"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed." - President Eisenhower, also a five-star General
That speech is one of the things that gives me great respect for Eisenhower and the political climate after the Second World War. Personally my favorite part of the speech is this:
That speech is one of the things that gives me great respect for Eisenhower and the political climate after the Second World War. Personally my favorite part of the speech is this:
The fruit of success in all these tasks would present the world with the greatest task—and the greatest opportunity—of all. It is this: the dedication of the energies, the resources, and the imaginations of all peaceful nations to a new kind of war. This would be a declared, total war, not upon any human enemy, but upon the brute forces of poverty and need.
The arms industry seems to me to be the most indefensible of all endeavours which we accept as legal, even beyond oil and gas (which I have massive issues with, 'cos, y'know, climate emergency)....
The arms industry seems to me to be the most indefensible of all endeavours which we accept as legal, even beyond oil and gas (which I have massive issues with, 'cos, y'know, climate emergency). Oil can be used to make chemicals, knives can be used for all manner of purposes, but what are guns, missiles and fighter jets used for? Killing, and only killing. I can't imagine the world would be a less safe place if all factories producing these things just closed their doors one night, never to produce such instruments of war ever again. Are there terrorists with caches of guns, bullets, grenades, etc? Sure, but outside of making their own bullets or guns in their own clandestine operations, how else are they going to get bullets once mass manufacturing by legal industry is stopped around the world? Point being: dismantling the arms trade also makes it harder for the 'baddies' to supply their operation as well. So why not just make the arms trade illegal on an international level? Of course there are some aspects of the defence industry which do not kill people like radar, no reason we can't still research and build passive defence systems like that. Just, y'know, stop building things that kill people, 'cos killing people is bad? 🙄
Unless every country in the entire world decided to do that at the same time, I disagree that things would be as safe or safer. If the West and Western allied powers suddenly closed up all their...
I can't imagine the world would be a less safe place if all factories producing these things just closed their doors one night, never to produce such instruments of war ever again.
Unless every country in the entire world decided to do that at the same time, I disagree that things would be as safe or safer. If the West and Western allied powers suddenly closed up all their defense manufacturers then asymmetrical and insurgent warfare wouldn't change much, sure, but nations like Russia (see Ukraine), and China (see Tibet, and South China Sea) would likely start ramping their production up and being even more aggressive in gobbling up everything around them.
Just, y'know, stop building things that kill people, 'cos killing people is bad?
Extremist organizations in the middle east don't have some guaranteed surplus or back alley deal with a major power, they simply make firearms themselves. The tools needed to make firearms are...
Sure, but outside of making their own bullets or guns in their own clandestine operations, how else are they going to get bullets once mass manufacturing by legal industry is stopped around the world?
Extremist organizations in the middle east don't have some guaranteed surplus or back alley deal with a major power, they simply make firearms themselves.
The tools needed to make firearms are commonplace, be they high end CNC, older manual mills and lathes, or simple hand tools and drill presses present in every other home garage in the US.
The same tools can easily make cases and bullets, mass manufacturing is absolutely not necessary.
No, before you think about it, making chemical gunpowder and primers are not difficult either, is widely available knowledge, and the ingredients are available over the counter with zero regulation or the possibility to be regulated. This goes for all materials necessary for the manufacture of firearms and ammunition.
3D printing has only made it easier to make firearms. Nearly everything in this photo is printed or hardware store attainable, the only parts that were firearm specific and not as easily made (highlighted in pink) with hand tools have recently been replaced with printed pieces as well. This is just one model, there are hundreds, is not a throwaway firearm, and model makers have been going through constant testing and refinement demonstrating the model more than capable of withstanding thousands of rounds without failure.
And finally, you can't uninvent anything and guns are not complicated. Close all the factories today, new ones open tomorrow. Close those and they'll reopen on a smaller individually, but overall larger scale.
Plus there's tools like the Ghost Gunner, which currently only finish 80% lower receivers, but I don't see why a similar tool could not be used to produce a relatively large quantity of high...
Plus there's tools like the Ghost Gunner, which currently only finish 80% lower receivers, but I don't see why a similar tool could not be used to produce a relatively large quantity of high quality parts for an underground arms industry.
Yep, didn't even want to get into the specifics of desktop CNC (which is all the Ghost Gunner is) which has proliferated over the past 5 years. I have a stack of forged aluminum (my mailman loved...
Yep, didn't even want to get into the specifics of desktop CNC (which is all the Ghost Gunner is) which has proliferated over the past 5 years. I have a stack of forged aluminum (my mailman loved me) sitting in my garage that I picked up for cheap for the 1m x 1m CNC I'm building this year.
If I ignore my 3D printer entirely, only use the aluminum I have that can make an AR15 lower in a single piece (no 80% or mating two smaller pieces), I can turn out a dozen AR15 lowers (the part considered a firearm by the ATF) in a weekend. That's one man, in a home garage, with completely raw material.
Killing people is bad, but when talking about war and peace, it's important to see them in the correct frame. Unless human nature suddenly changes and everyone becomes completely selfless, peace...
Exemplary
Of course there are some aspects of the defence industry which do not kill people like radar, no reason we can't still research and build passive defence systems like that. Just, y'know, stop building things that kill people, 'cos killing people is bad? 🙄
Killing people is bad, but when talking about war and peace, it's important to see them in the correct frame. Unless human nature suddenly changes and everyone becomes completely selfless, peace will always be about economics and balance of power. Nations don't generally wage wars of passion - they attack if they see the possibility to profit from it. Conversely, to keep the peace you have to keep war expensive for everyone.
A core element of keeping wars expensive is maintaining sufficient military strength. If I have no army, my neighbor can just roll in with whatever thugs they've got and take everything. If I have some form of an army, the invading neighbor will first have to fight and defeat it - which makes the whole ordeal much more expensive from them (logistics deploying enough forces to secure victory, internal issues from the population seeing their soldiers coming home in body bags, etc.). If I can push that expense high enough, my neighbor won't invade.
The ultimate form of this principle is the MAD doctrine - nations with advanced enough nuclear arsenal can't fight each other without ensuring their own complete destruction - so they don't fight (overtly). In this way, nuclear weapons are the thing that keeps peace across most of the planet. But for MAD to work, conflicting nuclear nations have to be roughly matched in capacity.
MAD is the place where, ironically, developing defensive technologies is dangerous. If my new radar system allows me to cheaply and efficiently intercept enemy ICBMs, then to ensure balance of power, other nations may decide to strike me before I can deploy this radar system. Same principle scales down to conventional conflicts between non-nuclear powers - if I could suddenly equip all my soldiers in Iron Man suits, every other nation would want to prevent that from happening, possibly by going to war now; otherwise, they risk being pushed around and possibly conquered by my super soldiers.
Also worth noting, there is no such thing as purely defensive technology - any technology you can use to defend your territory, you could pack on a truck and deploy in someone else's territory to limit the movement of their soldiers.
All that is to say: in real world, you can't end war by making it illegal. Because in a peaceful utopia, the first one to pick up a stone would become Genghis Khan.
(And then real world is even more complicated. Diplomacy and war are not distinct things, they are parts of a spectrum. Nations that aren't shooting at each other still wage invisible war by economic pressure. Weak nations align themselves with stronger ones, to make it expensive for other weak nations to invade them. It all boils down to who can push around who, and what to do to be the pusher, not the pushee.)
This is easy to say but you're avoiding some hard problems. Killing people may be bad but, just for starters, you do need some way of not letting a lynch mob get away with it.
This is easy to say but you're avoiding some hard problems. Killing people may be bad but, just for starters, you do need some way of not letting a lynch mob get away with it.
That speech is one of the things that gives me great respect for Eisenhower and the political climate after the Second World War. Personally my favorite part of the speech is this:
The arms industry seems to me to be the most indefensible of all endeavours which we accept as legal, even beyond oil and gas (which I have massive issues with, 'cos, y'know, climate emergency). Oil can be used to make chemicals, knives can be used for all manner of purposes, but what are guns, missiles and fighter jets used for? Killing, and only killing. I can't imagine the world would be a less safe place if all factories producing these things just closed their doors one night, never to produce such instruments of war ever again. Are there terrorists with caches of guns, bullets, grenades, etc? Sure, but outside of making their own bullets or guns in their own clandestine operations, how else are they going to get bullets once mass manufacturing by legal industry is stopped around the world? Point being: dismantling the arms trade also makes it harder for the 'baddies' to supply their operation as well. So why not just make the arms trade illegal on an international level? Of course there are some aspects of the defence industry which do not kill people like radar, no reason we can't still research and build passive defence systems like that. Just, y'know, stop building things that kill people, 'cos killing people is bad? 🙄
Unless every country in the entire world decided to do that at the same time, I disagree that things would be as safe or safer. If the West and Western allied powers suddenly closed up all their defense manufacturers then asymmetrical and insurgent warfare wouldn't change much, sure, but nations like Russia (see Ukraine), and China (see Tibet, and South China Sea) would likely start ramping their production up and being even more aggressive in gobbling up everything around them.
If only it were that easy. :(
Extremist organizations in the middle east don't have some guaranteed surplus or back alley deal with a major power, they simply make firearms themselves.
The tools needed to make firearms are commonplace, be they high end CNC, older manual mills and lathes, or simple hand tools and drill presses present in every other home garage in the US.
The same tools can easily make cases and bullets, mass manufacturing is absolutely not necessary.
No, before you think about it, making chemical gunpowder and primers are not difficult either, is widely available knowledge, and the ingredients are available over the counter with zero regulation or the possibility to be regulated. This goes for all materials necessary for the manufacture of firearms and ammunition.
3D printing has only made it easier to make firearms. Nearly everything in this photo is printed or hardware store attainable, the only parts that were firearm specific and not as easily made (highlighted in pink) with hand tools have recently been replaced with printed pieces as well. This is just one model, there are hundreds, is not a throwaway firearm, and model makers have been going through constant testing and refinement demonstrating the model more than capable of withstanding thousands of rounds without failure.
And finally, you can't uninvent anything and guns are not complicated. Close all the factories today, new ones open tomorrow. Close those and they'll reopen on a smaller individually, but overall larger scale.
Plus there's tools like the Ghost Gunner, which currently only finish 80% lower receivers, but I don't see why a similar tool could not be used to produce a relatively large quantity of high quality parts for an underground arms industry.
Yep, didn't even want to get into the specifics of desktop CNC (which is all the Ghost Gunner is) which has proliferated over the past 5 years. I have a stack of forged aluminum (my mailman loved me) sitting in my garage that I picked up for cheap for the 1m x 1m CNC I'm building this year.
If I ignore my 3D printer entirely, only use the aluminum I have that can make an AR15 lower in a single piece (no 80% or mating two smaller pieces), I can turn out a dozen AR15 lowers (the part considered a firearm by the ATF) in a weekend. That's one man, in a home garage, with completely raw material.
Killing people is bad, but when talking about war and peace, it's important to see them in the correct frame. Unless human nature suddenly changes and everyone becomes completely selfless, peace will always be about economics and balance of power. Nations don't generally wage wars of passion - they attack if they see the possibility to profit from it. Conversely, to keep the peace you have to keep war expensive for everyone.
A core element of keeping wars expensive is maintaining sufficient military strength. If I have no army, my neighbor can just roll in with whatever thugs they've got and take everything. If I have some form of an army, the invading neighbor will first have to fight and defeat it - which makes the whole ordeal much more expensive from them (logistics deploying enough forces to secure victory, internal issues from the population seeing their soldiers coming home in body bags, etc.). If I can push that expense high enough, my neighbor won't invade.
The ultimate form of this principle is the MAD doctrine - nations with advanced enough nuclear arsenal can't fight each other without ensuring their own complete destruction - so they don't fight (overtly). In this way, nuclear weapons are the thing that keeps peace across most of the planet. But for MAD to work, conflicting nuclear nations have to be roughly matched in capacity.
MAD is the place where, ironically, developing defensive technologies is dangerous. If my new radar system allows me to cheaply and efficiently intercept enemy ICBMs, then to ensure balance of power, other nations may decide to strike me before I can deploy this radar system. Same principle scales down to conventional conflicts between non-nuclear powers - if I could suddenly equip all my soldiers in Iron Man suits, every other nation would want to prevent that from happening, possibly by going to war now; otherwise, they risk being pushed around and possibly conquered by my super soldiers.
Also worth noting, there is no such thing as purely defensive technology - any technology you can use to defend your territory, you could pack on a truck and deploy in someone else's territory to limit the movement of their soldiers.
All that is to say: in real world, you can't end war by making it illegal. Because in a peaceful utopia, the first one to pick up a stone would become Genghis Khan.
(And then real world is even more complicated. Diplomacy and war are not distinct things, they are parts of a spectrum. Nations that aren't shooting at each other still wage invisible war by economic pressure. Weak nations align themselves with stronger ones, to make it expensive for other weak nations to invade them. It all boils down to who can push around who, and what to do to be the pusher, not the pushee.)
This is easy to say but you're avoiding some hard problems. Killing people may be bad but, just for starters, you do need some way of not letting a lynch mob get away with it.