Originally posted by emosun16
If there wasn't any guns in the entire world, it would be harder to fight wars. No one would fear getting shot in the back! Less crimes would be commited. I know this is just a hollow dream, but I'd like everyone just to imagine what it'd be like if we didn't have guns.

[edit on 11-10-2009 by emosun16]

I am really finding it difficult to not insult you. Please do some history research. The most violent times in humanity came way prior to the advent of the firearm. People will fight. Wars will be waged. The only thing "guns" have done is make it to where people who would be not as able to defend themselves now more capable of doing so.

If they wernt guns wed ust find other ways to kill each other.
pretty much sums it up

Originally posted by emosun16
If there wasn't any guns in the entire world, it would be harder to fight wars. No one would fear getting shot in the back! Less crimes would be commited. I know this is just a hollow dream, but I'd like everyone just to imagine what it'd be like if we didn't have guns.

[edit on 11-10-2009 by emosun16]

I have to laugh when I hear these arguments because I am amazed that a living, breathing, thinking individual can be this out of touch. There was a time without any guns. NO GUNS WHATSOEVER. And guess what. There was war, lots of it.

The fundamental flaw with this "pie in the sky" type of reasoning is that it fails to take history and human nature into account.

Wars, feuds, and savage behavior among the human race long predate guns. Before there were guns, there were swords, and there were wars...

Violence is not caused by the tool by which it is expressed. That is akin to saying that a hammer builds a house and without hammers there would be no homes.

History and common sense rebuke this argument utterly.

Most people do not appreciate how brutal life was for the kind of tribal communities people portray as being "close to nature", such as the tribes of the pre-colonial Americas, or the various peoples of undeveloped regions of Africa. They frequently waged wars of genocide on their neighbors, preferring to strike at the women and children of their enemies when the warriors would be away or asleep.

They often did this with clubs, and wood or stone implements, because they generally did not have access to metal. In modern times, such tribal warfare is usually done with machetes, which are kept around because they are ubiquitous, useful tools in peacetime that can be used as a weapon.

Without guns, we'd fight with pike formations, getting more people killed. More murders would be committed with knives and gardening tools and blunt objects.

[edit on 12-10-2009 by mdiinican]

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Originally posted by emosun16
If there wasn't any guns in the entire world, it would be harder to fight wars. No one would fear getting shot in the back! Less crimes would be commited. I know this is just a hollow dream, but I'd like everyone just to imagine what it'd be like if we didn't have guns.

[edit on 11-10-2009 by emosun16]

Not much of a history buff are you?

If your argument were to hold water, we would only need to examine a time before firearms were invented. Since gunpowder was introduced to Europe in the 100 years war (1337-1453), any time before that would show your "utopia." When you examine the actual history, there is plenty of war, murder, crime, etc.

Harder to fight wars? Wars have been waged since the beginning of time. Every civilization in recorded history has waged war against others. Ask Hannibal about the difficulty of waging his war upon Rome before firearms were invented.

No one getting shot in the back? There has always been friendly fire incidents since the beginning of warfare. Whether it be an accidental death via arrow, trebuchet, or any type of siege weapon or boiling liquid. There have been many battles where archers have let loose volleys on their own army while they are fighting in hand to hand combat with their enemies. Collateral damage or friendly fire has only been a big deal since the 1960's. Before then, it was an accepted risk of waging war. Actually, it still is.

Less crime? If you consider murder, raping, pillaging, ransacking locations for resources, commodities, etc a crime, then there was plenty of crime in ancient times. Egyptians wrote of pirates as early as 1350 BC. Greeks had pirates in 3rd and 2nd century BC. Even Julius Caesar was held for ransom by Cilician pirates. See Piracy, Hunnic empire, Vikings, Corsairs. There has always been plenty of crime.

Hollow dream? Definitely. Good luck with that.

[edit on 14-10-2009 by xman_in_blackx]

Without guns most of the toys we have in modern society would not exist. Firearms were one of the first percision crafted tools. The original purpose was hunting like the bow & arrow. Hunting tools all get used in war, it's just how the dice fell. I must disagree with the mod who said we are omnivore. Canine teeth and binocular vision are marks of carnivores, we like are relations just also happen to be able to survive on plants if need be. Just not at optimum efficency.

Without guns we would have bows and crossbows, without bows and crossbows we'd have javalins and spears, without them we would have swords and daggers.

The world would be ruled by whoever was strongest without guns, a gun is the perfect equalizer, your granny could defend her self with a revolver and your kid could defend him/herself with a gun.

Guns are a necesary evil, criminals will always have guns and we need to have guns to protect ourselves from THEM.

They will get their weapons illegally anyway, even if we banned all guns, they would make them in their own garage, this is happening in brittain, ever heard of zip guns?

it makes me think about two old Sci fi stories by Stanislaw Lem: One was "Return from the stars"- about the future society where people were "betrised"- kind of emotionally castrated- unable to do any violence, the second...forget the name but it was the futures society as well where kind "inteligent" microparticles called "bystrosphere" controled all the peoples activities, and feeling negative emotion freeze or dissable the agressor- finally even there the extremists did found their metods to fool the system, causing the "righteous" emotions whenever they intended to do harm to someone...
Well there is "The Clockwork Orange" story as well.
WE HAVE TO DECIDE TO DO GOOD BY OURSELVES AND BENEVOLENTLY.

I was going to write out a long and well thought out reply to this uh... gentlemen.. but I think everyone else has beat me to it. War, murder and general violence have existed since the dawn of mankind, and that will never change. It's the world we live in. Do you also blame spoons for making Rosie O Donnell a fat swine? Maybe those should disappear too eh? but then people would eat with their hands.. maybe we should cut those off too and let a nice man in a white coat from the government feed us.

Ask the mother who had to protect herself and her children from home invaders if guns were evil.

Guns dont kill people, people kill people.

Take away my gun, I will just have to get creative and make weapons that arent as "friendly" as bulletts can be.

Why do people still bother debating this topic? Its pretty cut and dry if you ask me.

Words of Advice- Buy a gun, it may save your life someday.

If there were no weapons in the world? None at all-- no guns, no swords, no spears, no knives?

I'd break rocks until I got one with a sharp edge, then I'd use it to carve a point into a long stick. Then, I'd go around stabbing people with it, and taking any of their belongings for which I could find a use, or a passing desire.

Once somebody else, at least as enterprising as myself, equipped themselves with a similar sharpened stick, I'd head to my garage, and build a primitive firearm. It's not hard. And thus, the arms race would begin anew.

My point is that weapons can be destroyed, but the desire to use them, and the ability to create them ex nihilo but the bounty of Nature, cannot.

All that would be accomplished by the destruction of every single weapon on Earth would be the creation of an enormous, extremely appealing market for the self-motivated evildoer.

[edit on 8-11-2009 by The Parallelogram]

As my Granfather always used to reply to hypothetical questions:

"If my aunt had balls she'd be my uncle!"

Then alot of innocent lives would have been spared having to come back.