Promethius

“The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.”
Einstein, Albert

I once read a science fiction book in which mankind had discovered the means to travel the galaxy. They discovered life to be commonplace, and found thousands of civilizations, but none much more advanced than our own, just burned out worlds. After much study they determined that once a society reaches the technological point where the average citizen possessed the knowledge to create a weapon of terrible destructive power, some nut would use it.

When the second amendment was drafted in 1791, about the closest one man could likely come to a massacre with a gun was to fire a musket into a crowd and then stop, pack some powder etc. for a firing rate of about three rounds per minute. The second amendment was drafted, not as most people seem to believe, to protect hunters and shoot burglers, but rather to keep the power in the hands of the people should they need to rise up against oppressive rule.

Today, we find ourselves somewhere in between these two times. The reason for the second amendment still stands, perhaps stronger than when it was written, but weapons have evolved to the point where one person can easily conceal weapons capable of inflicting hundreds of casualties. How should we deal with this problem?  The obvious answer would be to limit the potential lethality each citizen is allowed to bear. The problem is, making something illegal doesn’t make it go away. According to the department of justice, 80% of gun crimes are committed by people who had come by the guns illegally. I think whatever efforts we make, it is imperative that rather than hiding from the technology,  we embrace it for the good it can do. You can’t uninvent fire, you can only use it and prepare for its misuse.