Month: July 2008

From Richard Fernandez of The Belmont Club:

And as anyone who has mis-spent his youth can testify, what constitutes a bladed weapon is limited only by the imagination. A wine bottle rapped against a railing. An artfully folded aluminum can. Forks bent to fit around your hand. Ballpoint pens. Sticks cut at an angle. Flathead screwdrivers. Hard wire. Anyone who works in corrections knows that a determined man can make a weapon out of practically anything.

The implements of mayhem were always ready to hand. What was lacking once was the wolfpack social infrastructure to wield it at random. The hardware remained largely inert until the right software was downloaded to animate it into chopping, slashing and stabbing motions. Maybe what we need is a software patch, not downrated hardware.

Arms control really does boil down to a form of ludditism; a desire to uninvent certain technology, and drive it from the knowledge of man.  The British experiment has shown that this does not cause violence to cease.

Most of us don’t have the time or inclination to learn to fight with bladed instruments, and my understanding from people in the know is that such fighting is likely to result in being stabbed even for a skilled fighter.  One reason the firearm was such an important technological achievement is because it gives ordinary people of moderate fighting skills the same power as someone much stronger and well learned in fighting.  As the old saying goes, “God may have created man, but Sam Colt made them equal.”