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Author Topic: "The Gun Is Civilization" by Maj. L. Caudill USMC (Ret)  (Read 1953 times)

Offline GreyGeek

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"The Gun Is Civilization" by Maj. L. Caudill USMC (Ret)
« on: January 08, 2017, 08:19:33 PM »
"The Gun Is Civilization" by Maj. L. Caudill USMC (Ret) Human beings only have two ways to deal with one another: reason and force. If you want me to do something for you, you have a choice of either convincing me via argument, or force me to do your bidding under threat of force. Every human interaction falls into one of those two categories, without exception. Reason or force, that's it. In a truly moral and civilized society, people exclusively interact through persuasion. Force has no place as a valid method of social interaction and the only thing that removes force from the menu is the personal firearm, as paradoxical as it may sound to some. When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force. You have to use reason and try to persuade me, because I have a way to negate your threat or employment of force. The gun is the only personal weapon that puts a 100-pound woman on equal footing with a 220-pound mugger, a 75-year old retiree on equal footing with a 19-year old gang banger, and a single guy on equal footing with a carload of drunken guys with baseball bats. The gun removes the disparity in physical strength, size, or numbers between a potential attacker and a defender. There are plenty of people who consider the gun as the source of bad force equations. These are the people who think that we'd be more civilized if all guns were removed from society, because a firearm makes it easier for a [armed] mugger to do his job. That, of course, is only true if the mugger's potential victims are mostly disarmed either by choice or by legislative fiat— it has no validity when most of a mugger's potential marks are armed. People who argue for the banning of arms ask for automatic rule by the young, the strong, and the many, and that's the exact opposite of a civilized society. A mugger, even an armed one, can only make a successful living in a society where the state has granted him a force monopoly. Then there's the argument that the gun makes confrontations lethal that otherwise would only result in injury. This argument is fallacious in several ways. Without guns involved, confrontations are won by the physically superior party inflicting overwhelming injury on the loser. People who think that fists, bats, sticks, or stones don't constitute lethal force, watch too much TV, where people take beatings and come out of it with a bloody lip at worst. The fact that the gun makes lethal force easier works solely in favor of the weaker defender, not the stronger attacker. If both are armed, the field is level. The gun is the only weapon that's as lethal in the hands of an octogenarian as it is in the hands of a weight lifter. It simply wouldn't work as well as a force equalizer if it wasn't both lethal and easily employable. When I carry a gun, I don't do so because I am looking for a fight, but because I'm looking to be left alone. The gun at my side means that I cannot be forced, only persuaded. I don't carry it because I'm afraid, but because it enables me to be unafraid. It doesn't limit the actions of those who would interact with me through reason, only the actions of those who would do so by force. It removes force from the equation... and that's why carrying a gun is a civilized act.

Offline JTH

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Re: "The Gun Is Civilization" by Maj. L. Caudill USMC (Ret)
« Reply #1 on: January 08, 2017, 09:05:53 PM »
Just as a comment, that wasn't written by any  "Major Caudill," though for some reason that is the purported mythical author that someone made up to pass it on when it originally went viral.  The correction to it has been widely published, and is easily searchable.

It was written by Marko Kloos in 2007.  Marko immigrated to the U.S. (from Germany, if I recall correctly) in 1996, was not ever in the U.S. military, and is now a published author.  Marko is a good guy. 

If you happen to read gun blogs, Marko's blog is TheMunchkinWrangler, and you've probably read some of his other stuff.

https://munchkinwrangler.wordpress.com/2007/03/23/why-the-gun-is-civilization/
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Offline GreyGeek

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Re: "The Gun Is Civilization" by Maj. L. Caudill USMC (Ret)
« Reply #2 on: January 09, 2017, 05:38:47 PM »
Just as a comment, that wasn't written by any  "Major Caudill," though for some reason that is the purported mythical author that someone made up to pass it on when it originally went viral.  The correction to it has been widely published, and is easily searchable.

It was written by Marko Kloos in 2007.  Marko immigrated to the U.S. (from Germany, if I recall correctly) in 1996, was not ever in the U.S. military, and is now a published author.  Marko is a good guy. 

If you happen to read gun blogs, Marko's blog is TheMunchkinWrangler, and you've probably read some of his other stuff.

https://munchkinwrangler.wordpress.com/2007/03/23/why-the-gun-is-civilization/
Thank you for that correction!

Offline depserv

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Re: "The Gun Is Civilization" by Maj. L. Caudill USMC (Ret)
« Reply #3 on: January 10, 2017, 02:52:27 PM »
I remember years ago reading a book titled The Evolution Of Weapons And Warfare by a noted military historian named Colonel Trevor N. Dupuy (Ret.).  The author makes the point at the end of the book that as weapon lethality increases, per capita battlefield deaths decrease. This of course is the opposite of what one would expect.  He speculates that the reason for it is that as weapon lethality increases dispersal of soldiers also increases, and that more than makes up for the greater lethality.  I could probably dream up other reasons, but he's the authority on the matter.

In 216 BC there was a famous battle between Rome and a Carthaginian force by a village called Cannae, where roughly 60,000 Romans were killed in a single day (estimates vary).  That's comparable to the number of Americans killed in the Vietnam war, which lasted a decade.  So 60,000 men were killed in a single days with swords, and the same number killed with guns took ten years.

The point to this is that weapon lethality is not what determines how many people get killed, even in war.  Men have had the power to kill each other since Cain killed Abel; the mechanical difficulty in killing a person is not what keeps people from doing it and never has been: where there is a desire to do so, the means have always been there. 

I don't have historical statistics to back it up, but I have always assumed this to be likewise true of violence between individuals.  In debates with anti-gun bigots I have asked them to show me a historical correlation between firearm development and an increase in murder rate, because if what they say about there being something special about guns that makes there widespread distribution result in a higher murder rate, we should be able to look back and see murder rate go up with each improvement in guns.  But no one has ever been able to show me such a correlation.  Murder rates go up and down, but they are independent of advancements in weapon technology. 

What widespread distribution of guns does do though is explained very well in the above essay.
« Last Edit: January 10, 2017, 05:52:34 PM by depserv »
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Offline GreyGeek

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Re: "The Gun Is Civilization" by Maj. L. Caudill USMC (Ret)
« Reply #4 on: January 13, 2017, 05:51:18 PM »
In war, however, nothing exceeds the killing power of a nuclear device.  In two incidents of less than 15 seconds more than 200,000 went to meet their Maker.   Fire bombing in Japan and Germany killed twice that many.   And, modern weapons have the ability to "reach out and touch someone".   The latest iteration of TrackingPoint's Linux powered gun sight, being developed for the military, will reach out 3,000 meters and touch a 16" target traveling 20m/s.   

The Bible records that an Angel of the Lord killed 185,000 men in Sennacherib's Army in a single night.

Offline Mali

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Re: "The Gun Is Civilization" by Maj. L. Caudill USMC (Ret)
« Reply #5 on: January 16, 2017, 12:44:32 PM »
The latest iteration of TrackingPoint's Linux powered gun sight, being developed for the military, will reach out 3,000 meters and touch a 16" target traveling 20m/s.   
HAD to bring out the Linux thing didn't you?  ;D

You are correct that our weapons get more and more efficient at mass casualty in less time and that is a scary thing. Someday we may actually have a "Death Star" level weapon. I won't be alive to see it, but it is a likely scenario.
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same. - Ronald Reagan

Offline GreyGeek

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Re: "The Gun Is Civilization" by Maj. L. Caudill USMC (Ret)
« Reply #6 on: January 16, 2017, 02:47:42 PM »
HAD to bring out the Linux thing didn't you?  ;D
Yup.  I hate to see people exploited by Microsoft and Apple and still get infected with malware.

You are correct that our weapons get more and more efficient at mass casualty in less time and that is a scary thing. Someday we may actually have a "Death Star" level weapon. I won't be alive to see it, but it is a likely scenario.
And, they'll get smaller and thus more portable.  We have GPS guided bombs.  With modern GPS we can target to within 2.5 cm (1 inch).  I can see bullets fired into arcs that use miniature electronics to guide the projectile to within +- 1 inch at five miles, the shooter not even being able to see the target.   Just an airborne or spaceborne targeting system that feeds constant updates to the projectile in flight as the target moves.

Watching Jihadi and Syrian videos of the war there points out that most "warriors" just stick their AK47  up in the air so the muzzle is above the wall or mound, and sprays lead down range.   That is a LOT of Lead pollution that will come back to poison future inhabitants.  One bullet could do the job if existing technology were used.   Linux is free.  The software which does the trajectory calculations and the hardware which controls the barrel is not free.  That's where the cost is. But, economy of scale could drop the cost to the commodity basement.

Using three or four wifi routers positioned around a house or a building  I can measure the reflected energy and create an interior map of the house, and images of the people inside of it.  One can even detect beating hearts by the doppler shift.  Weapons exist now that could shoot through the walls and hit that heart, if it were known exactly where to point them.  Now we have that technology. 

How about insect size drones that fly over, around and through barriers and contain a miniature hypodermic with a milligram of a potent neurotoxin?  Just flying into the face, arms, back of the neck or the scalp ... and a minute later the target is dead.

And there are so many more things most people never think of or read about.


Offline Kendahl

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Re: "The Gun Is Civilization" by Maj. L. Caudill USMC (Ret)
« Reply #7 on: January 16, 2017, 07:46:45 PM »
I don't have historical statistics to back it up, but I have always assumed this to be likewise true of violence between individuals.  In debates with anti-gun bigots I have asked them to show me a historical correlation between firearm development and an increase in murder rate, because if what they say about there being something special about guns that makes there widespread distribution result in a higher murder rate, we should be able to look back and see murder rate go up with each improvement in guns.  But no one has ever been able to show me such a correlation.
The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker discusses the more or less steady decline in violence from human prehistory to modern times. The Omaha Public Library has a copy.