Guns Don't Kill People --

Guns Don't Kill People -- People Kill People "Guns don't kill people; people kill people." The conception to this statement is a true statement regardless how anyone wants to see it. It is cause and effect. The temporal order on how things are done. There has to be some sort of human intervention. Guns don't go off on their own, changing human violence to creating peace may have an impact on this phrase.

In the end what will it be, removing guns from everyone's home or removing the people that kill people. The gun is just a tool like any other tool used for whatever purpose it was invented. The same goes for a machete…it was designed for cutting tree limbs and clearing paths, but in the wake of Darfur, it was used to cut human limbs and torsos. The gun is made for target practice, or for self-defense when in imminent danger. People's invisible mentalities are what cause others to die.

Not the guns. The gun is not going to hiccup and fire on its own. A relationship has to exist between the two variables. The saying "guns don't kill people; people kill people" is often used by defenders of the second amendment to justify citizens' right to keep and bear arms. My peer obviously agrees with this statement and has interesting and valid points. But while his assertions are technically correct, some of his assumptions and conclusions are simplistic and questionable and require further clarification.

When he says "this is a true statement regardless how anyone wants to see it," he is again oversimplifying the essence of the statement. Let me explain this with an example. One might propose that the Iranian ambitions to possess nuclear weapons should not be opposed because nuclear weapons do not kill people or do not explode on their own, human intervention is needed.

But who is going buy this statement? There is a reasonable ground to think that Iranians may use nuclear weapons if they possess them and therefore the international community wants to deny them the right to own WMD. Although the statement "nuclear weapons do not kill people; humans do" is technically correct, its assumptions are simplistic because in a complex world it is clear that the availability of WMD to all nations increases the risk of the use of nuclear weapons.

Of course, the analogy is not entirely correct, as nuclear weapons are much more powerful than handy guns. But the logic behind the analogy is sound. When my peer says that without human intervention guns do not kill people, he is ignoring the fact that free availability of guns may allow some crazy people to kill others although without guns they might not have been able to kill anyone. My peer's statement that a gun "is just a tool like any other" again is technically correct but simplistic.

A gun is a much more powerful weapon than a pocket knife. The crazy person who tried to assassinate President Reagan would have had far lesser chances of attacking the President with a pocket knife, for example. The availability of guns makes it easier to kill others. My peer's analogy with the use of machete in Rwanda actually weakens his argument. Again, it is technically true that the machetes did not kill people, but people with machetes did.

But one might also argue that without the easily availability of machetes -- the genocidal leaders bought them from China and made them easily available to their fanatic followers -- the magnitude of mass murder might have been much lesser. My peer says that guns are made for self-defense, but so are nuclear weapons. To my knowledge, nobody supports the idea that all nations should be allowed to possess.