Guns – What Are They Good For

War

The Wikipedia section on the history of guns makes it clear that the history of guns and war are clearly intertwined, guns being developed primarily as a means to kill people in warfare.

Indeed even with the advent of weapons of mass destruction, the infamous WMDs, guns are still the weapon of choice in warfare. These guns are often being fired by the poor and disadvantaged against other poor and disadvantaged in wars started by the wealthy and advantaged.

Hunting

People have been hunting successfully without firearms for survival and sport since man started eating meat. Nonetheless the use of hunting rifles to kill game is a long established and accepted part of many societies. But, no one needs a military assault rifle to hunt for sport or survival. Spraying bullets at everything around hoping to hit something or mowing down a whole herd in one push of a trigger is not sport.

Sport Shooting

Shooting as a sport is also a thing, from biathlon in the Olympics to target shooting with handguns. No harm is done here as long as the guns are safely stored at the shooting range.

Criminals and Police

Criminals have discovered that guns can be a useful tool of their trade and the police have responded. In some countries the police responded cautiously with beat police and detectives remaining unarmed and special armed response units established. Other countries decided to start an arms race with the criminals, with ordinary police armed to the teeth and and special (SWAT) units armed like military assault units. We will leave it to your reading of current affairs to determine which response resulted in more or less gun violence and deaths.

Mass Murder

The easy availability of military style assault weapons has made mass murder a much easier undertaking than in the past. Internationally, the numbers of incidents of mass murders compared to the availability of such weapons speaks for itself.

Protection and Vigilantism

While some believe that they need guns to protect themselves and to deal with criminals, most civilized societies believe that should be the role of the police. There is a a belief, primarily in one country, that an armed populace is a safe populace and the more people with guns the safer a society is. Unfortunately the facts internationally indicate the opposite, particularly when it comes to gun violence and the deaths from it.

What Should We Do

So what should Canada do about guns and gun violence. Fortunately we are not saddled by a foolish Second Amendment but consider gun ownership to be a carefully regulated privilege as most civilized countries do.

While hunting rifles can be used in crimes, and no doubt are occasionally, they are not the main problem.

The big problem with gun violence lies with handguns and assault rifles which no ordinary citizens have a need for. This is one situation where there are simple and effective solutions. No one outside of the military and certain special police units need assault rifles. They should simply be prohibited. As for handguns, there is really no need for civilians to have them either but since they can be easily controlled for sport shooting purposes by restricting their use and storage to approved shooting ranges they should be allowed with those restrictions.

Government simply needs to ignore the imported ideas of the American right wing and provide the solutions the majority of Canadians agree with.

On Free Trade

Even among left wing parties and progressive politicians trade is worshipped as the saviour of the world, but perhaps we should ask ourselves Is Trade Evil ?

After we do that we can consider the question of free trade and free trade agreements.

We need to seriously look at the so-called free trade agreements for what they are. They certainly do not guarantee free trade. What they guarantee are rights to corporations over sovereign countries with things like investor state dispute provisions that allow corporations to sue countries for passing legislation in the public interest that offends the multinational corporations rights to maximize their profits.

So what could real free trade look like. One option would be absolute free trade. Eliminate all tariffs and non-tariff barriers. Provide no artificial advantages to domestic products or corporations. Provide no, intentional or otherwise, advantages to foreign products or corporations.

Any goods could be sold in Canada, subject equally to any forms of taxation applied, regardless of country of origin, as long as the goods are produced subject to health and safety, environmental, and labour standards (minimum wages, collective bargaining and workers rights provisions, etc.) equivalent to those required of goods produced in Canada.

That would be true free trade.

Can We, Should We, Will We Live Forever Online

When typing for this blog I have often wished I could just think my thoughts at the computer and have them type out on the screen. This, no doubt, has much to do with the fact I am a one finger hunt and peck typist (having been streamed into drafting and electricity in grade nine rather than typing and home economics).

But this got me thinking bigger.

First some thoughts on what makes us human. I have heard it said that what separates us from the (other) animals is that we are aware of our existence. I think it is probably somewhat more than that, extending to the fact that we philosophize and question the meaning of life. Of course we do not know what (other) animals are thinking but clearly thinking and communicating are more important to us than simply the tasks necessary for our physical existence.

On to the idea of living forever. It seems the biggest obstacle to living forever is that our bodies wear out, particularly our hearts and lungs that keep oxygen and blood circulating. The other big factor is that the earth could not sustain everyone living forever unless we stopped reproducing.

But what if we did not need most of our physical body and all those resources we live off of. What if we only needed to keep our brains alive.

If the essence of being human is thinking and communication, what if we only needed our brains to do that.

What if we had a brain-computer interface that would let us think our thoughts to our computers and communicate with other humans, including living brains. What then.

How much space and resources would it take to just keep our brains alive after our bodies died,

And what if we did not even have to do that. What if we could transfer the essence of our brains, our intellectual being and memories onto computer chips that required virtually no storage space and only required a few millivolts of energy to be sustained forever.

The big question is would you want to live forever on the Internet watching mankind make the same mistakes over and over forever and ever.

Metric for Americans

American exceptionalism often means things like calling football soccer while the rest of the world calls it football . Yes, us northern neighbours do the same thing but it's still wrong.

My biggest peeve about American exceptionalism is the fact they cannot get their political colours correct. Every American election period I am puzzled by which states are red and which are blue till I remember that the land of Donkeys and Elephants has it backwards. In the rest of the world red represents the left and blue represents the right but America chooses to do it differently. BTW Wikipedia's explanation is here FWIW.

Perhaps the strangest example of American exceptionalism is that after fighting a bitter war of independence from the British Imperialists they choose to be (almost) the only country in the world still using the Imperial system of measurement and not using the Metric system.

So for those leery of change let's do a quick comparison.

We can see the multitude of complicated calculations necessary to use the Imperial System while the Metric system simply requires an ability to move the decimal point.

So what would that mean for Americans. Probably less than they fear. In Canada, in some sense, we have a hybrid system. For almost everything official Metric is used. The most noticeable changes for the common person are weather and driving and we have adapted to this easily. Most of us don't relate to the old Fahrenheit units anymore. The same can be said of distances and speed limits.

For the home handyman little has changed. Plywood (and particle board) is still sold in 4 foot by 8 foot sheets, though sometimes the thickness will be in millimetres rather than fractions of an inch. And two by fours are still the same standard 1½ X 3½ inch size. In Canada most measuring tapes are marked in both Metric and Imperial measurements. So build away using your existing tools.

As for cooking have no fear. There is no Metric Fire Department burning your old cookbooks and grandmother's recipes and no Metric Police seizing your Imperial measuring spoons and cups. Indeed, most measuring spoons and cups in Canada are marked in both measuring systems. You simply gain access to both Metric and Imperial recipes.

So have no fear America, embrace progress and leave Liberia and Myanmar to fend for themselves in a Metric world.