Idle Hands

Let me begin by stating that I am completely pro-gun. Gun rights are not only essential for protecting all other rights, but also that they are rights alone should simply suffice as justification for their continued existence. But where reason fails…

Anyway, while I am pro-gun, I recognize the great evil that guns helped bring about in Western society. (As did the industrial revolution, but that is a story for another time.) Guns do not kill people, people kill people. Of course the same could be said of Communism. No, I am not saying guns are Communist and, like Communism, have no legitimate use. What I am saying is that guns helped lead to Communism. I know, it may seem strange, but ‘bear’ with me…

It all begins in Medieval Europe, or perhaps in China, but regardless: the meteoric rise of guns and gunpowder led to a restructuring of armies and, therefore, a reformation of European society. Feudalism, in many ways a precursor to Federalism, depended upon a fragile status quo maintained by several key factors. A lack of transportation was one of those factors. Another was the power of the nobility.

The nobility derived their powers from arms. Nobles spent much of their lives training for war. They had the money, and therefore the equipment, to go to war. Swords were expensive to make, and learning to use one even more so. Nobles had an interest in the status quo. Not just at the micro-level, mind you, but at the macro as well. Whenever one of their brethren became too powerful they tended to band together to defeat him. And they generally succeeded. The status quo was maintained. Then…

The gun. It changed everything. And not entirely for the better. You see, guns were relatively easy to make, and training was even easier. The accuracy of guns at the time made aiming a relatively unnecessary part of Basic. Load, point, shoot. Rinse. Repeat. Guns were less effective than bows and arrows. Bows like swords, however, required quite a bit of training, and as the population grew self-trained woodsmen became increasingly hard to find.

So what was the problem? Other than as Huxley once pointed out, rather than improving the world we have simply developed more efficient means of killing each other? Well for one, this destroyed the role of the nobles. Some have credited gunpowder with the development of democracy in Europe. I credit it with the development of anarchy; instability, disruption, chaos. Of course that really is what democracy is. Democracy—small ‘d,’ unless at the beginning of a sentence, as in this sentence—is very unlike the constitutional republic stability-loving Northern Europeans had grown fond of. Yes, even under monarchy realms such as England were constitutional republics.

The problem wasn’t just that the peasants had more power, but that the nobles retained every aspect of their power outside of war. They were in effect a bunch of rich people with political power and no real jobs. Sound familiar?

There was a solution to this problem. Louis XIV decided he could keep the nobility busy by building a cult of personality around himself and throwing lavish parties for them so they would compete for his favor. Meanwhile Louis would bankrupt France paying for those parties, building palaces, and fighting expansionist foreign wars in an attempt to further his own ambitions. Oh, wait. That wasn’t a solution at all. It was a disaster that (hopefully) culminated in the bloodbath of the French Revolution. Well, I’m sure the Sun King’s policies worked better in Prussia…

So next time you fire a gun, remember that while it is merely a tool, for good or ill, it can also have a transformative effect far beyond what one might imagine. And then, instead of throwing it away in disgust, keep training. Keep training and don’t let His Majesty buy you off with trinkets—surrendering your traditional right, and duty, to fight.