What if we replace guns and bullets with bows and arrows? (2022)
solar.lowtechmagazine.com
solar.lowtechmagazine.com
The Onion couldn't come up with this. It's so embarrassing. And yet, as I type this, dozens of people are taking this premise seriously and debating it on its merits. Humans really are doomed.
For the last 80 or so years the nuclear weapon has likely reduced the number of deaths in war more than anything else. Of course it's hard to prove a counterfactual. This said, the cost of outright war with nukes is so terrible that the large nations of the world have avoided going toe to toe and instead engaged in smaller proxy wars, that while terrible, have had relatively low population kill rate in relation to what occurred in world wars.
Veteran's Day is being observed today in the US
not all of us but some are a bit bored today :)
I agree for less pessimistic reasons. The Hacker News crowd prefers intellectually stimulating conversation. Considering unexplored alternatives.
Exploring ideas is a huge pillar of this community. Engaging in that process doesn't mean that any of us think this could happen in the real world.
I agree for less pessimistic reasons. The Hacker News crowd prefers intellectually stimulating conversation. Playing around with new ideas. Considering unexplored alternatives.
A huge pillar of this community is exploring ideas. Engaging in that doesn't mean that any of us think this could happen in the real world.
Personally, I find discussion about hypothetical, albeit completely impractical, ways we could avoid killing each other a much better use of time than a lot of other topics, like discussing ways we could kill each other more efficiently.
Ok. Fine. I'm in. Let's discuss it.
Do you think we're better off using ai to decide the arms treaties, or should we hold off for quantum computing?
It is, sadly, part of our nature. And because of that I prefer hypotheticals that actually have some basis in reality.
By the way so, during the time of bow, arrow, sword, spear and shield, we still managed to kill hundreds of thousands of people.
This comes up now and then. But it doesn't hold water, because if true then people would on average be killing people roughly at the same rate, regardless of epoch, geographical area or society. But nations and tribes that were constantly warring have over time become good, peaceful neighbors, while the opposite is the exception. In spite of the impression one might get from the daily news, person-on-person violence is at an historical low.
Why is this explanation still popular, despite the obvious falsity of it? Good question, not sure. Maybe for now suffice to say that it isn't true whenever it pops up. Eventually we might start scrutinizing the real reasons (or lack thereof) for going to war, and the mindless slaughter it necessarily entails.
There is no obvious falisty here. Any intelligent entity has the ability to kill, it's part of the nature of intelligence. The question you're asking, which is different is "What drives more killing at particular times, and can it be avoided".
And here is the answer you don't want to hear.
No.
This is just game theory in practice. Every player has the option of cooperating or competing. If they decide to compete it is likely they will choose to escalate in order to win.
Maybe the model didn't take all parameters into account - a primary characteristic of all models? Such arguments may first seem like a plausible description of the world only to become arguments for a course of action.
In short I would not rely too much on a theory that says "we must go to war and kill thousands if not millions of civilians otherwise the opponent will" as a lame excuse to leave other options unexplored. We're getting close to that phase in history where other such options seem ever more realistic IMO.
The argument that I originally objected to was that it is in "our nature" to develop ever more lethal means of warfare. Your objection to this is that (according to game theory) there is no way to stop this, so although it might not be in our genetic nature then it is in the "nature" of game theory (with rational players that might as well be robots). My objection to this stands: you can't know all the parameters of the game even if it probably is possible to retrofit the theory to past events so that it looks all encompassing. In systems as complex as total world history you simply can not pin down all the parameters sufficiently so that you can foresee all possible outcomes - no matter how much one might wish for such powers. It is a temptation that many, perhaps mostly mathematicians, have succumbed to: replacing the world with the model, or the terrain with the map if you will.
So, even this kind of "nature" is false, even if less obviously so. I don't expect you to agree, but I think we can agree that this is the point of contention, and since our beliefs are simply different (and I don't expect you to be swayed as a consequence of our little exchange here) there is no use arguing further.
You're simply submitting that a model exists where we can all get along, and handwaving why as too complex. Your model is as simply unpredictable as my model is. But with any models where there is a large amount of unpredictability, is you look at model probability. What is more probable? That everyone suddenly starts getting along with no defectors. Or that some groups play along waiting for the right time to defect?
Now in your latest comment, you start talking about various probabilities instead, which speaks a different language than the one used previously. High probability based on historical and, as such different, circumstances is not same as predicting with absolute certainty what will happen, as I'm sure you agree.
Which brings me to reiterate what I said at the start of this thread: It is not part of our unchangeable nature to be ever more destructive towards fellow man. And, I might add: to insist that it is (in our nature) is not only false, it becomes an argument for not exploring the sorely needed avenues for peace that exist.
If you really feel that way, please either (1) go vegan, or (2) start killing the animals you eat and wear with your bare hands.
They didn’t need advanced weaponry to kill tens of thousands of people. A few thousand soldiers would go through a city, house-by-house, and put every single man, woman, and child to the sword. They then looted what they wanted and burned the house to the ground.
Thousands more died during the siege, long before any soldiers reached them, due to disease and starvation from overcrowding and dwindling food supplies. It was absolutely horrific and it happened mainly because swords, spears, and bows were useless against city walls so long sieges were the rule.
The massacres that followed could be chalked up to deep resentment on the part of the attacking soldiers for the defenders holding out so long. I think another part of it is simply that the commanders of the day had less power over their soldiers, so looting and pillaging was part of the bargain to encourage them to fight.
Medieval wars were in general shorter, more regional, used much smaller forces and affected the civilian population less than in later ages. Of course it is very difficult to give any numbers, but various infection diseases, childbirth and infant death were major causes of death. (E.g. women life expectancy overtook that of men only in the 19th century.) Also at least in the 13th and 14th century in Europe main reasons for a significant temporary population decline - during a time of general population growth - were black death and hunger, the latter being partially caused by limitations to agriculture technology and available land.
lol. lmao, even.
Just an army moving through a region - just walking, scouting and "foraging" (this doesn't mean bushes, this means looting from rural villages) - guarantees a famine for those involved. Only the invention of the railway prevented (no, lessened) this.
as a general rule though this was also because it was Christians killing non-Christians etc.
The ancient empires were able to gather armies much larger than any medieval king could, and, at the same time, people had few qualms about genocide. There weren't even religious reasons not to commit one, much less any chivalry codes etc.
The Romans in particular had the principle of "aries murum attigit", which meant that a city had time to surrender until the first battering ram touched its walls. After that, the captives would be put to the sword.
And whatever other effect he might have on you, he engaged you enough to leave this comment. I think it worked.
Netanyahu's brother Yoni died in the Entebbe raid, didn't seem to make Binyamin a pacifist.
Entire article begins with "What If" and then explores it seriously. What if questions are important even if the subsequent topic isn't fundamentally serious.
This, after detailed explanations that amount to why firearms are technically superior.
It is very silly.
I agree with you, except no.
I mean, the universe will eventually die in heat death - and long before that Earth will become inhospitable - and even before that - we'll probably get smashed by some giant meteor or something.
Smart people wasting braincells on pointless thought experiments does not make us doomed.
On the contrary, the extremely-rare crazy idea that turns out to be genius is probably worth all the pointless debate.
>> Rather than being technically superior weapons, firearms took the skills and muscular effort out of killing someone from a distance. The main reason most European armies switched from bows to crossbows and then firearms was the short learning curves of these weapons. Crossbowmen and musketeers required little or no training, while it took many years of practice to build an archer skillful and strong enough to be of use in warfare. The crossbow and the firearm thus expanded the number of people in a given population that could become soldiers. That was great news for those in power because they could now build large armies quickly.
That’s unfortunate then, since that point is verifiably false. Historically speaking people do considerably less killing today than they did in the past, despite having inferior weapons[1]. There is in fact a solid argument that readily available superior weaponry has a net zero effect on violence. For example controlling for demographics the USA’s murder rate is roughly on par with the Western European countries. And indeed, rural home invasions are virtually unheard of in the USA while they do occur in Europe.
[1] https://www.vrc.crim.cam.ac.uk/vrcresearch/london-medieval-m...
bro just come out and say it
You're thinking rate of violence day-to-day. I feel the author was thinking of how humans have increased their potential lethality, by analyzing the range, rate of fire, supply, required skill, accuracy of humans and their relationship with weaponry.
>> And indeed, rural home invasions are virtually unheard of in the USA
Wow, I need to live where you live! Home invasions are quite common in metro areas in the USA (edit: I see you said "rural" now). As a note the US has vast rural areas that see very little crime, so nationally speaking the US statistics versus Europe is horribly skewed. True comparison would be by cities, but every country and city reports crime differently!
Data for burglaries:
Europe: https://www.eupedia.com/europe/crime_maps_of_europe.shtml#bu...
USA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
I guess you didn't read much of lowtechmag, which is definitely just about the opposite of "impractical", being much centered on actual experimentation, detailed technical analysis etc. But then again "of course people on HN" would get offended by such slightly technocritical pov.
> suggesting that the entire world replace advanced weaponry with stuff that got phased out hundreds of years ago
Exactly what part of the title starting with "What if" did you not understand? This article -- like several other on the website, but for this one it's particularly obvious -- are thought experiment, designed very much to confront people with unusual ideas and hence make the current norm more obvious.
It's something else. Mental habits that are entirely rhetorically based. Basically, George Orwell's nightmare
But idk. Were Charles Manson or the unibomber "naive" to think they could achieve their goals, their way?
It's not a naive mindset, whether or not the conclusion is. I don't think it's lack of experience or depth that leads here.
It's the duck-witch skit from Monty python.
This is objectively true now and has been for a while, though the article goes into detail about how it was far from being true in the early days of the firearm.
> firearms took the skills and muscular effort out of killing someone from a distance.
> Crossbowmen and musketeers required little or no training, while it took many years of practice to build an archer skillful and strong enough to be of use in warfare.
As with many things, economics dictate the choices we make as societies.
> It would decrease the number of people in a given population who could become effective soldiers
We're doing a fine enough job of that already, with sedentary lifestyles leading to fat and unhealthy people.
The materialist approach to history is always the most effective.
First: violence was a lot worse before, so what makes the author think going back in time with weapons is actually good?
Second: that guns allow the weak to be as threatening as the strong is considered a feature by many people; an equalizing force. As the saying goes: "God made men, Sam Colt made them equal." The idea that you can find vulnerable people and exploit them without fear is a big driver of violence -- but if everyone must fear violence coming back at them, that's a pacifying force.
Third, the author goes on about the sustainability of guns. But arrows are a lot bigger and more expensive, so I question the idea that they'd be made sustainably. "Artisanal" means wood, I suppose, and that could be much more problematic than a few factories cranking out bullets. People would reuse arrows more, but there are also a lot more people today so that would really involve some kind of industrial process and I doubt it comes out as a net advantage.
Even when it comes to public safety, I'm not quite sure it's a win. We are pretty safe most places, and in the US, violence is mostly local to known areas.
This isn’t self-evident. In fact, evidence suggests that more guns leads to more violence. But, we continue the experiment in the U.S.
But only strong and well-trained people can use bows effectively. In other words, it's a world where the strong are in control.
He says guns are no more/less dangerous than bow and arrow when comparing the best bowman to anyone with a gun.
Yeah, the best bowman can fire an arrow every 5-6 seconds. But that random person off the street that is having a mental breakdown and wants to kill a bunch of people as a type of suicide? Yeah, he's not going to be a world class bowman.
The safest places still have some guns around. Enough that when something is happening, they arrive on the scene quickly. You could imagine those translating to skilled bowmen instead, and that's an interesting thought experiment, but it's hard to conclude much.
Beyond the the obvious (both nasty nations and scared nations will keep their guns and bullets), the article seems blind to the fact that artillery, landmines, and other non-gun weapons cause ~90% of casualties on modern battlefields. Granted that those things fall under the same "it would be so much better if only..." idealism - but omitting them throws some credibility shadow on their historical account.
If getting everyone to move to bows is feasible, why make that the goal? We should instead solve all conflicts with dance offs and rap battles. Ooh, or a walk off! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkMer1HnluU
Experimental archeology shows that this was not the case. Arrows could not penetrate thick plate, and could only defeat plate armor by shooting a large number of arrows and hoping to hit a weak point. The Youtube channel "Tod's Workshop" has done many tests with reproduction bows/arrows/armor, designed to replicate typical equipment and technique (featuring archer Joe Gibbs shooting an impressive 160lb draw weight) from the Battle of Agincourt era. Medieval plate armor was highly effective.
Good introduction video is "MEDIEVAL ARMOUR TESTED! - Arrows vs Amour 2":
Can someone link one of those assessments?
Most assessments I've seen usually focus on accuracy, penetration, and reliability.
Accuracy is usually measured in MoA in US.
Penetration is usually measured using ballistic gel. (12 to 16 inches against an unarmored human)
Reliability is measured with "Mean Rounds Between Failure".
Effective and Maximum Range, and fire rate of weapon is definitely measured, but it's not something that I would think is highlighted compared the other metrics above.
I'm not sure how one would measure "lethality". Debate over "stopping power" goes back a long way, but it's not something that I've seen is easily measured or compared against.
> For all these reasons, rather than keeping weapons out of the sustainability discussion – they should be our focus. If we cannot imagine low-tech warfare, we cannot imagine a low-tech, sustainable, and fair society. Switching to low-tech weapons sounds unrealistic because it would require global cooperation, but the same holds for lowering the emissions from fossil fuels. Switching to low-tech weapons sounds unrealistic because it involves “uninventing” things, but this also applies to many other problematic everyday products.
> Indeed, military technology is one of the few domains in which we have collectively decided not to use certain technologies. Humanity has banned many types of weapons in warfare, such as chemical and biological weapons, blinding laser weapons, and poisoned bullets. Meanwhile, no country has succeeded in outlawing SUVs, although their danger to other road users and the environment is well-known. As weird as it sounds, military technology leads by example
But for some reason this strategy does not seem well-liked amongst climate change activists.
All sorts of vehicles are banned from roads. Not banning SUVs doesn’t indicate that were unable to ban SUVs because of some lack of ability to regulate vehicle types on roads.
If one subscribes to that view, there's no argument that this was a collective decision for humanities sake, but rather a cost/benefit analysis by the military.
Why do you believe so?
Someone should tell Russia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landmines_in_Ukraine
The US and the USSR never banned them. Most of the world did so they could claim moral clout, but make no mistake, if the shooting started they'd be buying them from one side or the other like crazy.
As former USSR countries, UKR and RUS never agreed to ban them. Same for cluster munitions. And we're seeing just how brutally effective both are.
So e.g. chemical and biological weapons are pretty poor performers when you put them up against conventional weapons.
For one thing, both can backfire greatly if for example they are improperly handled behind the frontlines. Weapons need to be stable and easy to handle and able to deal with fuckups without killing your own people.
They also are expensive as hell, it costs a lot more (and is probably harder) to find competent people willing to make these types of weapons, and per dollar, they don't kill as many people as conventional bombs do. (See: World War 1) So, they are 'banned', but mostly because they aren't very effective.
When you look at so-called chemical weapons that are in use, they are usually used for temporary area denial, are stable, not that lethal, if at all, and easy to produce: white phosphorus, CN and CS gas, etc. The US of course calls white phosphorus for 'illumination' but the people firing it know what they're using it for. So when they do beat out the alternatives, they get used anyway.
Laser weapons are being developed but they are basically just not there yet. Batteries are heavy and the usefulness seems pretty limited to shooting down incoming drones/missiles possibly. Just using anti-missile missiles or just a stream of bullets is still cheaper and more reliable. Again, if you can see and hit someone in the eyes with a laser, why not just shoot them with a normal bullet? The economics don't make sense.
Poisoned bullets I haven't really heard of, I'm not sure what kind of poison would survive being coated onto a bullet and fired out of a gun, or how making a really expensive nerve agent bullet and then shooting someone with it is better or more sensible than just shooting them with a regular bullet so I can't really comment.
Expanding ammo was 'banned' but again, it was essentially replaced with spitzer style rifle bullets that are more accurate and effective anyway, and can have a similar result on impact.
tldr it's not a good comparison to call these things actually banned in a meaningful sense.
The only "banned" weapons that aren't still being used routinely are nukes.
I don't think it makes sense to ban weapons of war. People don't go to war for fun; they fight out of desperation, whether it's a desperate struggle for national survival, or a desperate struggle for the political survival of some despot. If they can't buy precision glide-bombs and cruise missiles, they use barrel-bombs and gas. Rape as a weapon of war is banned as a warcrime, but it happens in every war, because killing seems to give men a stiffy.
Waging war on civilians is a warcrime, but all wars are fought against civilians; siege warfare is as old as warfare itself, and is the epitome of war against civilians. The same applies to carpet-bombing, and most kinds of economic sanctions. Armies don't usually go to war - countries go to war.
(The situation in Sudan looks anomalous to me; the warring parties seem to be two branches of the same military force, fighting over control over illegal mines).
If lasers were available in WW2 I think they would have been used as blinding weapons against kamikazes. One could make the argument the rules of war against blinding don't apply to someone who is already going to kill themselves to attack you -- he's not planning on having usable eyes anyway.
The Device that Won WW2 - The Cavity Magnetron
Yea, the fact the US/Britain had RADAR while Germany/Japan did not, or did not in the same fashion the allied forces did dramatically shifted the favor towards the allies.
Of course, safety is important, so you also are forbidden from operating electric scooters on many public roads.
Like I can move things myself. I don’t want to hire movers or a driver. I want to do things on my schedule.
Imagine a version of game theory in which a defector gets a huge, overwhelming advantage, but everyone declines to defect because they just have so much integrity and a vision of a better world. Now imagine how different the universe would have to be for that to work.
While soldiers carry firearms, due to decades of tradition designed to reduce the possibility of an escalation, agreements disallowed usage of firearms, but the Chinese side was reported to possess iron rods, clubs and batons wrapped in barbed wire and clubs embedded with nails.[191][192] Hand-to-hand combat broke out, and the Indian soldiers called for reinforcements from a post about 3.2 kilometres (2 mi) away. Eventually, up to 600 men were engaged in combat using stones, batons, iron rods, and other makeshift weapons. The fighting, which took place in near-total darkness, lasted for up to six hours.
The fighting resulted in the deaths of 20 Indian soldiers ... While three Indian soldiers died on the spot, others died later due to injuries and hypothermia.[199] Most of the soldiers who were killed fell to their deaths after losing their footing or being pushed off a ridge.[193] The clash took place near the fast-flowing Galwan River, and some soldiers from both sides fell into a rivulet and were killed or injured. ... According to Indian media sources, the mêlée resulted in 43 Chinese casualties.
This is a thinly veiled 'lets ban guns' but this is naive at best and when you understand why the second amendment is literally 300 IQ. Banning guns is not even close to the realm of possible.
I do have an expectation the 'free world' will inevitably adopt something similar to the second amendment. Though I expect restrictions like the lack of fully automatics will be written more explicitly.
Not to mention the reality that gun manufacturing is now worldwide, achievable at home and this can never ever be regulated for the rest of history.
The second amendment experiment has been a disaster. No other country wants to replicate it.
> Not to mention the reality that gun manufacturing is now worldwide, achievable at home and this can never ever be regulated for the rest of history.
You can’t make illegal drugs in your home, why do you expect that the manufacture or firearms can’t be regulated? I am guessing you mean that it will not be practically feasible to prevent people from making their own firearms. I would say that it depends upon the penalty.
There was a time when I thought the same. I very much agreed with Michael Moore, but then I learnt more. The second amendment is literally the only thing holding the USA together right now. In my opinion anyway.
>You can’t make illegal drugs in your home, why do you expect that the manufacture or firearms can’t be regulated?
You absolutely can make illegal drugs in your home. Many people do and they'll never be caught. The actual crime is selling those illegal drugs. If you never sell, the police are never going to catch you.
Personally, the drug war has been an abject failure. In my opinion anyway.
> I am guessing you mean that it will not be practically feasible to prevent people from making their own firearms. I would say that it depends upon the penalty.
Rifling buttons and cnc machines are quite available at very cheap prices.
3d printed guns are even a thing.
What penalty? The right to bear arms in the USA shall not be infringed. The proposed laws of requiring 3d printer owners to have background checks like firearm owners might become a thing but there won't be any infringing penalties.
Clearing a room with a bow and arrow? This is some really ignorant, ivory tower drivel.
I always assumed the name came from the weapon invariably having the shape of an arc.
More seriously, several of the assertions in this piece are seriously borked.
OK, a few paras in: "a bow with a draw weight of 45 lbs can kill almost any creature on this planet". Umm, no? Maybe a "HELL naw man". It doesn't even sound true if you think about it, say, medium-hard. He's also comparing bow maximum ranges with aimed rifle precision ranges, another "the hell is this guy thinking" sort of assertion. Historical stuff: "became the dominant hand-held missile weapons from the 1500s onwards" Nope, he is at least a century too early here, possible a century and a half - hell, the Spanish colunellas was only invented in 1510, to say nothing of it being successfully implemented.
I'm done. After all that we don't even touch on the actual reason for firearms in the early modern period, which is . . they're cheap as hell. It's an iron tube with special dirt. And it can be fired by a conscript peasant with a couple days' training. Every other missile weapon is orders of magnitude more costly, and only occasionally maybe marginally better in some edge cases.
I totally dig on the idea of sustainable ranged weapons, but dude . . you gotta get some better background if you want to get taken serious.
Sorry this sounds kinda hostile. I am sure the author is a great person and really smart. I'd probably really enjoy hanging out with him.
A 4' tungsten needle at high subsonic speed would be a scary thing. Maximum range of 5+ km, almost silent, and able to punch through meters of concrete. It's not quite an anti-tank weapon, but if it hit a car or a person it would just leave a hole and a thump. It'd go right through an engine block and bury itself into the ground so deeply that the hole would fill itself back.
I've also seen what a modern broadhead can do to a moose. Warning: this video is horrible.
https://youtu.be/3VhEYvHdVa0?si=vsK_aWdSxJ3ylYpU&t=70
That arrow goes right through the ribcage and shreds a lung. The animal coughs up a pint of blood immediately. In less than a minute it passes out from blood loss.
All to say... maybe we wouldn't kill people on the scale of a nuclear bomb. But if humans really tried to go to war with arrows, it would be awful. Guns are better at killing than they ever have been, but bows have also gotten better.
https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/72713/why-were-s...
This is ridiculously false on its face. Pick a novice and give them 1 hour of training and they'll be able to shoot faster and sustain that rate of fire with a modern semi-automatic pistol than any expert archer in the world.
Yea, bows are insanely deadly, but it totally ignores that guns vs bows isn't really the discussion about war. Artillery (and more modern missiles) are what rack up the kills.
The transition is a classic example of a disruptive innovation—-initial tech is worse along every dimension (range, damage, reliability, firing rate) except one, training time.
Some of the comparisons are wildly biased. The effective range of an M4 is 550m, much better than the M9’s 50m. A standard rifleman’s combat load is 180 rounds which is surely lighter than 180 arrows.
If you want to hunt small game, a bow can be the best choice.
But if you're attacked by zombies, you grab a gun and get in the car.
https://time.com/5842494/colt-gun-debate-history/
The bow and arrow is a great weapon and hunting tool which I learned to use as a child. But my policy is to avoid lethal confrontation until it is face-to-face. Then I can use handier weapons, e.g., a handful of dirt or a knife. That is almost always possible.
So why don't we replace all our bows, arrows, rifles and pistols with knives? Bwahahahaaah!8-))
The people who break the rules will keep using guns and obliterate those who strictly follow the rules.
This is also how tyranny can form relatively easily, when "times are good," for example, in NaZi Germany it would have been those blindly following laws-rules, so long as "it's written into law" then that is the bar of following orders, and why with the Nuremberg Trials it was determined that "I was just following orders" isn't a valid for participating in, being [blindly or willing] complicit in crimes against humanity - and that "they should have known better" is why even why some "journalists"-propagandists were hung as their punishment.
shame; there's a lot more you can do with a bow and arrow than a bullet and gun, like throwing a guide line over a tree
You mean like this [0], or indeed three of the other four images in the the article I link?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_thrower#/media/File:US_Na...
The article doesn't mention it - but firearms generally have a far greater psychological "punch" than bows & arrows. Especially when used at any scale, or against opponents unfamiliar with them - as would be the case for all but veteran troops, back in the early firearms era.
Anyways, I was wondering why we still don’t have modern lethal dart guns that can replace traditional firearms? I remember seeing them as a potential futuristic military weapon in Pop Mech. I’m guessing that reliability is the issue?
i was promised flying cars and flechette pistols
Now if theres a collapse the bow would be a requirement to know how to use and build.
True. But compared to the chemical / metallurgical / etc. skills and supply chain needed to keep producing modern bullets...making and using bows is trivial.
[Edits - emphasis added.]
The using part seems like it requires a level of skill that might take longer to acquire than skill at hitting a close target with an automatic gun.
Meanwhile I can build a gun with not much more than a block of wood and a pipe, as for bullet availability. As a species we've produced a lot of those and a lot of them can be found in a lot of places, so I don't imagine a bow will become feasible until well after the collapse.
Which is to say if we got sent back 200k years to anywhere in the world of our choice, after 3 months in a library studying the books of our choice, the bow would be easier to create.
Unless you were fighting other humans with ranged weapons, you'd be far, far better off with spears and traps.
hmm doubtful. even with a musket you need gunpowder, primer, trigger mechanism, some sort of boring inside the barrel
in short a lot of specialized materials and equipment are needed for even the most basic gun
A bow you just need trees and some woodworking tools and some sort of metal for arrowheads.
The cartridge can be re-used. Gunpowder made of three elements that are widely available. The lead bullet is one of the easiest materials to find and work with, lead is a low temperature metal used for thousands of years; you can cast the stuff in a literal campfire.
The one part you might have a hard time with is the primer, but you can stock up on those or use a black powder rifle and flint (Look up successful attempts to make the Gorn gun)
You’d still have modern metalwork and everything, just no explosives. Lots of potential for interesting weapons. Then eventually rail guns.