From Crossbows to Cryptography: Techno-Thwarting the State (1987) | Hacker News Reader

From Crossbows to Cryptography: Techno-Thwarting the State (1987)

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23 pointsmo7 comments

A good reminder of Sam Harris's excellent article, "The Riddle of the Gun" [1]. An excerpt:

"Wouldn’t any decent person wish for a world without guns? In my view, only someone who doesn’t understand violence could wish for such a world. A world without guns is one in which the most aggressive men can do more or less anything they want. It is a world in which a man with a knife can rape and murder a woman in the presence of a dozen witnesses, and none will find the courage to intervene."

[1] http://samharris.org/blog/item/the-riddle-of-the-gun

That comes with a huge asterisk. First, guns are much more likely to be used against the person who is trying to defend themselves [1][2]. You can make the argument that people should take responsibility to learn how to properly use guns, but most people will not or cannot. People should also take responsibility to not overeat, not smoke, not get accidentally pregnant/get others accidentally pregnant, and not transmit STD's, yet here we are. This situation can be improved with education, but the reality is that unless handling guns is your job, you are likely to have it used against you then to use it on your assailant.

Second, most rape cases do not happen the way Harris describes. Acquaintance rape happens in 82% of the cases [3], and usually behind closed doors, with no witnesses. There are no dozens of witnesses, or even knives in most of these situations.

Thirdly, there are places in the world where gun ownership and use is minimal, even by the police [4][5]. They have much less violence, murders, rape, etc. than the US, which has very high rates of both gun ownership and gun violence. Specifically, the murder rate in the US is 5.8 times higher than in Germany. Think about that for a second: two first world countries, the US locked in an endless cycle of gun violence, mass shootings, and police brutality, vs Germany (or the UK, or Australia, etc.) Basically, more guns, more problems, as statistics and cold hard facts pretty clearly show.

Personally, I don't think all guns need to be abolished. The police should be armed with proper weapons. But generally, a private citizen that thinks he/she will defend themselves with a personal weapon, is likely deluding themselves about actually being safe, and chances are they are actually in more danger than without a weapon. Therefore, private ownership of guns for non-hunting purposes should IMO be abolished in the US, and the police forces re-trained to use guns extremely minimally.

[1] http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/02/having-a...

[2] http://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2013/mar/25/guns-pro...

[3] http://www.911rape.org/facts-quotes/statistics

[4] http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/justiz/polizei-schoss-2011-se...

[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentiona...

Author is laughably clueless about history. Crossbows date back to the 5th century BC (in both China and ancient Greece), long before the invention of plate armor. Also, mounted knights in armor collecting taxes? Sure, just like the IRS sends tanks instead of demand letters...not. Historically medieval armies included heavy cavalry like knights and crossbow and longbow archers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossbow#History is not exhaustic but reasonably well referenced.

Even if you are right (I don't know), and history would be exact science (it is not), that nobody would want to rewrite to they own benefit, the writer makes a very good point that should be considered.

There is an ongoing arms race between oppressors and freedom fighters. Both use technology to achieve their goals.

Today it's as true as it was in the medieval era, only the style is different, and the scale is larger.

To be fair, the analogy is very leaky. The US has shown time and again that arming an oppressed population generally leads to terrible results. On the other hand, giving an oppressed population access to information seems to do much good. So, basically the article would be better if the author skipped the crossbow and guns portion of it and instead simply talked about access to information. I still believe that what is going to bring democracy to the Middle East is not going to be a US invasion, but Walmart and McDonalds (for better or worse).

Imagine a Kickstarter campaign to drop iPods over North Korea. Boy this would be fun.

There are tiny organizations that smuggle in technology and media from South Korea (one bag at a time, usually). North Koreans are not universally bamboozled by their government's propaganda.

However, pervasive propaganda disorients North Koreans with respect to the rest of the world.

They have an active military only slightly smaller than the U.S. or India, and a huge paramilitary force (largest by raw count, more than twice India's second place paramilitary). Over 3 in 10 North Koreans are affiliated with the military or paramilitary. Of course, one function of the North Korean paramilitary forces is suppressing dissent, which includes keeping an eye on fellow paramilitary personnel.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_...

For further reference: https://sites.google.com/site/sophieinnorthkorea/home

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