rakhmones hobn

The firearm has lost its gravitas. Before the gun was invented, Soldier was a craft, a trade, a lifetime-devotion, the polar opposite to healer but with equal amounts of energy and time spent refining both mind and body. The physical matter of forcing the point of a spear through another man's chest, pulling out bits of bone and alveoli as he gurgles cries for his mother, the ability to hack a man to pieces as you would the overgrowing shrubs in your back yard, to not only look a man in the eyes and take his life from him, but to exert every ounce of will in your mind to force your body into the act, the dedication is almost beyond modern comprehension. This is, I'm sure, why we're still hung up on "ultimate warriors", why we still drool over our man-dogs in squared circles battering one another to early graves to prove who is more efficient at doing harm. Gladiators, Spartan warriors, Samurai, Mongols, and on to bursting point, human history records most poetically and most efficiently the deeds of these professional slayers of men.

When the gun was first invented, soldiers of the era must have reacted as radio did to the invention of television, as mill workers did to their mechanical counterparts: a mix of amused disdain and scowling fear, laughing at the idea of their redundancy so as to hide their tears of rage and sorrow. Imagine it: the taking of a human life had been reduced from romanticized art form to the twitch of the finger. Now Rich Man Winters need not spend money training some yokel to guard him from all that would challenge his purported fortunes, he need simply pull a switch. The role of the professional soldier changed from that day forward, for what good was a lifetime's devotion to one's body and mind when such things were possible?


The progression of the firearm went much as every invention man has concocted in his brief stay on this planet, be it the wheel, the cotton gin, or the computer. Soon firearms were made portable, when before they stood mounted to battlements, making every hand in the village with a steady hand a warrior. The gun became more compact, more simplistic, more efficient. As humanity poured generation upon generation of knowledge into their production, these machines came to hold a new form of power in the form of mass production. The possession alone was not enough, the deciding factor was how many you had. The individual shock of the gun was lessened by its streamlining, but not erased, just as a sword could not be worn without intention of threat until the gun had rendered it obsolete.

Today guns are mass produced at alarming rates. There exist shops that deal specifically in the trade and upkeep of guns, magazines are circulated discussing the latest and greatest innovations in firearm technology, in some sections of this country it is assumed that everyone is in possession of one of these weapons. The gun, therefore, has lost its gravitas, it has become a sword, it has lost its shock. Instinctual fear still kicks for some at their sight, but we have moved beyond how capable we are of killing to how impressively we can achieve this goal. A more perfect example than the film Equilibrium cannot be found, actually creating a martial art surrounding the use of these weapons, an orgasm of the coined term "gunplay." The gravity of the gun is gone now, you can buy one for one week's honest work and kill whomever you wish. Is it any wonder we drift fondly to the days when killers were so easy to recognize?