Help with a debate! (small arms are the real weapons of mass destruction)?

joshua_alvara

Well Weapons of Mass Destruction is a weapon which can kill large numbers of humans, animals and plants, and/or cause great damage to man-made structures (e.g. buildings) or natural structures (e.g. mountains). The term covers several weapon types, including nuclear, biological, chemical (NBC) and, increasingly, radiological weapons. It all depends on the yield of the weapon. Like which will do more damage a 21 kiloton nuclear bomb or a 2 megaton Nuclear ICBM? It basically is the people who kill each other because who creates the WMDs?
Man

Small arms don't count.

dsm37127

a woman in my home town was just beaten to death with a baseball bat. are you going to consider a bat to be a weapon of mass destruction????? a gun is a useless tool that has absolutely no value or use until a human picks it up and uses it. the same can apply to a hammer, nailgun, saw, icepick, tire iron, knife, screwdriver, or whatever. anything can be used as a weapon when the persons intent is to do harm. it doesn't necessarily have to be a gun.

Jeff

It's sounds like a bunch of anti-constitutional sentiments to me. It also sounds like Double Speak: "small arms" couldn't possibly be massively destructive. I also oppose such nonsense.

Cimon

Some examples:
In the battle of Cannae(216 BC) Hannibal inflicted losses to the Romans amounting to the same losses inflicted by the atom bomb in Hiroshima:76000 Romans died in the space of
a single afternoon...and that before the gunpowder(!!!)
The same number of casualties we have in the battle of Borodino(1812 AD) between invading French army(Napoleon) and the Russians defending Moscau.
Now consider for exaple the casualties during the Napoleonic
20 years of war and you will see that atomic weapons were never a deterent to war...(the Germans in the summer of 1941
inflicted to the Russians 5000000(!) casualties in the space of three operational months,dead wounded and captured, dimensions of almost an atomic broadside...

Doc 13

WRONG...the real WMD is liberal traitors like Hilary Clinton & Barrack Obama who want to tie the hands of our men & women in combat and then tuck tail and surender first chance they get.

igdubya

small arms, rifles and shotguns were used for hunting food, for self defense, for murder, robbery and law enforcement long before the concept of WMD. It was the development of the automatic weapon and machine gun that could kill masses of people by a single weapon. The rifle I use for hunting would not be a weapon of mass destruction even in the loosest of terms and used by millions of Chinese soldiers, going against one bomb dropped by an Aircraft. Who destroys who. Who destroys what. small arms weapons only destroy human life or animal life in general. A WMD is capable of destroying an entire city, buildings and homes and landscape. Its hard to compare the hand held weapon with such a massive force of destruction, (mass destruction) even tho the hand held weapons have killed more humans totally.
For argument sake, It should boil down to what the intent and design was for the particular weapon and the definition of what mass is. Is mass only humans? Or is (mass) including buildings, bridges, homes and vegetation.
Just one guys opinion

mariner31

Weapon of mass destruction (WMD) is a term used to describe a massive weapon with the capacity to indiscriminately kill or incapacitate. The phrase broadly encompasses several areas of weapon synthesis, including nuclear, biological, chemical (NBC) and, increasingly, radiological weapons.

There is controversy over when the term was first used, either in 1937 (in reference to the mass destruction of Guernica, Spain, by aerial bombardment) or in 1945 (with reference to nuclear weapons). Following the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and progressing through the Cold War, the term came to refer more to non-conventional weapons. The phrase entered widespread popular usage in relation to the U.S.-led 2003 invasion of Iraq. Terms used in a military context include atomic, biological, and chemical warfare (ABC warfare), nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC) after the invention of the hydrogen bomb, and chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN), recognizing the threat of non-explosive radiological weapons.

I would NEVER include small-arms as "WMD". http://www.wmd.com/

Those who do shootings, sad as they acts are, usually only KILL 5-20 people. Suicide bombers tend to only kill 5-100 people. A WMD is intended to kill thousands to HUNDREDS of thousands in ONE motion.

DASHLOC4ever

I could explain the value of small arms regarding the freedom of man for many pages but space is limited here.

I suggest that you go to the NRA website and get a copy of More Guns Less Crime by John Lott.

It gives empirical date on the relationship of an armed population and the reduction of the violent crime rate.

It also includes a chapter detailing the failed attempts to discredit him and his work

Your Uncle Dodge!

A gun can lie on the kitchen table, loaded and cleaned, ready for use, and never kill a soul.

Put two men in the room with opposing views, and the odds are that gun will become part of the debate. Someone could die.

But it isn't the gun's fault. A Glock 17, for example, has three safeties built in to where a gun cannot fire by itself, even if dropped.

It always takes a person to pull the trigger. It is the man who kills, not his weapon.

yacommiehoonazis

People with small arms are too weak to do much damage. It's those people with big arms that worry me, like football players and wrestlers who are strong and maybe even on steroids that make them mean.
Now for a serious answer. Small arms are, by definition, not weapons of mass destruction, and the only people who say they are, are liberals who hate guns and the individual freedom that can only be protected by individuals with guns.
Liberals want to fool people into banning guns so that liberals can enforce their will on us and we will be defenceless against their tyranny.

Small arms or weapons of mass destruction don't kill people. People kill people.

A gun or a nuclear bomb won't kill you by themselves.

Carole Q

Robert S (which is also Mariner31) is correct.
Weapon (singular) used to create massive destruction (devasting to thousands of: homes, acres, cubic yards of air, lives, or combination of). WeaponS that could do massive destruction would not be from the use of small arms' weapons.

Teekno

A weapon of mass destruction is a device that can cause a large number of casualties -- with a yield measured in the thousands -- with a single deployment/engagement of the weapon.

Small arms don't qualify.

How ever, more people have died from small arms than from WMDs. If that's the angle you're going for, then it might help to know that it's been said that the AK-47 is responsible for more deaths than any single weapon ever invented in the modern era.

redneckking_99

Anything can be used to kill. It isn't the object but humans that make something deadly. A gun is just another tool that can be used to kill.

RUESTER

The real weapon of mass destruction is the one most commonly overlooked. It is the human brain. We started out taking a wooden stick, sharpening the end to kill, and are now capable of destroying the world with nuclear weapons. A bomb, H bomb, Thermo nuclear. We have every thing in this world available to us to use to kill our fellow man. So what is the real weapon of mass destruction?

I , a happy Bolshevik

Hmm.. The problem is that most States in the World claim for their monopoly in the use of weapons, and ... Do you trust in your local Police?...

Kay

But the weapon sure helps the man to kill a lot easier.

Ander

The real WMDs? That's simple---cow farts:

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/cow-emissions-more-damaging-to-planet-than-cosub2sub-from-cars-427843.html

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