Ask HN: Why stop at banning Nuclear Weapons?

> If we collectively prohibited all countries worldwide from producing weapons like tanks, rocket launchers, etc...

> There would be no need for any country to own or acquire similar defences.

If one country decides NOT to get rid of all its weapons how do you enforce your "prohibition"? Even classes of weapons that everyone agrees should be banned are retained because they are useful in extremis, eg, land mines.

> What benefit is there to owning or using a weapon?

That's a good question.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-r...

Just looking at this table, I'd say: None whatsoever.

> If we collectively prohibited all countries worldwide from producing weapons like tanks, rocket launchers, etc...

There is an important difference between PRIVATE gun ownership and the military. Problem is, yes, ideally we would live in a violence free utopia, but if only ONE country doesn't agree to this, then pretty much everyone else has to equip an army as well.

This is a rather academic question (which is ok). But we have to understand that at the same time it is far removed from the realities of human society and the modus-operandi how state and inter-state relationships function, and how subjects respond to the applied "force-field". There is another option to solving the question, let everyone have a gun (assured mutual-annihilation on local and state scale). Of cause, while several philosophers argued for this point, it remains in the same stratospheric realm as "no guns for anyone". However, I would submit an opinion that a third option exists, creating a global village (no states), then there is no need for inter-state violence. This, I hope in some very distant future will happen, similar to a single living body made of various organs, a global civilization will emerge, having local culture and information exchange, as well as a global means of communication (single universal language and protocols). I suppose, this is also somewhere in the stratosphere.

If you had a button you could press which would magically make all weapons on earth disappear, what will you have achieved? You would have just transformed the power structure and taken the might away from those with physical weapons, and delivered this might to those with big muscles and the ability to coordinate with others like them to give you a good beating.

But all that aside, I talk about magic buttons because such a law would be impossible to enforce, and certainly not globally.

>> What benefit is there to owning or using a weapon?

At a minimum, weapons provide deterrance so that people who would harm other people think twice and hopefully do not take harmful actions.

We give weapons to the country's police and military so they can enforce the laws and protect from foreign invasions.

>> If we collectively prohibited all countries worldwide from producing weapons like tanks, rocket launchers, etc...

>> There would be no need for any country to own or acquire similar defences.

If all people were kind-hearted angels we would not need laws, but we live in reality where human nature, scarcity of resources, and aggression come into play.

Being armed to the teeth / mutually assured destruction is the stable nash equilibrium state.

It's not globally optimal (as banning weapons would be), but it is the state where parties are not incentivized to cheat/lie.

How do you stop others from producing weapons though? Let's say you get USA, China, Russia, Brazil, Israel, etc to agree to destroy all weapons. Get rid of guns, mines, and so on. How do you keep a terrorist cell in Pakistan with a bunch of tanks from conquering India?

But what's interesting is that the Geneva Convention has made practically every kind of warfare a war crime. And it seems to have worked (besides the terrorism bit).

We can probably stand to get rid of the more war-crimish weapons, like fire bombs and land mines. I think planes and carriers are such a large cost, that they've been labeled white elephants. But the last time we had a major war, the US managed to send planes all over the Pacific and rescue a lot of people from torture and rape.

> There would be no need for any country to own or acquire similar defences.

That is incredibly naive.

All countries must lean towards maximum ability to hold on to power. In certain cases that might mean abstaining from certain weapons to get favorable trade agreements from other countries. But that is just a deference to the more powerful country which needs those weapons to enforce their global trading position.

"We are talking about banning automatic weapons in America recently"

I haven't heard that at all. Do you have a source?

"If we collectively prohibited all countries worldwide from producing weapons like tanks, rocket launchers, etc...

There would be no need for any country to own or acquire similar defences."

That's only true if there's trust and enforcement.

> Why do we as a human race allow for the production of any weapons whatsoever?

The only thing every human shares is here in a list of universals:

https://condor.depaul.edu/~mfiddler/hyphen/humunivers.htm

Nowhere in that list is 'cohesive world wide political power'. No one could get 10 random people selected from around the world (let alone 10 friends) to agree on where to eat even if it was their treat. Heck they wouldn't likely speak the same language.

Might as well think everyone could stop having sex for two weeks so Gonorrhea can die out forever.

Your proposal is naive.

I fear your model of human behaviour is currently getting you into trouble in other aspects of your life.