Guns that Beep

The Link Between Technology and Violence

Riddle: When is a computer mouse a weapon?

Answer: When used by a cyberterrorist.

Let's consider for a moment the similarity between the click of a trigger and the click of a mouse. Doing so, it will be helpful to review briefly the history of firearms.

Death on a Button

In 1430 the first cast-iron gun was introduced. It was called (we can only imagine why) "Mad Marjorie." Initial progress in firearms was slow, so it took about a century before the matchlock rifle appeared. This device featured a lighted wick mounted on a moveable arm. When the trigger was depressed, a hammer was brought down against the flash pan to ignite the powder. Those of us who spend a good part of our time (and who doesn't?) pushing buttons, including keyboard buttons, to get through the chores of the day, may be interested to know that the Matchlock rifle was the first Western mechanical device to feature button activation.

Next, in 1612, came the Flintlock. Developed in France by Marin le Bourgeoys who was assigned to the Louvre gun shops by King Henri IV, it advanced the design of the Matchlock with flint ignition and a secure, moisture-protected flashpan, all forged in one piece. Easier to manufacture, more reliable. By 1664, experiments were underway with rotating-block repeated fire guns, holding a number of shots in a revolving cylinder, but the devices produced were dangerous to operate and hard to manufacture. It would take another century and a half for the repeating firearm to become a standard weapon.

Even confined to one click-shot at a time, however, the Flintlock proved to be a weapon of mass destruction. Used in the American Civil War, it permitted a peak mortality level of 26,000 soldiers in a day. Just by clicking a button. Bear in mind, these were not even repeating rifles, the first commercial model of which was produced by Mannlicher in 1878, a dozen years after the Civil War ended. Just when the Industrial Revolution was building up a terrific head of steam, armament manufacture seemed to be lagging behind — but one object was to change the pace of firearms production, once and for all.

The Gun That Won the West

Samuel Colt (1814 - 1862) was an adventurous Yankee boy from Hartford Connecticut. At thirteen, he shipped on a boat to the Far East. The idea of the revolver came to him from observing the large wooden ratchet-hub used to coil ropes for raising and lowering sails. He whittled a wooden model and set it preciously aside. In his twenties, Colt became a showman who offered doses of laughing gas (nitrous oxide) at travelling fairs. The money he made on this happy drug was eventually to finance his ideas and allow him to produce a working metal version of his wooden prototype. The Colt Revolver was created.

"Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves, but Samuel Colt made all men equal."

Six clicks at a time helped win the West. Before the westward-moving settlers had the Colt, they were decimated by Indian raids. A skilled warrior on a horse could get off ten arrows in the time it took a gunman to reload his rifle. At close range the settler with two Colts could eliminate ten Indians in a matter of seconds. High efficiency, this. The technology was now growing by leaps and bounds. The increase in killing power calls to mind the kind of incremental leaps that are routinely hyped today when high-tech gear is being sold— the latest update of Windows, for instance. Mr Bill Gates and others who peddle these wares want us to believe that technology can only get better and better.

But as technology has advanced, so have the genocidal capabilities of the human species. So what do we believe about the connection between the technological imperative and violence?

Cut to Flanders Fields

Now, a snippet of synchronicity: in 1834, when Colt was just twenty (having already conceived the revolver, but not produced it), English mathematician Charles Babbage invented the "analytical engine," the great-grandaddy of the computer. From the 1840s on, computer and gun would evolve in parallel. And there were spin-offs from both of these developments into all areas of the Industrial Revolution.. Colt and other gunmakers actually pioneered the assembly line method of manufacture that was later adopted by industrial tycoons like Henry Ford. Indeed, Ford admitted that he was directly indebted to Colt for that idea.

One initial tool of technology, the lethal weapon of cowboy heroes in the Wild West, was to be the inspiration for a whole range of mass-produced devices.

Of course, this shift had already been in effect in the 18th Century with long rifles that allow soldiers to kill at a distance. And killing at a distance with arrows and spears had begun well back in prehistory. The difference now was, only a click of the finger was required to kill massively (using six hundred rounds a minute) at a distance. The problem with the machine gun was, if both sides had it, there was no particular advantage to either side. The inconceivable slaughter in the trenches not only made the war masters rethink their tactics, it drove the technology to its next advance: the mobile, hand-held machine gun.

Developed after World War I, the submachine gun became glamorously linked to American gangsters in the Roaring Twenties. Once again, the close link between firearms and illicit drugs is evident. Submachine guns used in World War II again changed the tactics of war, for they both permitted and required house-to-house fighting. This still goes on, as seen in the recent American assault on Falluja in Iraq. There was plenty of this kind of combat in WW II, but it was not until the signal year, 1947, that a Russian soldier invented what was to become the pre-eimnent popular weapon of mass destruction.

Terrorist Icon

The Kalashnikov AK 47 (named for the year of its invention) is a lethal device of idiotic simplicity. Its construction is so elementary that it is extremely easy to manufacture. Usable in all conditions, it requires minimal maintainance and is well-nigh indestructable. It is estimated that AK 47s have now killed more people than were killed in the two World Wars that transpired before its invention. Its manufacture and dispersion across the world are staggering. Where guns can be bought, legally or otherwise, it goes for around $100, retail.

Believe it or not: If all the Kalashnikovs in the world were evenly distributed to the population of the planet, one person in sixty would have one. This makes them more widely used than computers, so far.

But if the Kalahnikov is both an icon and tool of terrorism, so is the computer. Cyberterrorism may largely be an invented threat, but there is no question that computers can and will be used to wreak havoc in the world, surely with some lethal effects. The latest trend in firearms manufacture is to combine the gun with the computer to produce the fully electronic gun, guided by programs. Computer-game warfare such as the world saw in the Gulf War of 1991 may be only a mild glimpse of something ahead. The state-of-the-art weapon today is called "Metal Storm." This a block of barrel locked into a cube that thousands of rounds of high-velosity fire at the click of a mouse. One soldier armed with "Metal Storm" and seated in front of a laptop is said to able to annihilate a ground army of a thousand soldiers in second.

"Metal Storm" makes a horrendous din, of course, but other models in deveopment only beep and whizz. The electronic gun is not a fantasy of Hollywood filmakers. The day is nigh when someone points an electronic gun, it beeps, and someone dies.

So, where is all the lethal technology going to take us? How we answer this question depends on what we believe about human potential for violence and how it may be linked to the imperative for technological progress.