A recent event in my neighborhood started me thinking about guns, violence and conflict resolution. I came to the following conclusion: let’s get rid of the guns and replace them with swords. Hear me out, it’s not as crazy as it sounds.

• Swords are cool – Seriously, from the Three Musketeers to Highlander to Samurai Jack, all the most bad-ass heroes have swords (except for Bruce Lee; that man was a weapon unto himself). Think of a samurai, making a lightning-fast strike with his katana; or a knight, resplendent in armour and bearing the sword of his forefathers; or of the luxurious beauty and grace of the renaissance noble with his swift rapier. Actually, I can summarize it in just one word: lightsaber. Swords are just fracking cool. I mean, how many times did you choose a Halloween costume because it came with a sword? Every little kid, given a stick, will turn it into a sword at some point. It’s in our DNA or something.
• Mad skillz – The Man in Black didn’t overcome the incomparable Inigo Montoya by whipping out his 9mm and waving it around. It takes skill to wield a sword. And when you can do it properly, people respect you. Flash a gun and it’s the gun getting all the respect, by virtue of the power contained in it. You get none of that respect, though those pulling one often are confused by that little point. When you can use a sword, it is your skill, your strength, your discipline that get the respect. The sword is merely the conduit for these things.
• Mano a mano (or womano a womano, or any other combination thereof) – If I pull out a gun, I have the automatic advantage. Even if you have one too, I can pop a cap in you before your hand even reaches that gun falling out of the waistband of your sweatpants. In the real world, people aren’t meeting in the middle of a dusty street at high noon, as romantic as that idea sounds. Guns are pulled during moments of high emotion, usually unplanned. Now, if both participants are armed with swords, they are forced to truly engage one another. One person’s skill and steel against another’s. Because of this, if you pull out a sword, you had better be damn sure you know how to use it. The mere presence of a sword doesn’t alter the balance of power in your favor, it’s what you do with it. And you never know how good the person you’re facing is.
• Philosophy – Guns are power; power that the wielder has neither earned nor deserves. You didn’t have to train to master or harness that power. All that’s required is the ability to pull a trigger. Granted that there are true skills involved in marksmanship and I’m sure there are individuals out there who honor their firearm as a samurai does his katana. But these are few and far between. If you pick up a gun you get immediate use of its power with no effort on your part. Power obtained without training and knowledge can be dangerous. A sword makes you only mildly more powerful than being barehanded. It is the exercise of training with a weapon, of learning about it, of making it become a fluid extension of yourself that makes it powerful. The self-discipline and sacrifice needed to master the sword imparts knowledge, a realization of what that weapon can do that makes you respect it and understand when to use it.
• Reduction in collateral damage – If I heard someone in my neighborhood shout, “He’s got a sword!” I wouldn’t duck back into my house and herd my family into a more protected room, as I had to when someone pulled a gun. A sword isn’t going to come flying through the window at supersonic speeds, smash clear through a cheap plasterboard wall and splatter my kids’ insides all over. A sword requires intention and proximity to cause damage. Generally, only the participants are in danger and they are presumably equipped to deal with it.

I realize that there is a lot of naivete and romanticization in this post. Too much time playing D&D, watching fantasy movies, reading LOTR over and over again skews a person’s perceptions, I guess. Personally I eschew violence. But there is a part of me that dislikes unfairness even more. And the power imbalance when a gun is introduced is inherently unfair. That pisses me off. It makes me think that if you’re so stupid that you are compelled to draw a weapon against someone, let it be a weapon where you stand an equal chance of getting taken out. Have some pride in yourself and don’t go the lazy, easy way out of whipping out your piece.

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