Making Killing easy

Ever since humans got big heads they started trying to find easier ways to kill either animals or each other. First spears instead of clubs then spear throwers, then bows and arrows, then the crossbows and longbows.

There have been saner voices in the past; In 1139 Pope Innocent III and the second Lateran council outlaw the crossbow as a weapon causing unacceptable devastation, of course nobody listen with the crossbow being used until the invention of the musket around 1500. The musket was the weapon of choice until the mid 19^th century when the rifle was invented just in time for the American Civil War. We invented automatic rifles and machineguns in time the First World War. We invented in the same time frame canons and bombs of all kinds including nuclear bombs that can wipeout whole cities with one bomb dropped from high in the air. We can now sit thousands of miles away eating popcorn while killing people we don’t like. We are even working on machines that will pick out who to kill, so they can’t be hacked into by the people we don’t like.

Today in the year 2013 we are still wrestling with the same question as in 1139, have we made killing too easy. We hope that someday the human race will evolve to the point where we can answer that question.