Guns to Africa

I've been thinking about what we can do to help Africa, and I think the best thing we could do is probably to export more small arms to them. Weapons are probably the most useful thing we could give them. With weapons they could stand off the raiders while having the chance to keep what they earn through their own hard work. "Big Men" in uniforms wouldn't find it as easy to take aid shipments away from the intended recipients quite as easily if the weapons weren't overwhelmingly one-sided.

Some people will of course, argue that we would just be prolonging conflict by increasing the number of weapons available to said conflicts.

However, I imagine everyone in the Sudan who is not a Muslim Arab (Janjaweed militia) would probably greatly appreciate prolonging the conflict, maybe even escalating it, since the only other option is to be dead. Well, to be positive about it, I suppose being a starving, displaced refugee is slightly better than being dead, in that you have the potential, however slight, of recovering from that situation.

Much better to be a lion defending your home though. After all, genocide can really only happen if one side is immeasurably stronger than the other.

Freedom is 90% economics. Private property and the means to defend it are likely to be the best indicator of a just society. That means to defend may be a system of laws and government enforcement that actually works, as Barnett makes the point when he talks about the Functioning Core. In a place where that situation does not obtain, private security, in an individual's hands, is the other option.

Guns are the great equalizer. While a professional does have a significant advantage over a neophyte with a weapon, many of the natural advantages of the strong are erased or attenuated by the technology of firearms. Physically weaker women can level the playing field with physically stronger men, for example.

Those Black Christian and Animist villages being razed, raped, and pillaged by Arab militias might just have a chance if they were armed. (Note that I am not automatically prejudiced in favour of Christian groups- I am NOT a Christian) It might even have had a deterrent effect before the hostility erupted into the mess it is now.