There are some interesting parallels between the current debate on guns and the long running debate on nuclear weapons. Both debates revolve around a particular type of weapon and who should have it under what circumstances.
One of the profound things that the nuclear debate has highlighted is the question of when is enough enough. Both the United States and the Soviet Union have thousands of warheads which could destroy the other many times over. Both sides accumulated these weapons out of fear of the other side and their fear ran away from reality. Other countries only have arsenals in the hundreds of warheads but even an exchange of one hundred nuclear bombs could have devastating consequences for the entire world. In a similar fashion, you have people arming themselves past the point of utility. Why would anyone person in our society need 10 guns, 100 guns, 1000 guns? The gun shops will happily sell a hundred assault rifles to one person at one time. This is just plain nuts. Unless he is planning on reselling them, he could not possibility use all of them.
Then there is the question of the sanity of the person who wants the guns. Part of the gun debate is over making sure that people who are mentally ill are not able to purchase a gun. In a similar way, there is a debate over whether some country led by people whose sanity is questioned should be allowed to have nuclear weapons.
Mexico is being flooded with guns smuggled in from the Unites States. Incredible harm is being done to their society with tens of thousands of people being murdered by these smuggled guns. The international community fears that there may be countries, organizations or individuals who would sell nuclear weapons to others who would use them to harm the people of countries that they hate or disagree with about something. Just as law enforcement agencies work to prevent gun thefts, illegal sales and smuggling, national and international agencies are trying to prevent the illegal proliferation of nuclear weapons.
Asymmetry is also an issue. The idea of a small nuclear state such as North Korea attacking a huge nuclear state like the United States would be like a few criminals attacking the New York Police Department. The problem is how to respond with appropriate force to such threats in order to minimize collateral damage to bystanders.
India and Pakistan are neighbors who are not getting along and have been involved in military exchanges in the past like a couple of people who live near each other and have had fights. Both India and Pakistan feel that they need to have nuclear weapons in case the other side uses them. But just like the situation where statistics show that owning a gun to protect yourself is likely to lead to you being harmed, if either India or Pakistan started a nuclear war, they would wind up eating the fallout from their own weapons.
And, finally, part of the problem in both cases is that there are powerful rich organizations and individuals who profit handsomely from the sale of weapons and who apparently have no concern about who might use them and for what purpose.
The human race as individuals and as nations really has to find better ways to resolve disputes than to resort to the use of weapons which may be as harmful to the user as they might be to a target.
