The question you've asked has a lot to do with your moral outlook and your views on human life (which appear to be good). Unfortunately, many people don't share your views. For example, some cultures only value the lives of people from their own ethnic background. Outsiders are not even considered human. Certainly the more extreme cases are cannibals, but today, in Sudan, slavery is common, and genocide is being carried out because those being killed or enslaved aren't considered as human as those who are in power. In other areas, human life isn't considered valuable because of the horrible overpopulation of those areas. Add to that religions that don't cherish life and are willing to discard lives either because they will be reincarnated anyway, or because they will go to heaven if they die for their faith, or because it doesn't matter if a nonbeliever dies, or any other rationale along those lines. Yes, these beliefs are out there and all of them place human life as unimportant in the face of a higher religious ideal.

Most people pretend to want world peace, but what they really want is peace on their own terms. This isn't really surprising. If I told you that we could all have world peace tomorrow, no more killing or wars, but to do this, we'd all have to become slaves to one person, would you think that was a fair trade? How about if we all had to follow the same religion? If your answer to either is no, then you are really saying you want peace on your own terms.

To further complicate things, there are people who simply will not follow the laws of society. No matter what the society, and no matter what the law, someone, somewhere will break it. Nobody can agree on the basic reasons for this, but it is acknowledged as a truism. As such, there needs to be some defense against those who will not follow the rule of law. Before gunpowder was introduced, people defended themselves with knives, swords, etc. Before smelting of metals, they used clubs or rocks. If one believes that life is important, then they will fight to protect their own lives. As an example, assume that someone wants something that you have. If they have no regard for laws, then they may attack you for that item (happens every day). Your only options in this case are: 1) give them the item (or run away and allow them the item); 2) fight to protect the item. If the item is something inanimate, you might choose the first option, but what if that item is your child or your life or the life of someone you love? Often reasonable people with no violent tendencies will choose to fight in such a case. To increase one's chances of succeeding, one can use a weapon in the fight, so can the attacker and the result is a small scale war in which one or the other may become seriously injured or die.

Do newer guns and newer technology really change this? At one point, groups that waged war used clubs and rocks. Injuries were blunt force trauma and were generally lethal (with no antibiotics, a large bruise could easily become septic leading to death and internal bleeding from these wounds would also lead to death). Later pointed weapons such as spears and bladed weapons became common. The cuts were cleaner and it was possible for a person to survive several cuts from these weapons, but still many people died. Later came projectile weapons (bows, crossbows) which redefined combat. A single archer could do more damage than a squad of footsoldiers and wouldn't have to be as heavily armored therefore costing less to fight a war. When gunpowder was discovered and controlled, it made warfare even cheaper and made armor impractical (plate mail doesn't stand well against a musket). This part of the equation is simply a Pandora's box. Once a discovery is made, it is impossible to "undiscover" it. Like it or not, anyone can make gunpowder and without much skill can manufacture their own guns. With just a bit more skill and time, anyone can construct a modern weapon, largely by hand. The end result is still the same, though. People are still killing people just as they have for the entire history of the world.

If a person enters a church and starts shooting, and a person inside the church shoots back and kills the first, the first person is considered "the bad guy" and the second is a "hero" (article here). In reality, they both killed people, but what other choices are there? Once the first person made the decision to open fire, the second person really had no good options; either 1) Kill the first person, or 2) attempt to escape and allow the first person to continue killing. Those who argue that there is a third choice (e.g. wound the first person, or reason with him) haven't really been in that situation, there is no reasoning with a person who has killed in the midst of their rampage, and the person who can successfully wound someone who is shooting at them is very rare indeed.

One can aruge that if there were no guns, this wouldn't have happend. Perhaps that is true, but as I noted above, anyone can make their own guns, or they could have attacked with other weapons (molotov cocktails, poison gas, etc.) It isn't the guns that caused the deaths, it is the person who wielded them.

As to nations, the wars waged by nations are simply an extension of fights that individuals have, simply on a bigger scale. In 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait. The Iraqis wanted the money that Kuwait had, they were trying to recover from their war against Iran. They disputed the possession of several oil fields and historically Kuwait had been part of Iraq, so they probably wanted the land back. How is any of this different from a burglar that wants your plasma television or your jewelry collection?

The list of reasons for conflict are very long and very complex. There isn't any single answer, nor is there any solution other than to continue moving towards unifying ideologies. Unfortunately that will not occur in our lifetimes (if it will ever occur at all; it probably won't). Thus we are destined to see more killing and more war. Bigger and better guns are simply a symption of this reality.

-- Jeff

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"Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem." --Ronald Reagan