Should firearms be banned worldwide to prevent shooting sprees?

The wish is understandable, but such a ban fails because of money: weapons are a business, and hardly any government wants to give it up. The real evil is the greed that sells weapons to poor countries and lets people there bleed.

After a shooting spree in which innocent people die, many ask whether firearms should not simply be banned everywhere. The first verse above shows how heavily the death of a single person weighs. Whoever kills an innocent person is as if he had killed all mankind.

But one has to be honest. A worldwide ban would hurt the economies of many countries, and so governments will hardly listen, however loudly people protest. Weapons are a business.

There is something bitter besides. In the changed situation of the world, many conventional weapons are no longer needed. They have become a burden. Whoever has no scruples turns them into money. Such weapons are sold to poor countries. In this way the last drop is drained from their economies, and the people there fight one another with these very weapons.

The second verse above says that corruption on land and sea comes from what people's hands have done. War and violence in poor countries are often not their own fault alone. They are also fed by those who profit from them.

So a ban on its own would not heal this evil. The root is the greed that values profit above life. Only when people and states stop seeking mischief in the earth, as the third verse above warns, will the trade in death also shrink.