Disarming, Or Arming, For Peace

EINSTEIN SAID "You cannot simultaneously prepare for war and preserve peace". Or maybe the part about preserving peace came before the war prep part. Maybe the comment was "you cannot simultaneously preserve peace and prepare for war." (Age does terrible things to one's memory). But either way, its the same statement, a statement of a negative, mathematical, mutually exclusive pair of circumstances. And, at first glance, it seems like a true statement, a statement which makes good sense. How does war prep make peace more likely than war? Good question, one might think. But alas, its quite the opposite of what we often hear about "peace through strength", the philosophy that a nation like the United States, say, better insures peace by being and remaining militarily as well as economically strong. Mutual Assured Destruction, and all that. Being militarily mighty deters potential enemies from attacking, and so forth. But what about military might as a force which might tempt the militarily mighty into making war? Is there any truth to that notion? The frequency with which the united States has become involved in wars has, in fact, greatly increased since Pearl harbor,the attack on Pearl Harbor being the event after which the U.S. decided to remain on a permanent war time military and economic mode. Before Pearl Harbor, the U.S. tended to disarm when there was no war, and to rapidly become armed when a war occurred. But the big war put the fear of God, or war, or whatever into us, and to this very day, we are always prepared for war, but also always at war, and always have been, since World War Two. The same sort of thinking seems to be the basis for people who advocate that the best way to reduce or end mass murder in America is to arm as many good citizens as possible, including teachers in the classroom. if the United States becomes an increasing well armed society, will it become less, or more violent? A highly relevant questions, one might think. The mental health, psychological, and sociological community, the people who determine who is mentally healthy and who isn't, and who determine who and who isn't "qualified" to carry weapons; those folks appear to be leaning towards disarming for less violence, rather than arming for less violence. It is to be hoped that our lawmakers pay as much attention to mental health professionals as they do to billionaires who like guns.