Why are Guns a Thing?

Why are Guns a Thing? That is what I am going to try to answer. I’m going to talk about how they were invented, how they've changed over the years, and if they should exist.

How were guns invented? Guns were invented in China in 142 A.D. when it was first mentioned as it would “fly and dance”. At first, people were trying to make a potion that let you live forever, but they ended up inventing gunpowder. In 33 A.D. a scientist by the name of Ge Hong wrote down the ingredients for gunpowder-

1. sulfur

2 charcoal

3. potassium nitrate

When gunpowder was first invented no one really had a true use for it, and for a while, it was pretty useless. But then people started using then in fireworks which would make parties or celebrations very exciting to be at. Then in around 900 A.D. the first “guns” were invented. They looked like a mini cannon on a stick and back then they weren’t always super reliable. Also later then cannons were invented and gunpowder started to spread.

Guns first started to spread across the globe in around 1100 A.D.. At first, gunpowder was just supposed to be a secret weapon, but after a while, the Romans and Islamic empires started to figure out how to use gunpowder for guns. So slowly over time guns spread all over the world. But in my opinion, England was the most affected by guns when they arrived. In around the 1300s, England got guns and used them to fight. The three main advantages to guns were-

1. Distance
2. More power
3. Fewer people needed to operate

For a ram back then you would usually need around ten people to operate it but for a cannon, at most, it was three. Eventually, all people really fought with was cannons or guns. So about one thousand years in the future now we basically only use guns to fight. The US has around 393 million guns, which is 42% of all the guns in the world.

Should guns exist? I think not. Now if guns never were discovered who knows how many wars and battles wouldn’t have happened. But then again if they didn’t happen then what would our world look like without guns? No one can really guess because so many things have happened because of guns. In 2015 13,286 people died from firearms, and around 900,000 people die each year. So according to that around 1% of people in 2015 died of guns. Which even though it's a small amount, it's too many. In addition, guns are now basically apart of our culture. Think about all the video games in the world that involve guns, there's a lot, and it's to the point where guns are probably sometimes why people buy games, for the thrill of “holding” a weapon. So with all these school shootings, it's showing that this is really not good. That is why in my opinion guns should not have been invented.

Main source: https://quatr.us/china/gunpowder-ancient-china.htm