Guns don’t kill, but texting apparently does

The ability to communicate in broadly understood forms separates the great apes from other members of the animal kingdom. The ability to freely communicate over various indirect media separates man from the other great apes.

The ability to censor those communications separates the politician from man.

The Sindh government has come up with a ludicrous solution to resolve the violence in Pakistan’s ‘Wild West’ by moving to ban internet-based chat services such as WhatsApp and Viber. This reminds one of Charlton Heston’s famous “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” statement. Unfortunately, while it is true that guns don’t kill people (of their own accord), the same can be said of nuclear weapons, sarin, heroin, kite strings, kitchen knives, and even water, but all these can kill if used ‘properly’. Karachi, and indeed the country, can trace law and order problems to the easy availability of guns. Even before gangs and ‘God-fearing’ murderers became a problem, guns were a clear threat to order in the country.

So, what did our brilliant leaders do?

They centralised gun licences so the only way citizens could get a gun was through their local MNA, because they are incorruptible. Or extremely corrupt, as the number of legal automatics around suggests.

Instead of banning chat services which help people stay in touch without breaking the bank, why doesn’t the government do something realistic, such as banning guns? Granted, limited policing in the rural areas and an abundance of wild animals make them necessary in some places, but how many residents of Karachi or Lahore have needed an AK-47 to put down a wild boar inside their homes?

The state can easily make private weapons possession in urban areas a criminal offence to help curb the violence that plagues our cities, but that will never happen, because guns are supposedly a part of our ‘history’ and culture — the same history that refuses to recognise Asoka as one of the great rulers of this land. Remember how Muhammad bin Qasim invaded the south while firing an assault rifle in the air?

Me neither.

But that won’t stop vaderas, politicians, businessmen, self-proclaimed VIPs and their betas from moving with entourages of gunmen, because in Pakistan, one’s place in society seems to be in direct correlation with the number of guns one possesses.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 6^th, 2013.