Access to Weapons and Poverty

The alterity atrributed to the economically different classes of people; supported by notions of hierarchy and the reduction of the cost of production supported by the mass production of efficient weaponry hands those who buy such weapons an additional form or leverage to either revolutionise the present system or facilitate their movement within existing structures.

Topic to follow This is the dangers of cheap weapons being increasingly accessible to the disenfranchised.

I can lose but can never truly win.

Derivation and exposition of definition is only the suggestion of a concept, an idea or a thing in itself.

To define cannot be the only proof required for existence. I define myself therefore I exist, should I choose to re-define myself I cease to be that previously defined.

The ‘I exist therefore I am’ tautological chasm, is equally beguiling.


Though we can see easily and in spite of our own particular bias, the problem with this form of assertion, it is still readily invoked. It is employed in religion, in superstition, to segregate and to define status.

Winning is yet another arena it is frequently employed.

The rules of the ‘game’ are defined to be accessible to those playing the game. Games are culturally and socially derived, the same way the shape of glasses are pre-determined.


Who decided the length of a football field? That cricket should have 2 bails and 3 stumps? Who decided that a ‘touch-down’ didn’t actually have to touch down?

The winner is also pre-defined.

Statistically, the winner of an event can be deduced. To lose then is at the discretion of the winner.

Every horse race has a favourite, every golf tournament too. I propose that almost every event an outcome can be deduced.

Why then are winners so lauded? What purpose do they serve?

What has a winner achieved over and above what we knew they would at the outset?

If we can predict a winner, is there even any reason to have the sport? Could we assume that given the statistical information collected around Usain Bolt that he would win the 200 meters in the London Olympics? And if so do we really have to make him run it?

Could we at the outset predict that Rangers Football club will win its league outright this season and if so does Rangers need to actually physically play any games?



In a perverse way Usain runs to prevent his losing and Rangers will play football to ensure they don’t lose.

There are no winners, that weren’t already fancied, who weren’t already statistically going to win given the environment, rules and competition.

There are only losing winners, those who win in their stead are the next best thing not the best thing.

Without the notion of winners, those who do “win” cannot claim a higher status and so access privileges and powers others can’t.

Because as a society we value who can cover the distance of 100 meters the fastest, who can drive a car the quickest or gain a grade A in mathematics should not mean that they are treated any differently than another.

A “winner” is no more than the sum of his/her/their parts given a set of parameters regarding performance in a given environment. There is no help from god, no destiny, no basis to extrapolate across ethnic and social groups.


In effect winning is a forgone conclusion, so when a winner loses it can only be due to poor measurement or choice.