Apologies for the pretentious title, I think someone should write an educated piece about it. As a student of AI I learned about complex systems, about metastabile equilibria and choatic bifurcations, even in simple predator pray population models. I can imagine a similar thing being the case with weaponizeation of society.
Our society is being weaponized, it has been sold firearms and knives for decades now, unrelenting, resulting in school shootings and mall massacres. Now we have the trend of UFC wannabees, who try to mimic the best tactics, techniques and strategies to eliminate an opponent as fast as possible. In my neigborhood I see people showing each other moves, as if there’s a constructive, useful aspect to fistfights.
Now the problem is proliferation. It means the chance of a circumstance in which violence can escalate and in which it is easy to become violent, increases. So if you compare countries, USA vs Holland. In the USA if a dumb idiot carries a firearm and gets angry, he might use it and easily kill someone. In Holland if you get angry you won’t be open carrying a firearm and we can’t get dangerous knives. So you will have to fight, this is a lot more work.
I can imagine a map of a city, where the areas that invoke fear are heatmapped, which means people going there may be armed to begin with. Then the average firearm posession, the poverty level (major cause of criminality) and drug use. From that you will be able to predict the crimes that occur, the incidence of gun violence (I am totally ignoring domestic violence, drug violence)
With knives its possibly worse. Apparently some african immigrants are so used to knives it is the first thing they do when they feel threatened, pull out their knife. It used to be the same in Italy, every man with balls had a Stiletto or a flip knife. Knife fights are very dangerous, so many where killed in their adolescence. There too the nr. of fights and deaths must have been a function of the nr. of knives.
If you pile up the weapons eventually they will start killing people. Guns are like a contagous disease that kills the host (especially in war). It seems people who drive this increase in weapons and weaponization know this and want this. It seems sane people have to somehow reverse this trend.