Lord of War

Guns. One of the three g’s that have fascinated men over the ages - the other two being girls and games. It might be the image it conjures, or could be the way it gets stuck up in your throat and releases itself nasally when you pronounce the word.

I remember reading a thriller, the name and the author of which pass my memory right now, in which a politician was assassinated using a rubber bullet. The intricate detail to which the gun was made and the planning was done captivated me. It remains one of the best thrillers I have ever enjoyed. More relevantly, it made me fall in love with guns.

They keep recurring in my dreams. And I can’t give an apposite reason why.

I have heard gun-fire, real gun-fire; gun-fire that goes rattatatatat, with seemingly long pauses and short rats and tats in between. The incident took place half a kilometer away from my house, when an Assam Rifles convoy ‘retaliated’ to the explosion of a bomb. Those who had planted the bomb had run away. In the end, 18 civilians got killed by the one-sided gun-fire. No A.R. personnel received so much as a scratch.

For the first time, I didn’t find guns fun anymore.

Now, a pertinent question, why am I saying all these? There are two reasons-
1.I’m terribly bored to do anything else right now.
2.I just saw this movie, ‘Lord of War’.

The first needs no explanation.

As for the second, the movie (8.3/10) shows the plight of gun-runners and reveals an astonishing, though not really unknown, fact – the real culprits are those who make guns, and those who sell them. It shows a cynical and funny Nicholas Cage in his true elements. But in the same breath, shows the massacre of kids and women and gun-wielding teenagers. That’s not funny. Neither is the fact that the biggest gun-runners are the 5 so-called superpowers who are also the members of the U.N security council, who continue doing it with no repentance and reluctance.

As the protagonist says in the movie, “There are over 550 million firearms in worldwide circulation. That's one firearm for every twelve people on the planet. The only question is: How do we arm the other 11? ”

I don’t like guns anymore.