Somebody on Facebook asked, and without going into current politics (puh-leeze, guys, not here!) here’s my answer.
The question was: what do atevi think about gun control?
It’s illegal for humans to have one; Bren is always very careful with concealed-carry, and nobody fusses about Tabini’s, either. Repeating-fire type weapons and certain kinds of ammunition are reserved for the Assassins’ Guild. Rifles are fairly common–the meat supply relies only on wild game in season: ethics forbid ‘kept’ animals, and while the Hunters’ Guild supplies markets, private hunting is common. Pistols are generally permitted on a clan’s own property, but should not be taken outside it.
The Mospheirans also hunt, which takes a license, as does the possession of firearms. They do not permit weapons to be carried or used except on certain reserves, except for law enforcement. They were officially disarmed under the terms of the Treaty of the Landing, and the provision remains a matter of argument. [Some say they need to arm to defend the island; others say that arming would make it more likely they would have to defend the island—and they’re vastly outnumbered.] Hunting rifles are quite common; pistols are reserved for law enforcement.
Among the ship-folk, possession of weapons that might damage equipment or breach the walls is strictly controlled. Only the battle-armored security, which has weapons-control, targeting, and target-discrimination built into the armor, is permitted projectile weapons. The wearer may control the guns, and has the option to equip them and plug them in, but there is no trigger: the user establishes certain rules of engagement, such as fire-on-movement; fire-on-id; fire-on-fire; type of fire; and whether the background may be fragile or populated with non-combatants.
I had always labored under the assumption that Mospheira *had* some form of (secret) defensive array or process. I thought military officers were mentioned in one of the later books where Bren and Ilisidi briefly stop in a Mospheiran hotel.
There are: the police and the military are (re their cultural memory from the ship) one and the same. They have weapons, but they are not more advanced than the atevi.
That’s…on many levels both more and less paranoid than I would have given them credit for. Police=military is fraught with danger in most societies. And I’d have thought they’d be paranoid enough to stash a few nukes somewhere, in case they had to resort to survival-blackmail.
Are you proposing the colonist ship would have brought along nukes that would/could have been removed from onboard missles and been ferried down? To what purpose? I doubt the ship would be disarmed, and in Invader it didn’t seem like they were prepared for first contact. Would they have dedicated the resources to mine, refine, Uranium and build the nukes on Mospheria? That hardly seems likely. Uranium isn’t uniformly distributed on Earth.
They had about two centuries (?) since the last war. Two centuries starting from a very advanced level of technological know-how, presumably having thus bootstrapped an industrial society capable of exporting technological goods to the mainland.
How to prevent a possible future extermination had to have been on their minds having had a terrible brush with it already. If it were technically infeasible to produce nuclear weapons, would they not then have come up with some sort of lethal defensive alternative? They are not atevi to scruple in favour of biichi-ji or finesse. They’re a human settler society faced with being a minority, in a situation where the less-advanced aboriginals (due to the treaty and the numerical situation) were bound to catch up, and have.
One of the benefits of creating your own universe is that some problematic aspects of our society can be readdressed, by building in the logic from the ground up, as it were. Ilisidi undoubtedly ‘rode to the hunt’ as needed to supply her people’s requirements. Do the atevi trap as well as hunt, or is that unsporting?
They tend to dig eggs, and shoot running game. Ilisidi, however, will shoot any poacher caught shooting at the wi’itikin.
On the one hand, having an Assassin’s Guild implies legal institutionalized murder, however justified it may be, but on the other hand, I can see the value of having an AG that can quickly eliminate the “loose cannons” (disruptive elements)in a society before things get out of hand. Also, if the AG accepts the contract, that implies “just cause” — you’ve seriously messed up in some way — for taking somebody out, since they’re not going to take on “frivolous” contracts. Better to “surgically” remove someone by assassination before it gets to the “gang fight” stage, and starts harming innocent bystanders and destroying property. It is also a much better deterrent, I think, than a police force could be. Those who don’t/won’t/can’t keep their act together get removed from the stage, so to speak, by the Assassin’s Guild. Of course, with any institution, there is the risk of misuse of power, as we have seen.
For all the reasons you cite, is “murder” the right word? “the unlawful killing of another (human) being with malice aforethought”
Well, yes, the “unlawful” part wouldn’t apply, since the Assassin’s guild is open and above board and, one would suppose, was officially chartered at some point. And the malice would apply to the person who submitted the contract as one would assume that there is malice involved in somebody wanting somebody else dead. Also, as the legal definition of malice is “the intent to harm,” malice would also apply to the assassin who would “harm” to death the person the contract had been put on. And there would certainly be aforethought on the part of the assassin who planned and carried out the “hit.”
You can’t just freelance ‘hire’ an Assassin. You have to go through a Guild Council hearing with ample opportunity to present cause and defend. Assassination results when all other remedies including mediation have failed.
Then again, even when the AG gets out of hand, balance IS restored. It just gets a bit messy.
You’ll see a lot more about how the Assassins’ Guild functions in the two books upcoming. It’s not just that anybody can File Intent and have it granted. There’s a lengthy process, and a good part of the Guild’s function is trying to mediate, or, failing that, get clan heads to swat some people and get them to observe good sense. There is a ‘these people are fools’ clause.
There was an example where a woman wanted to File Intent on her husband, and Tabini tried to convince her that going through a regular judicial process would be better, and she said she still wanted to File Intent. Seemed wasteful to me, since if Tabini said he didn’t think Intent was the answer, then the AG would probably agree with him.
I tend to think of the AG carrying out Intent as capital punishment. It’s not like the target doesn’t know they’ve had Intent Filed, as it must be announced before the AG goes on the hunt. I’m sure that any lord who has had Intent Filed on him/her would be well aware of it, even if it were not announced, since their own AG people would tell them. Would there be cases of mixed man’chi toward the lord and the AG? In such a case, how would the lord’s AG resolve an issue where they knew about the Intent, but were under constraints by their man’chi to the AG to remain silent? Even in societies that have tightly controlled capital punishment, the sentence is known well in advance. Prisoners know when they have a death sentence, and I would be pretty sure that atevi lords would also know when they have a death sentence. But, if I recall correctly, doesn’t the fact that the AG controls the Intent mean that if the offending lord makes some kind of restitution, atonement, penance, whatever, that the AG has the option of cancelling the Intent? Like a stay of execution or a pardon?
I wonder how many lords have had a dash of cold water when someone Filed Intent on them, and had a sudden change of heart! Although one would think that if you have deliberately or foolishly ignored all the signs leading up to FI, simply being told that you are now marked for death might not make much of an impression.
It is very much in the interest of Guild *defending* the targeted party to talk their lord down off his idiocy, as they are the ones being shot at first. The Guild sincerely does not favor assassination as an answer, since they know each other and try to avoid killing fellow members.
There was, recall, the Human Heritage Party.
I suppose I can refrain from bringing up current politics.
But but..
One of the things I have liked about your writing is the political angles that you give decent airtime to. In particular, your sensitivity to lower class folks and innocents that get caught up in the plots of the powerful. It completely feeds my liberal (ack!) progressive (uggh!) biases.
My pet peeve is that we live in such a soundbite world these days that very few people seem able or interested in digging deeper into current issues. Politics has more in common with the super bowl than logic and reason.
So of course I just have to assume that my favorite thought-provoking author would have deep things to say about the miasma that is current politics.
Oh, I do, and I sometimes will, heatedly on Facebook (Cj Cherryh) lowercase J—where I don’t care if there are scars on the furniture. In this site, where we learn to know one another, I know we have all sorts of opinions, all well-thought, no crazies here except the creative kind of crazy, which I am myself. We know the idea is complex, and frankly, the common sense we all have informs us that one size does not fit all people, all places, all situations. I just like here, of all places on the web, to be a place where we can talk and feel comfortable, not always agreeing—which of us agrees with everybody on every point?—but at least a place where everybody feels this is *their* place.