From a reader:
Way back in 1964, Herman Kahn promulgated a broad spectrum continuum
of lethal force with a convenient numerical scale for rating one’s
own preference:
The fact that such unilateral restraints exist should not
surprise anyone. Indeed almost all nations and individuals
are likely to have limits which they will not cross even if
under great pressure to do so to protect themselves or to
further their policies. I have used the following chart to
illustrate this point:
Where Do You Draw the Line?
1. Insecticides
2. Eating meat
3. Any violence
4. Police
5. Conventional warfare
6. Kiloton weapons
7. Megaton weapons
8. Gigaton weapons
9. Doomsday machines
10. Galaxy-destroying machines
It is the purpose of the above chart to make it clear to both
the pacifist (who generally draws the line somewhere between
3 and 5) and the more resolute militarist (who draws the line
somewhere between 7 and 9) that both believe in some degree of
universal disamarment; that there are means neither would use,
no matter what risk results. In particular, if one could show
that by building a doomsday machine one doubled one’s personal
(or one’s nation’s) chance of survival, one would still be
unalterably opposed to building such a machine.
– Herman Kahn, “Thinking About the Unthinkable”,
Chapter 7, Footnote 6, p. 232 in the 1964
paperback edition.
Assault rifles? Call it 4.7