No truly civilised society can afford the diabolical luxury of unselective, indiscriminate, destructive devices; tragedies waiting to occur, patiently biding their time until innocent life is claimed or maimed. From the tremendous, immediate force of the landmine to the slow, lingering torture of the leghold trap, these impersonal, infernal mechanisms ought be abolished everywhere and forever. The world would be a better place for it, and the world is much in need of being a better place than it now is.
Contrary to some who defend landmines, they are not like the moat of a castle. The deterrent value of the castle moat is its high visibility. Were a castle moat hidden, as are landmines, no one would be deterred from attempting to breach the fortification.
Some liken a landmine, attached to a trip wire, to an alarm to awaken a sleeping soldier to the presence of an hostile intruder. Any sound producing mechanism, when tripped, would accomplish that.
Some rhetorically ask whether bullets, knives and clubs would be banned as well, faultily comparing the indiscriminate destruction of the landmine to selective, target-specific weapons. They further argue that although war never has been nice, it must be experienced to appreciate the defensive weapons in the military arsenal, landmines included.
Firstly, war need not be experienced for either it or its weapons to be appreciated, any more than a surgeon need undergo surgery to acquire surgical skills or a judge need commit crimes to preside over a trial fairly and justly. Secondly, weapons are technological devices, all of them intrinsically neutral. As mindless machines, they are instruments of the intentions of those using them. Any weapon can be used either offensively or defensively.
Beyond the errors on these points of those who advocate in favour of landmines, lies the greater point -- and pointless error -- of the lingering, long-lasting and often lethal legacies of certain weapons, regardless of how or of why they were deployed.
