The industrial revolution produced a shift from homemade goods to mass manufacturing, and the information age has ushered in "mass personalization" and a multitude of niches. Has warfare gone through a similar transition, where the "total war" of World War II is being replaced by more smaller-scale wars, fought with small arms, where the combatants are referred to as "insurgents", "terrorists", "criminals", "organized criminals", "gang members", etc, rather than nations?

In this country, there is widespread fear of escalating violence, as a result of the financial crisis. Are these fears reasonable? Does the US have a bright, high-tech future, as most futurists have been saying for decades, or a future characterized by starving unemployed people roaming the streets, robbing, invading homes, organizing into gangs, with underfunded police departments (due to downward-spiraling tax revenues) powerless to stop them? Certain spots within the US -- Oakland, California, South Central Los Angeles, Gary, Indiana, and certain suburbs of Washington D.C. (once dubbed the "murder capital" of the nation) are already mini-war zones. Is a mini-war zone likely to crop up near you?

In this future salon, we'll be looking at data from the Small Arms Survey, a research report from a group in Switzerland funded by the United Nations. In an effort to be more objective, we'll be looking primarily at other countries around the world -- countries such as Burundi, Uganda, Sudan, South Africa, El Salvador, and Brazil, which have high levels of armed violence, yet are all very different from each other, and see if we can draw any underlying conclusions about the pattern of armed violence around the world.