(another nodeshell filled!)
Why arm a monkey? A question no doubt running through all your minds as it ran through mine during the months I spent trying to puzzle out a suitable entry for this node. Would armed monkeys be polite monkeys? I somehow doubt it. Even Charlton Heston would doubt it. Those damn dirty apes certainly didn't turn out to be that peaceful.
In his 1998 book Techgnosis, Erik Davis argues that all technological development turns humans into "cyborgs" of a sort. We become dependent on the technology, as surely as if it were grafted onto our butts. Monkeys could discover a whole new world of technological marvels and skeet shooting.
By giving a gun to a monkey, I'm teaching it tolerance. Tolerance for what, you may ask. Robots. Robots are the natural enemies of monkeys, a racial war immortalized by James Kochalka in the song Monkey vs. Robot. If I had a monkey, I'd teach it to be tolerant of others, to be self assured enough to ignore those roving gangs of monkeys, just looking to rumble with some tin men. If I had a monkey, I would give it a gun.