| I know you meant "purpose-built" weapons, but the general case is that if the amount of weapons ever went down significantly, it would be a signal that our civilization is doomed.
A tool is something that stores & converts energy.
A weapon is a tool used for destruction.
Trying to ban swords, guns, explosives, etc. will only work in the short term. A growing industrial civilization keeps creating new ways to harness energy, and any of those can be mis-used.
Stopping that mis-use - our tendency to resort to violence - would involve a change as profound as the development of language. I'm not sure we'd recognize the results of that.
My cynical side suggests that our society is trying to stem the other side of the mis-use potential - by discouraging imagination and creativity. It's people like those here that convince me that will never succeed. Thank you all | 
