You're missing the point. Social conditioning and shame are very powerful.
It's likely that designing land-mines involves many interesting technical problems. Regardless of whether there are still engineers who will work on land-mines, there's a social good to shaming them (assuming you think land-mines are bad).
If you don't have strong feelings about land-mines, or you don't think they're all that bad, then this argument won't make any sense to you.
People can choose to do or to not do things regardless of their effectiveness.
Do you realize that you're implicitly adopting an amoral viewpoint when you raise pragmatism above ethics or morality? That's a choice -- not a given. This is why you're getting the strong negative reaction, here. History is littered with examples of how this leads to bad outcomes and evil systems.
It's likely that designing land-mines involves many interesting technical problems. Regardless of whether there are still engineers who will work on land-mines, there's a social good to shaming them (assuming you think land-mines are bad).
If you don't have strong feelings about land-mines, or you don't think they're all that bad, then this argument won't make any sense to you.
People can choose to do or to not do things regardless of their effectiveness.
Do you realize that you're implicitly adopting an amoral viewpoint when you raise pragmatism above ethics or morality? That's a choice -- not a given. This is why you're getting the strong negative reaction, here. History is littered with examples of how this leads to bad outcomes and evil systems.