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2008 Latest News

July 21, 2008

Biennial Meeting of States concludes

With the end of the Biennial Meeting of States on Small Arms in New York has come a degree of congruity on the small arms debate. With 134 states voting for the outcome, and abstentions from Iran and Zimbabwe only, agreement was reached on a number of questions regarding small arms controls, including recommendations for legislation on arms brokering, the marking of firearms at their point of manufacture to allow easier tracing, and recommendations on the management of arms stockpiles. The agenda at these now-concluded meetings was specifically limited to issues for which clear and broader support has already been established.

The anti-gun lobby group IANSA afterwards issued a statement calling the agreement "weaker than IANSA members and most gun-affected countries had hoped", and during the meeting called for governments to have greater internal interactions with non-governmental organizations on the matters of their own legislation.

The WFSA's American Secretary, Thomas L. Mason, was quoted in the New York Times: (Link to article).

He referred to the longstanding WFSA position that objections to the agreement are an outcome of concerns of the lawful gun-owning civilian populations. The UN approach covers not only military small arms but handguns, rifles and shotguns as well, the usual kinds of firearms owned lawfully throughout the world for hunting and competitive target shooting.

He argued that if the agreement were to be focused on fully-automatic assault rifles and other infantry-style arms including rocket-propelled grenades, objections might diminish. "If they would only concern themselves with military arms - fully automatic and on up - that would go a long way," Mr. Mason said.

The United States did not attend all the meetings, believing there was no need to contest many of the initiatives. Speaking on behalf of the European Union, France's representative said that the instrument was the most important practical achievement of the Programme of Action. His delegation was among those that would have preferred an instrument that was "more legally-binding and broader in scope".



July 16, 2008

UN Third Biennial Meeting of States in New York

With the Third Biennial Meeting of States on combating the illicit trade in small arms and light weapons now under way in New York, a number of announcements and news articles have been forthcoming as the media around the world begin to take it up.

A statement on behalf of United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said universal action is required to halt the illegal proliferation of small arms, which he blames for the deaths of large numbers of innocent civilians.

Member states have gathered every two years since 2003 to consider the implementation of the Programme of Action to Prevent, Combat and Eradicate the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All its Aspects, adopted in 2001. The Programme of Action contains control measures, including legislation and destruction of confiscated arms, and it requires member states to be able to identify and trace such arms. The outgoing chair of the Meeting of States, Pasi Patokallio from Finland, said that unscrupulous brokers are continuing to break Security Council embargoes on arms transfers.

The work of the Swiss Small Arms Survey (SSAS) suggests that wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are resulting in the destruction of fewer surplus arms, because new markets are being created to absorb them. According to Aaron Karp of the SSAS, the momentum towards destruction of arms stockpiles has now been lost.

The Swiss Jurg Streuli says this improper disposal of excess military arms is troubling, with countries still sending their excess military arms to other countries rather than destroying them. He asserts that only increased incentives for destruction will keep them from the world's illegal markets.

The program director of the SSAS, Keith Krause, blames the diversion of small arms into illegal possession on "weak systems of stockpile management and control", or on negligence of various authorities at different levels. His suggested solution is the installation of perimeter fences and other means of lockup, and also the monitoring of inventories.



July 3, 2008

Delhi's increasing illegal gun problem

The Times of India has run an article under the title "Blame the spiralling crime graph on unlicensed guns". According to the Times, illegal guns outnumber legal ones in Delhi, the capital, by a factor of eight. Official estimates of this kind are almost always on the low side.

The city alone is nearly fifteen hundred square kilometres and its population now stands at over fourteen million. Illegal arms factories are said to number in the hundreds just in Delhi and its surrounding local area. But of course, within the region there have also been longstanding traditions of the production of arms of all sorts by cottage industry, with a totally unknown potential output.

In Delhi, locally made handguns span the rudimentary to the quite high quality. The more sophisticated models sell on the streets for up to five thousand rupees, though more opulent criminals prefer illegally imported professionally manufactured ones from various countries and may pay twenty, forty or sixty times that much to own them.

According to the chief of police, illegally-owned handguns are continually rented out to criminals. A cash return is possible if the gun is returned in good condition. Porous borders are blamed for the availability of such numbers of arms - although the article does not consider the possibility that in any case the local illegal manufacture may simply increase to fill any obvious vacuum among the criminal element.

The numbers of prosecutions has dropped, for reasons not made clear, and it is also noted that the number of firearm-related incidents within the city has continued to rise. India of course already has extremely stringent gun legislation which has long been in place.

Times of India


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