Posted on 05/16/2006 1:08:09 PM PDT by holymoly
GUN violence is a global epidemic that kills an estimated 1000 people a day and stronger international controls on the sale and movement of arms are needed, a report released today said.
"If 1000 people a day were dying of avian flu, the world would sit up and take notice," said the report, published by IANSA, a group of agencies including Amnesty International and Oxfam.
The report was released ahead of the United Nations Small Arms Review Conference, a summit of world leaders to discuss arms legislation that is held every five years and meets in New York next month.
Gun violence, and the heavy toll it takes of human lives, is being ignored, IANSA director Rebecca Peters told reporters.
IANSA estimates that there are about 640 million small arms in the world, 59 per cent of them in the hands of civilians.
As many as 1.8 million people have been shot dead since the last UN review in 2001, it said.
The report said the problem was especially bad in developing countries, where easy access to guns, combined with widespread poverty, often created a lethal situation.
Ms Peters urged the United Nations to impose global regulations on arms distribution and set minimum guidelines for national rules on gun control.
"The conference must stop looking at this in such a fragmented way," she said.
The report recommended international cooperation to control the sale and transfer of firearms.
"The availability and misuse of guns, the high firearm death rates in many parts of the world and the means by which guns are spread around the world, are aspects of a common global problem - the uncontrolled proliferation of small arms," it said.
The perception that there is a difference between legal and illegal weapons is a dangerous fallacy, the report said.
Large numbers of firearms were manufactured legally, then stolen or bought illegally - yet little was done when an arms shipment went missing.
"It should be that when guns move into illegal hands, an alarm should go off," said Ms Peters.
Socialism kills alot more...
Only two months until the UN tries to Ban the Private Ownership of Firearms!
Name them....
How many people die of bombings every year? SOME gun deaths are the result of protection/self-defense. ALL bombings are a deliberate act of violence.
Bedwetters.
Let the UN try to make Gaza gun-free first.
Guns don't kill people, husbands who come home early kill people :) -- LTCG
Then we can be certain that the people who need to be killed won't be
Ms Peters urged the United Nations to impose global regulations on arms distribution and set minimum guidelines for national rules on gun control.
Ms. (how seventies!) Peters can #$*! my pasty white free American *&$#.
IANSA estimates that there are about 640 million small arms in the world, 59 per cent of them in the hands of civilians.
Good lord! Whose stupid idea was it to let governments hoard 41% of our guns?!?
Get rid of totalitarian leftist governments globally, and the “gun death” total will shrink tenfold.
Stupid European Barf Alert
Nice legs. Nice butt, too.
it doesn't break it down into defensive or offensive, a conspicuously absent statistic
Let's not discuss her trigger, hmmm?
If people would just stop shooting back at the people who are trying to kill or enslave them, those numbers would drop dramatically.
By law abiding citizens, I am sure. Right???
Well, I'll just say I wouldn't mind banging that.
1,000/day x 365/days=365,000/year killed by handguns. Now divide 365,000/6,616,000,000(world population)= 5.515 or .05%. So we are going to get upset because .05% of the worlds population dies each year. Disease and Communism kill more each day than guns do.AWB
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