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.
The "CORRUPT UN" thinks it is ok for despots and tyrants to buy guns.
Individuals,,,,OH NO, heaven forbid they own a gun.
Pure BC at its PC worst!
That number scares the hell out of me !
Just so. But it will be very difficult to pry the weapons out of the hands of the government officials and functionaries responsible for such carnage.
They're getting there. And that of the Bedouin is pretty serious.
And how many do governments kill every day?
"You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind each blade of grass." WWII Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto
So disarmament is being done legislatively and incrementally instead of directly.
"...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..."
Those two situations seem mutually-exclusive to me. If one is truly living in poverty one would be considering how they're going to buy, beg, borrow, or steal their next bowl of rice and beans three days from now. If these people are merely clinging to life itself...how do they have the discretionary funds to obtain these so-called "easily available" guns?
~ Blue Jays ~
I meant "gun culture" in a positive light.
America had a "gun culture" in the 1700's through the 1940's. It was one of the reasons Americans made such good soldiers. A large percentage of them could shoot and shoot well from chidlhood, whereas many of their opponents were unfmailiar with firearms until in the military.
Somebody who know, handles and respects guns from childhood is a more formidable opponent than somebody with just a crash course in firearms.
Idiots whose idea of masculinity is discharging semi and fully automatic weapons into the air at any excuse, and detonating themselves around little kids, women and other civilians are not part of a "gun culture" - they are simply insane lunatics.
WWII Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto.
Yamamoto was 10 times smarter than Sarah Brady ever will be when it comes to firearms.
LOLOL!!!
Great pic!
I'm not talking about the urbanized Arabs, mostly Jordanian, Egyptian and Syrian refugees who make up the bulk of today's terrorist cannon fodder. They're denied any real exposure to serious riflery in their own homelands, and aren't really trusted by their own factionous leaders in their settlements, as per the recent skirmishes between Hamass and PLOppy factions in Gaza.
I meant the Bedouin, such as those sons of King Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca, those with Lawrence fighting the Turks: Prince Faisal bin Husayn, Rustum Haidar, Nuri as-Said, Tahsin Qadri: men of the Howitat, Ajili, Harif, Rala, and Beni Saha. In Libya, the remains of the Senussi, sons and grandsons of Idris.
With cast-off Japanese Arisakas, leftover 7,65 Mausers from the Boer War and rifles taken from dead Turks and Germans, they chased the Turks out of their own Arab lands, admittedly with *some* British-supplied leadership and logistical support.
But nobody had to teach them how to shoot.
I think swimming pools cause more deaths per day than that. I'm for banning the international shipment of swimming pools.
I guess the empirical evidence of owning private guns was not important to the UN.
"But nobody had to teach them how to shoot."
I guess those people ( the Lawrence of Arabia type arabs)came from a warrior society and were acustomed to the use of weapons of various types. Some Arabs were using guns back in the days of matchlock muskets onwards. Before that they used arrows and bows.
They were a warrior society.
The other bunch are not. They are just fanatics and as you say, cannon fodder.
The UN can have my roommate's firearms after I beat them to death with their own blue helmets...
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