You should know me by now. I heard this before on FNC :
There is some confusion on this answer, because I think people might not be getting the difference in naval terminology between GUNS and SMALL ARMS.
There are laws regarding placing guns on a merchant ship, which can effectively make said ship a legal target in military operations. Essentially, a GUN is one of the deck mounted cannons you see on destroyers, cruisers, etc. SMALL ARMS, however, are a different category... and crews COULD legally be armed as such. Here's some reasons why a lot of crews AREN'T armed, however:
1) The pirates have grenade and small rocket launchers. They could potentially do a lot more damage against a crew armed with small arms
2) Merchant crews aren't generally trained in small arms combat
3) Pirates have yet to kill a single hostage, so most nations consider ransoming to be a valid alternative to a potentially lethal fight (that also makes the kill score 5:0 in our favor)
4) a significant number of freighters attacked by pirates are chemical haulers or oil tankers. If hit by an RPG or Rocket, or even by a stray bullet, those chemical or oil tanks could explode and kill the crew while causing environmental catastrophe
5) cost of comparable arms... while AK-47s are cheap, rocket launchers aren't. Not smart to bring a toothpick to a sword fight
6) Fishing trawlers are about 20 times more common than pirates in the area. Shooting up a fishing family would be VERY bad press.
7) pirates use surprise attacks with speed boats. Often the small crews of freightors don't even know the pirates are attacking until they're already climbing on board, even before that the boats can go 35 mph, which actually makes a fairly hard target to hit.
Answer : Why can't merchant ships carry weapons to defend themselves?
If they carried .50 machine guns, they could easily be detached from their mounts and stowed in an armory on board when entering port, if that was an issue. I really don't think merchant ships need big deck guns, the .50 has much longer range than a rocket propelled grenade or an AK47, which are the weapons of choice for these so called 'pirates'. As long as the merchantmen are alert at all times to incoming unidentified vessels, they could easily defend themselves with .50 M2HB's, one of the best mechanical devices ever made by John Moses Browning, who designed it back in 1918. The fact it's still in service today tells you what a remarkable machine it is, and with a maximum effective range of 1.2 miles, it would be more than a match for these dumb teenage Somali's waving their RPG's and AK's.
And notice I myself (though no Navy man) suggested 50 cal machine guns earlier in this thread.
3) Pirates have yet to kill a single hostage, so most nations consider ransoming to be a valid alternative to a potentially lethal fightBut even that that cocksure SOB of an answerer, promethius9594, got his facts wrong and wrong again.
The Somali pirates have killed a number of hostages. They claim they that "die in captivity". The idiot's answer is wrong that no hostage has been killed and wrong to suggest by his friggin DEADLY pacifistic answer that none will be killed. As The Economist reports a week ago, ""Piracy off the coast of Somalia is getting worse. Time to act" :
LAST year, pirates took 1,181 people hostage off the Somali coast. About half were released after the payment of ransoms, a few have died of abuse or neglect and around 760 are currently in captivity. They are usually held prisoner on their own hijacked vessels, some of which are employed as mother-ships from which the pirates stage further raids. So far this year, there have been 35 attacks, seven of them successful. In March, when the monsoon abates and the Arabian Sea grows calmer, the pace of the attacks will quicken.NO ONE KNOWS what the fate of the nearly 800 still in captivity. Every single man, woman and child held hostage is in fear for their life every minute of every day.