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Posted on 06/25/2002 10:40:34 PM PDT by Skibane
U.N.-backed study estimates 639 million small arms in world
GENEVA — An estimated 639 million small arms are held by individuals, police, military and guerrillas around the world, a U.N.-supported study said Monday.
The revised estimate in the second annual Small Arms Survey exceeded the 550 million estimated in the first edition published last year.
Peter Batchelor, one of the authors of the 329-page survey, said the revision didn't necessarily mean the number of arms had grown but was "based on better data and we think improved estimation techniques and particularly some much better data we received from Asia last year." The weapons included as small arms ranged from pistols and rifles to mortars under 90mm and shoulder-fired rocket launchers.
"For guerrillas, less concerned with tactical accuracy than political impact, the mortar is an ideal light weapon," the study said. "The mortar is an easy weapon to improvise from scrap."
The study said the bulk of small arms - 59.2 percent - are privately owned. Government armed forces own the second largest amount - 37.8 percent. Police have 2.8 percent and insurgents 0.2 percent.
China proved to be one of the most difficult countries to obtain information about the number of small arms, but the survey concluded that "the actual total probably is much greater than commonly assumed."
"Many Chinese people, such as those from major cities and coastal regions, are under the impression that guns are scarce in their society, strictly licensed and confined to the criminal underworld and the remote regions."
Recent indications from Chinese police of seizures of weapons, however, suggest that "firearms are rapidly becoming more plentiful."
The total numbers of small arms in civilian hands in China "must reach into the tens of millions," it said.
"It probably is surpassed only by the United States with some 240 million civilian firearms, and possibly India, home to some 40 million."
The survey, a project of Geneva's Graduate Institute of International Studies, is supported by the Swiss and other governments as well as the U.N. and other international organizations. It is published by the Oxford University Press.
If this were true, then how come we haven't seen the overthrow of the communist government yet?
• More than 1,000 companies in at least 98 countries worldwide are involved in some aspect of the production of small arms and/or ammunition.
• The global small arms market is dominated by only 13 countries.
• There are at least 639 million firearms in the world today, of which 59% are legally held by civilians.
• Civilians purchase more than 80% of all the fire-arms that are currently manufactured worldwide each year.
• The largest small arms exporters, by value, are the US and the Russian Federation.
• Small arms availability and use can contribute to a range of humanitarian effects, including forced displacement, and declining access to basic needs.
• Small arms can contribute to an increase in the scale and pace of killing.
• False end-use documentation is often used to evade UN arms embargoes, and divert arms to the illicit market.
• More than four million small arms have been eliminated from the global stockpile in the last decade as a result of various weapons collection and destruction programmes.
(source: Small Arms Survey)
And the UN would be well advised to keep its hands off of every single one of them.
"The Holocaust was one of the most famous humanitarian effects in world history."
DITTO !!
Come on, blue helmets. Come get 'em. I DARE YOU. Because this is a fight that would have the world's best military along with the world's most heavily armed society up against what, the UN's army from the EU??? bwahahahah
FO&D, UN!
It's none of their fecking business how many guns or anything else we have in USA!
You mean 9 out of 10 people on the Earth DON'T have a gun?
Is it any wonder that tyranny thrives?
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Is it any wonder we're the most free, and tyrants run the majority of the other nations?
At that rate it will take 15,975 years to destroy the existing small arms, then they can start on what will be made in the future.
We need to ramp up and get more.
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