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FPIF Column

Too Many Guns

Frida Berrigan | October 23, 2008

Editor: Emily Schwartz Greco

Foreign Policy In Focus

www.fpif.org

We've heard a lot about gun control and the second amendment in this election season. A McCain-Palin poster, featuring Alaska's 44-year-old governor with a big gun and the viewer in her rifle sights, is just one of the more graphic indications that gun control is a lightning-rod issue that distracts, distorts, and dismays.

More than 200 years after our founding fathers enshrined the right to "bear arms" in our Constitution, we have more arms than we can bear. Wars are fought, fortunes are made, and nations rise and fall on these weapons. At the human-to-human level crimes are committed, vengeance is taken, rage is given full range, and terror is wreaked from the barrel of these weapons.

The United States is the world's largest arms-supplying nation. In 2007, the United States entered into over $19.1 billion in Foreign Military Sales (FMS) agreements with other nations and for 2008, sales of military goods and services mushroomed to $34 billion — triple the volume of the Bush administration's first year.

U.S. exports range from combat aircraft to Pakistan, Greece, and Chile to small arms and light weapons to the Philippines, Egypt, and Georgia. Since the beginning of the war on terror, the United States has transferred more than $88 billion in weapons and military material through the Foreign Military Sales channel. In 2006 and 2007, U.S. weapons and military training went to over 168 states and territories. But it's not just big weapons systems transferred legally.

Illegal Weapons Sales

U.S. small arms are briskly — and illegally — sold all over the world. And we need not look further than our southern border to see the intersection of small arms trade and big military policy. The newspapers are full of stories of horrific violence between drug cartels and the Mexican military and police. The New York Times reported recently that 3,700 people have been killed in violent incidents related to the drug trade and organized crime so far this year. In the article "Killings Haunt Mexican School Children," Times reporter Marc Lacey documents the impact drug violence is having on Mexican school children. The headmaster at a school near where 11 mutilated bodies were dumped relates that his students are asking questions like: "Why did they die?"

Since a military-led crackdown on drug traffickers began more than 18 months ago, thousands have died in drug-related violence, including police officers and soldiers, as well as cartel members, corrupt officials, and countless innocent bystanders according to Mexican authorities.

The violence is fueled in part by the high-tech, high-quality weapons bought at gun shows and shops in the United States. According to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, more than 90% of guns seized after shootings or police raids in Mexico or at the border can be traced back to the United States. Last year alone, 2,455 weapons traces concluded that the guns had been purchased in the United States.

Where do they come from? There are more than 6,700 licensed gun dealers across four states within a short drive of the United States' 2,000-mile border with Mexico — three dealers for every mile of border territory. Each state has its own set of laws for gun sales. California has instituted a 30-day waiting period and banned the sale of assault rifles; neighboring Nevada and Arizona have not. The ease with which huge numbers of deadly weapons are bought and smuggled has led law-enforcement officials to dub the region an "iron river of guns."

This is our right to bear arms in practice. And it's not saving lives or guarding liberties. A glut in arms production and patchwork state-by-state laws regulating the sale of guns means that it's relatively easy for narco-traffickers and criminals to get their hands on everything from assault rifles to handguns, as well as all the ammunition they need.

In the last 10 years, the international community succeeded in establishing a global treaty against antipersonnel landmines and a global ban on cluster bombs — weapons of indiscriminate effect that can leave behind thousands of unexploded "bomblets" that pose a threat to military personnel and civilians alike.

A common thread that unites these efforts is the demand that human rights and humanitarian concerns be placed front and center in decisions on what weapons are transferred, and how they are used.

In addition, each campaign has made effective arguments suggesting that beyond the humanitarian benefits of curbing these weapons, there are national security and economic benefits as well: promoting stability, removing risks to traditional armed forces and peacekeeping operations, and making the nations of the global South safe for development.

Shouldn't a global treaty against guns be next?

Foreign Policy In Focus columnist Frida Berrigan is a senior program associate at the Arms and Security Initiative of the New America Foundation.

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Recommended citation:
Frida Berrigan, "Too Many Guns," (Washington, DC: Foreign Policy In Focus, October 23, 2008).

Web location:
http://fpif.org/fpiftxt/5619

Production Information:
Author(s): Frida Berrigan
Editor(s): Emily Schwartz Greco
Production: Jen Doak

Latest Comments & Conversation Area
Editor's Note: FPIF.org editors read and approve each comment. Comments are checked for content only; spelling and grammar errors are not corrected and comments that include vulgar language or libelous content are rejected.

Name:	Kurt "45superman" Hofmann	Date: Oct 23, 2008
Let me be sure I have this straight--because of murderous thugs in Mexico, fighting over the enormous profits engendered by the "War on Drugs," kill a great many people, our Constitutionally guaranteed, fundamental, absolute human right of the individual to keep and bear arms--you know, the one that SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED--should be tossed out the window? I'll fight before that happens, and so will many others. You want to see "Too Many Guns," up close and personal? Try disarming us.

Name:

Alan Richmond

Date: Oct 23, 2008

"California has instituted a 30-day waiting period and banned the sale of assault rifles..."

I'm curious what California has a 30 day waiting period for, I'm only aware of a 10 day waiting period on the purchase of new firearms.

Also, while true "assault rifles" (rifles that fire more than one round for each press of the trigger) are banned in California, I suspect the author actually was referring to California's more publicized ban on some semi-automatic weapons (one round per trigger press), the so-called "assault weapon" ban. This ban only applies to the way some guns look (and bans some *safety features*) and has little to do with how these guns work.

"And it's not saving lives..."

These people whose lives were saved would disagree:
http://keepandbeararms.com/opsd/default.asp
http://claytoncramer.com/gundefenseblog/blogger.html

Name:	Bruce W. Krafft	Date: Oct 23, 2008
Um, Frida? In that poster you link to, it's not a gun, it is a training mock-up (probably with a laser) and the governor is not pointing it at the viewer, so the viewer is not in her sights. In your second paragraph you mention that "crimes are committed, vengeance is taken, rage is given full range, and terror is wreaked from the barrel of these weapons" but fail to mention the rapes prevented, lives saved, and children protected (something like 1 million times a year in the US alone). When doing a cost-benefit analysis it is dishonest to just ignore the benefits.

Name:	"Straight Shooter" Phil	Date: Oct 23, 2008
"Shouldn't a global treaty against guns be next?" Nope! And Frida, I have about 160 to 200 million good reasons why . . . that would be the number of people who were "snuffed out" in the 20th century by the "well meaning" governnments who passed these very same laws that you want. And right after they passed those tyrannical laws, they started the starvation and outright murder of the very people they disarmed . .. by the millions! To quote Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, "Gun-Control is the Key to Genocide." Feel free to do some research here: http://www.jpfo.org/filegen-a-m/genocide.htm

Name:

Straight Shooter Phil

Date: Oct 23, 2008

Frida –

You might appreciate this interrogatory with Mr. Theodore Haas, a survivor of the Dachau concentration camp:

Q.) Did the camp inmates ever bring up the topic, "If only we were armed before, we would not be here now"?

A.) Many, many times. Before Adolph Hitler came to power, there was a black market in firearms, but the German people had been so conditioned to be law abiding, that they would never consider buying an unregistered gun. The German people really believed that only hoodlums own such guns. What fools we were. It truly frightens me to see how the government, media, and some police groups in America are pushing for the same mindset. In my opinion, the people of America had better start asking and demanding answers to some hard questions about firearms ownership, especially if the government does not trust me to own firearms, why or how can the people be expected to trust the government?

There is no doubt in my mind that millions of lives could have been saved if the people were not "brainwashed" about gun ownership and had been well armed. Hitler's thugs and goons were not very brave when confronted by a gun. Gun haters always want to forget the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, which is a perfect example of how a ragtag, half starved group of Jews took up 10 handguns and made a_ _es out of the Nazis.

You can read the full interview here: http://www.jpfo.org/filegen-n-z/survive.htm

Name:	John Rosenburg	Date: Oct 23, 2008
Ah, Palin is not holding a gun in that photo. She is holding pneumatic simulator; see the air hose? The air pressure makes it feel like a gun recoiling, but nothing comes out the barrel. It's part of a big video training system.

Name:	Paul Kersey	Date: Oct 23, 2008
What other constitutional rights do you want us to give up Frida? We'll give up our arms - one bullet at a time.

Name:	PavePusher	Date: Oct 23, 2008
Ah, liberals, the only ones responsible enough to determine our civil rights. Stopped much crime with all the gun bans lately? Nope, didn't think so.

Name:	theaton	Date: Oct 23, 2008
Assault rifles have been heavily regulated in the United States since 1934. To purchase an assault rifle in the Unites States you must pass a background check and pay the $300 tax. You must then find an assault rifle to purchase. Because of their heavy regulation, they are extremely expensive. The lowest priced one that I found recently was just over $10,000 dollars. The laws that apply to firearms purchases are the same at a gun show as they are anywhere else. The "gun show loophole" is a myth started by anti-gunners for its perceived shock value.

Name:	jokirt	Date: Oct 23, 2008
It sounds like Mexicans crossing our boarders illegally is the bigger problem according to her article. Banning firearms will do nothing for someone that has the evil intent of killing another person.

Name:

daveinvegas

Date: Oct 24, 2008

I can’t even begin to express my disgust about the level of incompetence displayed in this hit piece.

Are you referring to the training device that Sarah Palin is examining in Kuwait; the one that is used to train our troops? Is that the “rifle” you are referring to?

Does this weapons agreement (FMS) include military, full-auto assault rifles or the semi-auto civilian version? Are you attempting to pull the wool over the eyes of your readers? Are you attempting to compare legitimate U.S. sales of military weapons to other countries with civilian rifles?

Oh, so you are discussing military weapons that we civilians aren’t allowed to possess. You are discussing weapons such as claymore mines, anti-tank weapons, mortars and rockets, etc. Hardly a valid comparison to the rifles and handgun we civilians buy.

Drug related. I think you have answered you question. It’s the drugs that drug cartels and those same cartels that are responsible for all the violence. Is this also perhaps due to the fact that many people in Mexico don’t have access to firearms with which to defend themselves. Is it also possible that people in Mexico are ambivalent to the drug trade with the United States? What about the fact that the illegal drug trade is enabled by corrupt Mexican officials?

The violence is not “fueled” by firearms bought at gun shows. I challenge you to cite a valid source for that statement. By the way, just exactly what do you mean by “high-tech”? You are using pathetic rhetoric to incite your readers against the simple firearms available to the American public. Further, please cite a source for the connection to guns shows and illegal weapon sales to Mexico. That is what you are attempting to do by making two unrelated statements or facts in the same paragraph. Again, this violence you mention is DRUG related; illegal drugs and CRIMINAL activity. Stop the criminal activity and maybe the level of violence will drop. But there aren’t actually three dealers for every mile of border territory. The distance from the southeast of California to the northeast of California, as the crow flies, is some 800 miles. Many of the gun stores in California are well north of the California/Mexico border and due to the current political environment during the last several years, many gun stores in the U.S. have been closed. I would be willing to guess that many cities/towns in California don’t even have a gun store anymore. California has not instituted a 30-day waiting period. There is a 10 day waiting period in California and assault rifles have been banned in California for decades. However, more recently the State of California has banned some semi-auto rifles based soley on appearance, not capability. As to the “river of guns” statement, please cite your source.

Have you even bothered to research the consequences that have been the result of a disarmed civilian population? When you have, get back to me. You can respond at http://keepandbeararms.com/news/nl/disp.asp

Name:

Timothy J Jenkin

Date: Oct 24, 2008

Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.
Thomas Jefferson

It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others: or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.
Thomas Jefferson

Name:	John Bowen	Date: Oct 24, 2008
Wow, as a non-US citizen, it does seem to me that this 'opinion piece' totally ignores the facts, in favour of the author's prejudices. Is your think tank limited to one point of view, or will you permit the right to reply from a 2nd Amendment supporter ?

Name:	phil evans	Date: Oct 24, 2008
humans have the inalienable right to revolt against despots. that is why the second amendment was included to the bill of rights.

Name:	Craig Shearer	Date: Oct 24, 2008
There will be no ban on weapons in the United States. Period.

Name:	fsilber	Date: Oct 24, 2008
Why don't you first perfect your proposal on cocaine and heroin? As long as we are unable to keep illegal drugs from criminals and subversive elements, we have no hope of keeping guns from them. In the meantime, the most important thing is to make sure their would-be victims are well-armed.

Name:	jack burton	Date: Oct 24, 2008
Answers for those who think that "'gun control" is the best for America http://hubpages.com/hub/Answers-for-those-who-think-that-gun-control-is-the-best-for-America

Name:	2A	Date: Oct 24, 2008
Frida, If you do away with the 2nd Amend then we will end up like mexico! What people against guns dont realize is we are able to bear arms to keep the Govmt in check. If the next Admin tries to disarm the people and succeds, then it is people like you, that will come to people like me, looking for protection. Look at all the states with "strict gun laws" CA. NY. they have the highest crime rates. But then again why look at the facts?

Name:

Mike Vanderboegh

Date: Oct 24, 2008

Seconding Kurt Hofmann, with some additional observations.

How does an international treaty further circumscribing the natural rights of Americans keep guns out of the hands of Mexican drug dealers? Like the drugs they sell, they will get them from whereever they need them.

Apparently you believe that you can accomplish by international treaty what the gun control crowd have not been able to accomplish with legislation. Don't count on it.

You are vague (probably deliberately so) about what you would change in American law in order to accomodate your treaty. I would be interested to know what you think would be approriate.

I infer that you would ban ugly semiautomatic rifles of military utility (the deliberately misnamed 'assault weapons'). If so, Kurt is right. You would merely start a civil war your side could not hope to win.

It is important not to make policy decisions in ignorance of their unintended consequences. (Cf. for example what happened with the 'Assault Weapons' Ban of 1994 -- miilions of rifles and billions of rounds of ammunition flowed into this country in anticipation of future confiscation -- do you suppose that happened because we wanted to turn them in when asked?)

From your picture, I'd say that you were young and earnest. This is no substitute for intelligent reflection. You cannot accomplish what you want without provoking another American civil war of ghastly proportions. Does that sound like good policy to you?

Mike Vanderboegh GeorgeMason1776@aol.com

Name:	Richard	Date: Oct 24, 2008
What about the over proliferation of CARS? We have at least 1 car for every man, woman and child in the U.S. today. Car 'accidents' kill more people than the misuse of guns so, using YOUR definitions of dangerous, cars should be removed from the U.S. first. Just think of how much CO2 will not be emitted if we all had to give up our cars?

Name:	Sean	Date: Oct 24, 2008
I'll be waiting for you, or whoever you send, to pick up the guns.

Name:

Uzziel

Date: Oct 24, 2008

Yes, let's drag the fetid corpse into the main street and kick it some more.

Trying to reason with sheeple such as this authoress is becoming more and more of a cause suitable only for St. Jude. There's a time for diplomacy and a time for action; nowadays, common-sense diplomacy proves to be dead.

I'm generally sick of trying to convince the sheeple, now. They can be first ones herded down the slaughter chute, if they want; I'll just sit, knock back a couple cold ones, and watch. And, should any hoof-wringing ne'er-do-well finally drop the "philanthropic" ploy and make a grab for my firearms, then, by all means, let them try. Whatever happens, free men like me are just going to have *fun*!

Remember, as Mike from Michigan usually muses, there are not enough moose to go around.

-Uzziel-

Name:	libertree	Date: Oct 24, 2008
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. I think the tree needs some food, and if you or anyone else thinks I will freely submit, the blood will be from you!!!

Name:	Jack Racham	Date: Oct 24, 2008
Check on the activities of a little sociopath with delusions of grandeur named Robert Mugabe. You'll find Mugabe and his army of thugs in Zimbabwe. Note that the populace is unarmed and helpless to resist Mugabe - but according to you, that's fine.

Name:	Bob	Date: Oct 24, 2008
Gun control is people control. Frida...we don't need any more of this kind of rubbish.

Name:	tgvas	Date: Oct 24, 2008
From my cold dead hands, right after your's are cold and dead, so pleasssse, do not try to take anything from me, my guns, my books, or anything I have purchased in my life, legally and morally.

Name:	Fiftycal	Date: Oct 24, 2008
Maybe Mexico should ban FARMING because it is a major source of DRUGS that are smuggled into the U.S. maybe the U.S. should INVADE Peru and Columbia because those are major DRUG exporting nations. Maybe "foreign policy" is something beyond your limited comprehension.

Name:	Anton	Date: Oct 25, 2008
the right to share arms The American government has always maintained the right of its citizens to ship arms to belligerents. President Washington, through his Secretary of State, Thomas Jefferson, and his Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, took this position when France protested against the sale of arms to England in 1793, the answer being that "the exporting from the United States of warlike instruments and military stores is not to be interfered with." - Theodore Roosevelt's "Fear God..."p.160 Gun runners from the getgo!

Name:	paxdude	Date: Oct 25, 2008
"the right to bear arms" does not make it right to bear arms. and your "just war" is just that - just war. hell is war.

Name:	Spark	Date: Oct 26, 2008
Well done Frida. It's good to see someone within America who recognises that there is an absurb amount of weaponry its citizins can openly purchase. The gun-toting conservatives in this country are a joke to those outside America, it provides a very bad image abroad of a nation that doesn't value life and will openly sell devices designed to kill if they can turn over a quick buck. They start to regret their decision to eagerly sell these weapons once our troops come into combat with them. Maybe these trigger happy rednecks should go to Afghanistan for a steep learning curve.

Name:

Dean Jackson

Date: Oct 26, 2008

FPIF usually has really well thought out, rational articles. When they touch a controversial subject, they dive into it, and show us *how* they come to their conclusion.

Gun control is a topic that requires a long article to do anything that's not schlock. 500 words is a mockery of the topic, and articles like this call for a click on the "Unsubscribe" button of the feed reader.

America has nearly 200 million firearms in public circulation. If guns directly caused crime, we'd all be dead from the sheer number of them out there.

Dig deeper, maybe. Or just keep writing articles discussing the merits of puppies, and whether or not they're "Just too cute." Seems to be about the equal of articles like this.

Name:	burnt bridges	Date: Oct 27, 2008
Regarding allegations that US-purchased arms stoke the Mexican drug wars; what self-respecting Mexican mafioso would buy expensive arms here when in all likelihood Hugo's arms & ammo over in Venezuela runs constant sales and offers no money down as long as a few shots get fired across our border at our border agents? And no, I am not being facetious.

Name:

goodjob

Date: Oct 27, 2008

The facts regarding the cluster bomb ban are inaccurate. The United States did not sign the cluster bomb ban, neither did many other countries. There is a ban in name alone.

Your use of the cluster bomb analogy is quite ironic, essentially you’ve already proven through your own analogy that a ban on guns would be ineffective. When guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns. When cluster bombs are banned only those that ignore the ban will have them. Which is everyone! 99% of the weapons-producing countries did not sign the treaty.

"Also opposing the treaty and absent from the summit are Israel, Pakistan, India, Russia, and China, who together produce 99% of the world’s supply of cluster bombs."

(http://diplomacy.foreignpolicyblogs.com/2008/05/31/us-absent-at-signing-of-cluster-bomb-treaty/)

Name:	Danny Mitchell	Date: Dec 29, 2008
i think that guns are fine and banning them is just going to make people want them more(need i go back to the prohibition era)

Name:	goodjob	Date: Dec 29, 2008
i hereby recant all my previous statements because i own 2 or 3 assault rifles of my own

Name:	Steve	Date: Apr 07, 2009
It would appear that you have failed to do your research and simply relied on new accounts published by others to write this opinion piece. The 90% figgure isn't all guns, it's those that can be traced because they have been in the US market before. Your own statement is that 2,455 such weapons were traced to the US, but had you bothered to check, this is out of some 29,000 guns. Of the 2,455 number, many are also from Forign Military Sales from the US Government to the Government of Mexico put in criminal hands by corrupt police, military and Governmental officials, and deserting soldiers.

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