Arms trafficking

A tower of confiscated smuggled weapons about to be set ablaze in Nairobi, Kenya

Arms trafficking, also known as gunrunning, is the trafficking of contraband weapons and ammunition. What constitutes legal trade in firearms varies widely, depending on local and national laws.

The 1999 Report of the UN Panel of Governmental Experts on Small Arms provides a more refined and precise definition, which has become internationally accepted. This distinguishes between small arms (revolvers and self-loading pistols, rifles and carbines, submachine guns, assault rifles, and light machine guns), which are weapons designed for personal use, and light weapons (heavy machine guns, hand-held under-barrel and mounted grenade launchers, portable anti-aircraft guns, portable anti-tanks guns, recoilless rifles, portable launchers of anti-aircraft missile systems, and mortars of calibres less than 100 mm), which are designed for use by several persons serving as a unit. Ammunition and explosives also form an integral part of small arms and light weapons used in conflict.[1]

Impact

Areas

Although arms trafficking is widespread in regions of political turmoil, it is not limited to such areas, and for example, in South Asia, an estimated 63 million guns have been trafficked into India and Pakistan.[2]

The suppression of gunrunning is one of the areas of increasing interest in the context of international law. Examples of past and current gunrunning include:

In the United States, the term "Iron Pipeline" is sometimes used to describe Interstate Highway 95 and its connector highways as a corridor for arms trafficking into New York City.[3]

Market value

The total value of the global arms market is estimated around $60 billion a year, with around $8 billion attributed to pistols, rifles, machine guns, and bullets.[4] The total illegal arms trade is harder to estimate, but the illicit small arms market has been estimated at 10–20% of the total global arms trade.[5]

Notable arms dealers

Film

  • Lord of War (2005), a fictional crime war film in which Nicolas Cage plays an illegal arms dealer similar to the post-Soviet arms dealer Viktor Bout; the film was endorsed by Amnesty International for highlighting the arms trafficking by the international arms industry
  • Making a Killing: Inside the International Arms Trade (2006), a 15-minute documentary included in the two-Disc Special Edition DVD of Lord of War (2005).[6] Numerous other documentaries about arms trafficking are linked on this film's YouTube page.[7]
  • Iron Man (2008), a superhero film in which based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name, centering inventor Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) discovers his company has been arms trafficking weapons of his own designs to criminals worldwide, and seeks to stop his corrupt executives and other employees by becoming the technologically advanced superhero Iron Man.
  • War Dogs (2016), a black comedy-drama biographical film based on the true story of two young men, David Packouz and Efraim Diveroli, who won a $300 million contract from the Pentagon to arm America's allies in Afghanistan who later became involved in arms trafficking.
  • Shot Caller (2017), a crime thriller in which recently paroled felon Jacob "Money" Harlon, is forced by his gang shot caller to orchestrate a major arms deal with an allied Sureno gang.

Television

  • Sons of Anarchy, a FX-TV series about a fictional outlaw motorcycle club whose main source of income is trafficking arms to a variety of criminal enterprises domestically and internationally.
  • Death in Paradise Series 3, Episode 5, features Simon Shepherd as Jacob Doran, Saint Marie's Minister for Commerce, who is later found out by Humphrey Goodman to be a gunrunner.
  • Jormungand, an anime television series based on the manga series by Keitarō Takahashi, produced by White Fox, which addresses the issue of arms trafficking in the Middle East and throughout the European continent.
  • The Night Manager, a BBC miniseries where a former British soldier who is currently a night manager in hotels infiltrates the inner circle of an arms dealer.

Video games

  • Grand Theft Auto V's multiplayer platform, GTA Online, has a downloadable content pack revolving around manufacturing and distributing illegal arms through smuggling operations and missions included in "Gunrunning".
  • Mafia III, one of Lincoln Clay's underbosses, Haitian crime lord Cassandra, runs gun rackets.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Greene, O. (2000). "Examining international responses to illicit arms trafficking" (PDF). Crime, Law & Social Change. 33. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-03-23.
  2. ↑ Staff Correspondent (May 30, 2006). "Bangladesh turned into arms smuggling route; Experts critical of govt's indifference". The Daily Star.
  3. ↑ Enos, Sandra L. (2012). "Iron Pipeline". In Gregg Lee Carter. Guns in American Society: An Encyclopedia of History, Politics, Culture, and the Law. ABC-CLIO. pp. 440–44. ISBN 9780313386701. Retrieved 7 May 2015.
  4. ↑ Whitney, Craig R. (December 2012). "Ruling Arms". World Policy Journal.
  5. ↑ Schroeder, Matt & Lamb, Guy (2006). "The Illicit Arms Trade in Africa" (PDF). African Analyst. Archived from the original (PDF) on 21 February 2007. Retrieved 17 June 2016.
  6. ↑ "Making a Killing: Inside the International Arms Trade". IMDb.
  7. ↑ Making a Killing: Inside the International Arms Trade. YouTube.
  • "Arms Sales Monitoring Project". Federation of American Scientists.
  • "Arms Trafficking Data and Market". Havocscope Black Markets.
  • CIA (1980). Central American Arms Trafficking Report (PDF).
  • "Illicit Trafficking". Small Arms Survey.
  • "Official website". Small Arms Survey.
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