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Arms Trafficking: Small Arms and WMDs

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Illicit Markets, Organized Crime, and Global Security

Abstract

There are 875 million small arms in the world, and the majority—650 million—are owned by civilians. Of the civilian stockpile, gangs have an estimated two to ten million arms. Moreover, non-state armed groups have between 1.1 and 1.8 million arms. Law enforcement has 26 million arms, while the armed forces have 200 million arms. This chapter is an effort to examine the trends in arms, particularly the trafficking in small weapons and WMDs.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    “Estimating Civilian Owned Firearms,” Small Arms Survey Research Notes No. 9 (2011): pp. 1–4.

  2. 2.

    David P. Morton, Feng Pan, and Kevin J. Saeger. “Models for nuclear smuggling interdiction,” IIE Transactions 39, no. 1 (2007): pp. 3–14; Phil Williams and Paul N. Woessner, “Real threat of nuclear smuggling,” Scientific American 274, no. 1 (1996).

  3. 3.

    For more on gun culture, see: Michael A. Bellesiles, “The origins of gun culture in the United States, 1760–1865,” The Journal of American History 83, no. 2 (1996): pp. 425–455; Eugene. Volokh, “The Commonplace Second Amendment,” NYUL Rev. 73 (1998): p. 793.

  4. 4.

    The Data Team, “To keep and bear arms,” The Economist, August 10, 2015.

  5. 5.

    Mayors Against Illegal Guns, Trace the Guns: The Link Between Gun Law and Interstate Gun Trafficking (Mayors Against Illegal Guns: United States, 2010).

  6. 6.

    Aude Fleurant, Pieter D. Wezeman, Siemon T. Wezeman, and Nan Tian, Trends in International Arms Transfers, 2016 (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute: Sweden, 2017).

  7. 7.

    Ibid.

  8. 8.

    United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), UNODC Study on Firearms 2015 (UNODC: Vienna, 2015).

  9. 9.

    Arindrajit Dube, Oeindrila Dube, and Omar García-Ponce, “Cross-border spillover: US gun laws and violence in Mexico,” American Political Science Review 107, no. 3 (2013): pp. 397–417; Philip J. Cook, Wendy Cukier, and Keith Krause, “The illicit firearms trade in North America,” Criminology & Criminal Justice 9, no. 3 (2009): pp. 265–286.

  10. 10.

    Topher McDougal, David A. Shirk, Robert Muggah and John H. Patterson, The Way of the Gun: Estimating Firearms Traffic Across the U.S.-Mexico Border (University of San Diego Trans-border Institute: San Diego, CA, 2013).

  11. 11.

    Steven Dudley, “How Guns are Trafficked Below the Border,” InSight Crime, February 1, 2011, http://www.insightcrime.org/investigations/how-guns-are-trafficked-below-the-border, accessed July 2017.

  12. 12.

    Louis Fisher, “The Law: Obama’s Executive Privilege and Holder’s Contempt: ‘Operation Fast and Furious,’” Presidential Studies Quarterly 43, no. 1 (2013): pp. 167–185; Jessica A. Eby, “Fast and Furious, or Slow and Steady-The Flow of Guns from the United States to Mexico,” UCLA L. Rev. 61 (2013): p. 1082.

  13. 13.

    Government Accountability Office, Firearms Trafficking: U.S. Efforts to Combat Firearms Trafficking to Mexico Have Improved, but Some Collaboration Challenges Remain (GAO: Washington, DC, 2016).

  14. 14.

    Topher McDougal, David A. Shirk, Robert Muggah and John H. Patterson, The Way of the Gun: Estimating Firearms Traffic Across the U.S.-Mexico Border.

  15. 15.

    Steven Dudley, “How Guns are Trafficked Below the Border,” p. 1.

  16. 16.

    Government Accountability Office, Firearms Trafficking: U.S. Efforts to Combat Firearms Trafficking to Mexico Have Improved, but Some Collaboration Challenges Remain.

  17. 17.

    Topher McDougal, David A. Shirk, Robert Muggah and John H. Patterson, The Way of the Gun: Estimating Firearms Traffic Across the U.S.-Mexico Border.

  18. 18.

    Felipe Calderón quoted in “Mexico: U.S. Must Stop Gun Trade at Border,” CBS News, February 28, 2009.

  19. 19.

    Julia E. Sweig, “A Strategy to Reduce Gun Trafficking and Violence in the Americas,” Council on Foreign Relations, July 29, 2013, p. 2.

  20. 20.

    David Gagne, “InSight Crime’s 2016 Homicide Round-up,” InSight Crime, January 16, 2017, http://www.insightcrime.org/news-analysis/insight-crime-2016-homicide-round-up, accessed July 2017.

  21. 21.

    Robert Muggah and Ilona Szabó de Carvalho, “There’s a cure for Latin America’s murder epidemic—and it doesn’t involve more police or prisons,” World Economic Forum, April 4, 2017.

  22. 22.

    This is based on 2010 data or the most recent year available.

  23. 23.

    Jaime López, “En siete de cada diez homicidios las víctimas no son de pandillas,” Elsalvador.com, 15 de noviembre de 2015.

  24. 24.

    “Central America,” Department of Justice Bureau of Alcohol, Tabaco, Firearms and Explosives, Office of Strategic Intelligence and Information, March 2015.

  25. 25.

    Sarah Kinosian, “Arming the Conflict: El Salvador’s Gun Market,” Latin American Working Group, February 16, 2016, http://lawg.org/action-center/lawg-blog/69-general/1585-arming-the-conflict-el-salvadors-gun-market, accessed July 2017.

  26. 26.

    Sarah Kinosian, “Arming the Conflict: El Salvador’s Gun Market,” p. 1.

  27. 27.

    Jacob Parakilas and Iain Overton, The Devil’s Trade: Guns and violence in El Salvador (London: Action on Armed Violence (AOAV), 2014), p. 9; Sarah Kinosian, “Arming the Conflict: El Salvador’s Gun Market.”

  28. 28.

    Sarah Kinosian, “Arming the Conflict: El Salvador’s Gun Market,” p. 1.

  29. 29.

    UNODC, Country Fact Sheets: Summary Data from Country Responses on Firearms Seizures and Trafficking (UNODC: Vienna, 2015).

  30. 30.

    UNODC, Firearms within Central America (Vienna: UNODC, 2015).

  31. 31.

    UNODC, Country Fact Sheets: Summary Data from Country Responses on Firearms Seizures and Trafficking.

  32. 32.

    Ronan Graham, “Honduras Guns Feeding Central America’s Arms Trade,” InSight Crime, August 12, 2011, http://www.insightcrime.org/news-analysis/honduras-guns-feeding-central-americas-arms-trade, accessed July 2017, p. 1.

  33. 33.

    Luis Fernando Alonso, “Honduras Illegal Firearm Seizures Rise Amid Ongoing Insecurity,” InSight Crime, November 15, 2016, http://www.insightcrime.org/news-briefs/honduras-illegal-firearm-seizures-rise-amid-ongoing-insecurity, accessed July 2017.

  34. 34.

    Geoffrey Ramsey, “Cable: Honduran Military Supplied Weaponry to Cartels,” InSight Crime, April 25, 2011, http://www.insightcrime.org/news-analysis/cable-honduran-military-supplied-weaponry-to-cartels, accessed July 2017.

  35. 35.

    Julia E. Sweig, “A Strategy to Reduce Gun Trafficking and Violence in the Americas,” p. 7.

  36. 36.

    “Corruption Perceptions Index 2016,” Transparency International, https://www.transparency.org/news/feature/corruption_perceptions_index_2016, accessed July 2017.

  37. 37.

    Nils Duquet, “Paris attacks: Is Belgium Europe’s favourite gun shop?” BBC, November 19, 2015.

  38. 38.

    Nils Duquet and Maarten Van Alstein, Guns for sale: The Belgian illicit gun market in a European perspective (Brussels: Flemish Peace Institute, 2016), p. 2.

  39. 39.

    Ibid.

  40. 40.

    Ibid., p. 5.

  41. 41.

    “Global nuclear weapons: downsizing but modernizing,” SIPRI, June 13, 2016, https://www.sipri.org/media/press-release/2016/global-nuclear-weapons-downsizing-modernizing, accessed July 2017.

  42. 42.

    Donald Trump quoted in Alex Lockie, “How the US’s nuclear weapons compare to Russia’s,” Business Insider, September 28, 2016.

  43. 43.

    Sharon Squassoni and Amelia Armitage, “Nuclear Smuggling: From Moldova to ISIS?” CSIS, October 9, 2015.

  44. 44.

    International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Illicit Nuclear Trafficking: Collective Experience and the Way Forward (IAEA: Edinburgh, 2007).

  45. 45.

    Ibid.

  46. 46.

    Nuclear Threats Initiative, CNS Global Incidents and Trafficking Database (NTI: Washington, DC, 2016).

  47. 47.

    Barack Obama quoted in Charlie Cooper, “Isis nuclear bomb is a serious threat, warns Barack Obama,” Independent, April 1, 2016.

  48. 48.

    Matthew Bunn, Martin B. Malin, Nickolas Roth, William H. Tobey, Preventing Nuclear Terrorism: Continuous Improvement or Dangerous Decline? (Harvard Kennedy School, Belfer Center: Cambridge, MA, 2016), p. 18.

  49. 49.

    Peter Andreas, “The transformation of migrant Smuggling across the US-Mexican Border,” Global human smuggling: Comparative perspectives (2001): pp. 107–125; Peter Andreas, “US: Mexico: Open markets, closed border,” Foreign Policy 103 (1996): pp. 51–69; Peter Andreas, “The US immigration control offensive: Constructing an image of order on the southwest border,” Crossings: Mexican immigration in interdisciplinary perspectives (1998): pp. 341–356; Jason Ackleson, “Constructing security on the US–Mexico border,” Political Geography 24, no. 2 (2005): pp. 165–184; Mathew Coleman, “US statecraft and the US–Mexico border as security/economy nexus,” Political Geography 24, no. 2 (2005): pp. 185–209; Andreas Buehn, and Stefan Eichler, “Smuggling Illegal versus Legal Goods across the US-Mexico Border: A Structural Equations Model Approach,” Southern Economic Journal 76, no. 2 (2009): pp. 328–350.

  50. 50.

    For more, see Peter Andreas, “Redrawing the line: Borders and security in the twenty-first century,” International Security 28, no. 2 (2003): pp. 78–111; Fiona B. Adamson, “Crossing borders: international migration and national security,” International Security 31, no. 1 (2006): pp. 165–199; Emmanuel Brunet-Jailly, “Theorizing borders: An interdisciplinary perspective,” Geopolitics 10, no. 4 (2005): pp. 633–649; Ferruccio Pastore, Paola Monzini, and Giuseppe Sciortino, “Schengen’s soft underbelly? Irregular migration and human smuggling across land and sea borders to Italy,” International Migration 44, no. 4 (2006): pp. 95–119; Veronika Bilger, Martin Hofmann, and Michael Jandl, “Human smuggling as a transnational service industry: Evidence from Austria,” International Migration 44, no. 4 (2006): pp. 59–93.

  51. 51.

    Jonathan Medalia, Nuclear Terrorism: A Brief Review of Threats and Responses (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2005).

  52. 52.

    “Global Nuclear Detection Architecture,” U.S. Department of Homeland Security, https://www.dhs.gov/global-nuclear-detection-architecture, accessed July 2017.

  53. 53.

    U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Budget-in-Brief: Fiscal Year 2017 (U.S. Department of Homeland Security: Washington, DC, 2017).

  54. 54.

    Warren Richey, “Terror and the Mexico border: How big a threat?” The Christian Science Monitor, January 15, 2017.

  55. 55.

    John Kelly quoted in Polly Mosendz, “General Warns of ISIS Fighters Entering U.S. Through Caribbean,” Newsweek, March 13, 2015.

  56. 56.

    Warren Richey, “Terror and the Mexico border: How big a threat?”

  57. 57.

    John Kelly quoted in Zachary Cohen, “DHS chief: Terror risk as high as on 9/11,” CNN, April 18, 2017.

  58. 58.

    J.M. Berger and Jonathon Morgan, The ISIS Twitter Census: Defining and describing the population of ISIS supporters on Twitter (The Brookings Institution: Washington, DC, 2015).

  59. 59.

    For more on this topic, see: Carl T. Bogus, “The History and Politics of Second Amendment Scholarship: A Primer,” Chi.-Kent L. Rev. 76 (2000): p. 3; Robert J. Spitzer, “Lost and found: researching the Second Amendment,” Chi.-Kent L. Rev. 76 (2000): p. 349; Robert H. Churchill, “Gun Regulation, the Police Power, and the Right to Keep Arms in Early America: The Legal Context of the Second Amendment,” Law and History Review 25, no. 1 (2007): pp. 139–176; James Lindgren and Justin L. Heather, “Counting guns in early America,” Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 43 (2001): p. 1777; Sanford Levinson, “The embarrassing second amendment,” The Yale Law Journal 99, no. 3 (1989): pp. 637–659.

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Kassab, H.S., Rosen, J.D. (2019). Arms Trafficking: Small Arms and WMDs. In: Illicit Markets, Organized Crime, and Global Security. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90635-5_7

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