MISSING PIECES - Inter-Parliamentary Union

MISSING PIECES
Today, we know more about the complex relationships between the
demand for small arms and poverty, insecurity, injustice and the
abuse of natural resources.”
—Norwegian statement at the UN Review Conference, 26 June 2006
While discerning individual and collective preferences is key to comprehending
demand for guns in any particular situation, this alone is
insufficient.
The extent to which the desire for acquiring a gun can be fulfilled will
also be a function of the perceived, real, and relative price of small arms
in a given setting and the availability and price of acceptable substitutes.
Where gun prices are relatively high, they can be a function both of a strong
preference for small arms and limited supply. Prices can be reflected in
non-monetary ways. For example, the price of an AK-47 in a particular
setting may be high due to well-enforced penalties for illegal possession
(in this case, the price is the high personal cost of incarceration).
Preferences and price are also related to resource availability, or affordability.
One may have a high preference for obtaining a weapon, and the
price may be low, but if personal or group resources are lacking, demand
cannot be fulfilled. Resources may be monetary, but also exchangeable
commodities (e.g. animals, timber, and people), as well as such resources
as organisational capacity, access to enabling networks (e.g. arms brokers),
and even guns themselves (as tools for obtaining income or for stealing
other guns).
A constellation of relationships are at work in shaping demand in any
particular setting. The framework also suggests that particular policy
choices or interventions, if uninformed by an understanding of all three
factors, can produce results that may be the opposite of what was intended.
For example, economic incentive schemes aimed at providing alternatives
to criminality may merely increase the resources available for the purchase
of guns (the relative price will fall), possibly driving up demand, if
preferences—for example, the ‘macho’ symbolism of high-powered guns
in some cultural settings—are not simultaneously addressed. Moreover,
in some communities, the choice to acquire a gun is not necessarily taken
individually, but influenced by a series of collective decision-making processes
and cultural influences.
It also suggests that policy choices may be equally enriched by examining
why some societies ultimately do not choose to acquire small arms:
‘. . . generating a more sophisticated understanding of the preferences,
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