MISSING PIECES - Inter-Parliamentary Union
MISSING PIECES - Inter-Parliamentary Union
MISSING PIECES - Inter-Parliamentary Union
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THEME 1<br />
THEME 1 PREVENTING MISUSE:<br />
NATIONAL REGULATION OF SMALL ARMS<br />
Worldwide, the majority of small arms and light weapons<br />
are held not by military personnel or law enforcement<br />
officers, but by private citizens. 1 As these guns are routinely<br />
misused, stolen or otherwise leaked into the illicit trade,<br />
it is imperative that gun ownership and access by civilians be adequately<br />
regulated and limited at the national level.<br />
In the last decade, several countries—including Australia, Brazil, Belgium,<br />
Cambodia, Canada, Germany, Mauritius, Sierra Leone, South Africa,<br />
Turkey and the United Kingdom—have undertaken significant reforms to<br />
regulate and limit gun ownership by civilians. Many other governments—<br />
including those of Afghanistan, Argentina, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso,<br />
Burundi, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo,<br />
Ecuador, El Salvador, Ghana, Guatemala, Ireland, Jamaica, Jordan, Lebanon,<br />
Liberia, Montenegro, Mozambique, Nicaragua, the Occupied Palestinian<br />
Territories, Panama, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Portugal, Rwanda,<br />
Senegal, Sweden, Thailand, Uganda, Uruguay and Yemen—are currently<br />
in the process of strengthening laws and policies.<br />
Such reform is propelled mainly by local realities: massacres with guns<br />
that provoked widespread public outrage in Australia, Canada, and the<br />
UK; alarming levels of random and/or organised armed violence in Brazil<br />
and Thailand; and post-war or democratic transitional processes in Cambodia,<br />
Sierra Leone, and South Africa. These efforts have also been informed<br />
and reinforced by work at the international and regional levels, which<br />
increasingly has implied or explicitly called for more careful regulation of<br />
civilian ownership of and access to small arms and light weapons.<br />
Several factors account for this. Firstly, many governments recognise<br />
a connection between armed violence and the uncontrolled, or loosely<br />
controlled, trade in and possession of guns. 2 There is also growing awareness<br />
that most of the problems posed by weapons availability and misuse<br />
are ‘civilian’—that is, most guns are owned by civilians, and most victims<br />
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