WFSA Current News - August, 2005

August 20, 2005

British Olympic training impossible
            The BBC has reported that the British government has once again been asked to make provision for high-level sporting shooters to train in England, Scotland and Wales.
            Training for the 2012 Olympics under current arrangements is still impossible for most shooters. Those who can afford it go to Switzerland in training blocks, and otherwise have to travel to France, Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man or the Channel Islands. Those who cannot afford to travel are thus forbidden by law to train for their sporting events.
            Special provisions have been made for overseas shooters to compete in the Games, but the government has refused to allow any change to training for its own people.

August 16, 2005

Canadian call for central gun repositories
            The mayor of Toronto, David Miller, has called for all guns in Toronto to be kept in central repositories, according to an article in The National Post. This he wishes to apply to all registered guns belonging to all licensed owners, in the wake of Canada’s rising gun crime and increasingly fraught attempts to introduce longarm registration.
            The idea of repositories surfaces from time to time, usually propounded by those who have no idea of the number of guns that would need to be stored, and no idea of the cost or the logistics of it. Considering the large numbers of arms stolen from even the most secure units run by armed forces, it seldom receives much credibility. 
            The article says that the mayor has begun formal legal inquiries into the question of whether the city can legally force its legal firearm owners to have their guns locked up in some kind of central facility.

August 11, 2005

Russian black market in arms
            The Institute for War and Peace Reporting has released an article by Murat Gabarayev, a correspondent for the North Ossetia region. The article offers interviews with soldiers describing the way military arms are being pilfered and sold on the black markets of the North Caucasus. The practice, the article says, is as longstanding as it is widespread.
            One soldier said there are illegal sales taking place in every military unit. Another cited the Beslan school attack as a reason for the citizenry perceiving a need to become armed. Former soldier and now tertiary institution teacher Soslan Doyev is quoted as saying the authorities place so many obstacles in the way of legal ownership that people routinely turn to the black market.
            Colonel Martynov of the Interior Ministry Forces is quoted as saying: “If there are no instances of weapons being sold from military units, then where does the public get the machine guns, grenade launchers and ammunition which the law enforcement agencies confiscate almost every day?”
            The article is available at http://www.iwpr.net/index.pl?archive/cau/cau_200508_299_1_eng.txt .

August 5, 2005  

Mexican drug gangs using smuggled arms
            The Mexican newspaper El Universal has run an article continuing to lay blame at the feet of the United States for the illegal guns that are used against police by drug traffickers.
            Security specialist Jorge Chabat, from the Center for Economic Teaching and Research, is quoted as saying that guns are smuggled into Mexico from the neighbouring US because it is “easy to get guns there and it is very easy to cross the border with them”.
            The article then describes the problem as being “increasingly powerful” arms, and cites examples such as “Barrett 50mm (sic) machine guns”, which are so large and powerful they must be mounted on vehicles, to fire their armour-piercing rounds. Grenades and rocket launchers are also being used by Mexican criminals.
            The National Defense Secretariat claims the arms are being smuggled in by boat.
            The implication in the article is of a steady flow of legal arms turned into illegal ones by crossing the border, especially from the closer states of Arizona and Texas. The head of illegal arms operations in the office of the Federal Attorney General, Jorge Serrano Gutiérrez, is quoted as saying the arms they are seizing are “about as powerful as they get. I don't think they can get any more powerful."
            Despite the fact that Gutiérrez applauds the cooperation of the United States, the article completely ignores the fact that in the US the legal access to automatic arms has been strictly regulated since 1934, and the crime rate with such arms legally held by machine gun collectors is negligible, according to official figures. Hand grenades, rocket launchers and mounted machine guns are not the arms of hunters and other usual firearm owners. In other words, the arms coming into Mexico by boat are not connected with the legal trade, and there is no suggestion in the article of how tighter regulation would have a positive effect on the crime rate. The article implies negligence against the US for daring to have gun laws that are not as restrictive as Mexico’s, and then fails to take up the point that despite their restrictiveness, they are clearly not working. The arms smugglers are already outside the law and are already procuring arms which if indeed they do come from the United States are not from the legal trade.
            It is more likely that the smugglers are using ex-military arms left over from Central American conflicts. As such they will be very unlikely to fall within any demands Mexican commentators are likely to make on the USA with regard to tightening its domestic gun laws.

August 1, 2005

US – the “changing politics of gun control”
            After a drawn-out struggle over vexatious lawsuits directed at the manufacturers of lawful firearms, both The Wall Street Journal and The Los Angeles Times have published articles about the most recent development.
            Citing the “changing politics of gun control”, the Los Angeles Times has conceded it is likely the Senate will pass a bill banning most of the civil lawsuits that have been mounted by both municipalities and individuals attempting to hold gun manufacturers, dealers and trade associations responsible for damage caused by the unlawful use of the legally produced arms and ammunition that they had manufactured or sold.             The White House has issued a statement indicating support for the Bill, on the grounds that an industry important to defence needs should not be hampered by “frivolous lawsuits”.