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November 2007 Latest News

November 24, 2007

British authority considers complaints about violent images

The English Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) is being asked to consider a steadily rising number of complaints about the use of guns in advertising. Between 2006 and 2007, with the year still not finished, the number of complaints has risen by nearly seventy per cent to 1,700, and the number of advertisements at the centre of the complaints has more than doubled to 523.

Following contact by a London public safety group over advertising for the film "Shoot 'Em Up" depicting an actor pointing two handguns at the camera, the ASA upheld the complaint that it may be glorifying violence, and expressed its own misgivings about current advertising tendencies, citing rising public concerns about the issue. Public seminars are now being held about the role of images in the depiction of guns and knives not only in cinema but in video games.

The film distributor in this present case argued that the images were not offensive because the guns were angled away from the viewer, but the ASA overruled this argument.

Britain continues to experience numerous deaths of and by young people through the use of illegal handguns, despite the total ban on sporting handguns throughout the United Kingdom.

Link to Reuters Article



November 8, 2007

Ugandan disagreement on small arms circulation

According to The Monitor in Kampala, the German Government is funding a project in Uganda to track and control the numbers of small arms in circulation there.

Canon Joyce Nina of the Uganda Joint Christian Council has claimed that 65 per cent of the arms in circulation are in private hands, a group "not supposed to have guns at all because they are civilians".

At each change of government, she said, the arms of the security personnel have travelled with them, and this leakage has occurred because there has been "no mechanism to document the process". She further claimed that up to 80 per cent of the world's firearms are in the hands of civilians and only 20 per cent under the control of the government-approved military.

In contrast, a spokesman for the Uganda National Focal Point on Small Arms denied the suggestion that even as many as 60 per cent of firearms are in the hands of civilians, but admitted that there are illegal arms in circulation.

The seminar at which the opposing claims were made was organized mostly for medical practitioners and was organized by the East African Community and the Uganda Action Network on Small Arms. The assumption continues to be that record-keeping processes imposed on the compliant will somehow spill over into illegal arms transfers and reduce criminal activity.



November 3, 2007

Sierra Leone Parliamentarians pledge further action on small arms

A personal visit, according to Allafrica.com, has been made by members of the Sierra Leone Action Network on Small Arms (SLANSA) to Abel Strong, the Speaker of the Parliament. He subsequently made a statement that SLANSA has his support, and that of other members of the legislature.

In June, 2007 the Sierra Leone Parliament ratified the ECOWAS convention, but the ratification is not yet to be judged complete. The program co-ordinator of SLANSA, Florella Hazeley, leader of the delegation, emphasized the need for the establishment of a National Commission on small arms with a view to overhauling the national legislation that was brought down in 1955. She described the work her group did with the previous parliament by the operation of workshops and seminars on matters relating to small arms.

It was also said that that the group called Parliamentary Global Action on small Arms will be preparing a seminar on the Arms Trade Treaty in January, 2008, and is expecting support from the Department for International Development.

www.allafrica.com


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