A thought just came to me, re the US problem with homicide.
"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed".
That is the Second Amendment of the US Constitution. Holy Writ.
The Rock upon which the US NRA rests its gun case.
Yes. But. It doesn't say anything about ammunition, does it?
No. "Bear Arms". By which they had muskets and flintlocks in mind, anyway, not semi-automatics.
So. Obama can pass a law to require a person to apply for a licence to own a bullet. Two licences for two bullets, and so on. Mental health report for each licence.
He could call it the Chris Rock Law.
And dogs can detect illegal ammunition, so that will take care of the illegals.
Ah. I now see that Ammunition Accountability are already on the case.
So, one less thing for me to worry about.
Have a nice bullet free day, y'all.
Showing posts with label arms control. Show all posts
Showing posts with label arms control. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Saturday, January 24, 2009
If we want peace, stop the arms trade.
“Si vis pacem, para bellum”. "If you want peace, prepare for war" attributed to a Roman military writer Flavius Vegetius Renatus circa 375 AD.
This saying is generally accepted without criticism. But is it true?
Take suicide. The impulse to suicide is widespread, but the method is situation specific. For instance, in Bristol, people living nearer the suspension bridge were shown to be more at risk, and suicide rates dropped when barriers were erected. So, behaviour depends on two factors: desire and availability of an instrument. The same goes for death by shooting. Americans have easy access to guns, so, surprise surprise, they have high death rates by shooting.
By building up arms, politicians make it more likely that they will be used. It is in the interests of arms manufacturers to have wars, because that creates demand for their products.
If the Vegetius saying was true, the USA would be the most peaceable nation on earth, since it spends as much as the rest of the world combines. It is clearly not the most peaceable nation on earth, in fact the reverse is true.
I cannot find the source, but there is a story of two tribes who had a tradition of warring against each other. It was fairly ritualised, carried out on a regular annual basis, using clubs. A kind of deadly annual sports competition. Someone should have introduced them to football, but instead, they sold them a batch of machine guns and ammunition. Instead of deaths in single figures, the tribes wiped each other out.
True or not, the story shows how improving technology makes war more deadly. This is not to idealise swords and arrows, and the machete can kill you just as dead as the AK 47, but the machete is labour intensive, less productive.
Let's do a thought experiment. Take two countries, A and B, who dislike each other. An arms salesman goes to a country A and sells arms. He then goes to B and tells them that A has bought arms, so they need to defend themselves. B buys arms. And so on. An arms race is a mutually enforcing system.
This has relevance to Gaza. Israel and Hamas were both prepared for war. They got it. Now they have set the stage for yet more war.
Vegetius was wrong. If we want peace, we have to stop arming ourselves, stop selling arms into conflict areas, and start working to secure justice and sustainable economic systems.
This saying is generally accepted without criticism. But is it true?
Take suicide. The impulse to suicide is widespread, but the method is situation specific. For instance, in Bristol, people living nearer the suspension bridge were shown to be more at risk, and suicide rates dropped when barriers were erected. So, behaviour depends on two factors: desire and availability of an instrument. The same goes for death by shooting. Americans have easy access to guns, so, surprise surprise, they have high death rates by shooting.
By building up arms, politicians make it more likely that they will be used. It is in the interests of arms manufacturers to have wars, because that creates demand for their products.
If the Vegetius saying was true, the USA would be the most peaceable nation on earth, since it spends as much as the rest of the world combines. It is clearly not the most peaceable nation on earth, in fact the reverse is true.
I cannot find the source, but there is a story of two tribes who had a tradition of warring against each other. It was fairly ritualised, carried out on a regular annual basis, using clubs. A kind of deadly annual sports competition. Someone should have introduced them to football, but instead, they sold them a batch of machine guns and ammunition. Instead of deaths in single figures, the tribes wiped each other out.
True or not, the story shows how improving technology makes war more deadly. This is not to idealise swords and arrows, and the machete can kill you just as dead as the AK 47, but the machete is labour intensive, less productive.
Let's do a thought experiment. Take two countries, A and B, who dislike each other. An arms salesman goes to a country A and sells arms. He then goes to B and tells them that A has bought arms, so they need to defend themselves. B buys arms. And so on. An arms race is a mutually enforcing system.
This has relevance to Gaza. Israel and Hamas were both prepared for war. They got it. Now they have set the stage for yet more war.
Vegetius was wrong. If we want peace, we have to stop arming ourselves, stop selling arms into conflict areas, and start working to secure justice and sustainable economic systems.
Monday, January 05, 2009
Sure fire way to stop Qassam rockets
Israel's stated aim in its invasion of Gaza is to stop the rocket attacks. The practical way to achieve this is to have a ceasefire, and set up a for a third party trusted by both sides to patrol Gaza with units led by dogs trained to identify the odour of rocket fuel. They would be able to react to caches of Qassam rockets, which could then be confiscated and destroyed.
The Green Party has adopted the expanded use of dogs to pinpoint ammunition caches. This is proven tachnology (if dogs can be called technology) and is not expensive. Success with use of dogs in this application could bring forward the wider use of dogs in this role, and lead to a global reduction in the availability of ammunition in small arms and light weapons.
If the Israelis reject this option, it would provide evidence that their stated objective is just a cover for a wider agenda - namely, regime change. The Israeli Government says that it does not intend ot occupy Gaza, but their actions are calculated to destroy the democratically elected government of Gaza - so what is their plan? Another election? Is Fatah in a position to contest an election in Gaza? Or do the Israelis envisage a governmental vacuum, as in Somalia?
It seems that the action is no more thought through than the invasion of Iraq. It is simple to win a war, if you have military supremacy and you do not have any scruples about killing civilians, but to win the peace is a more complex matter.
The Green Party has adopted the expanded use of dogs to pinpoint ammunition caches. This is proven tachnology (if dogs can be called technology) and is not expensive. Success with use of dogs in this application could bring forward the wider use of dogs in this role, and lead to a global reduction in the availability of ammunition in small arms and light weapons.
If the Israelis reject this option, it would provide evidence that their stated objective is just a cover for a wider agenda - namely, regime change. The Israeli Government says that it does not intend ot occupy Gaza, but their actions are calculated to destroy the democratically elected government of Gaza - so what is their plan? Another election? Is Fatah in a position to contest an election in Gaza? Or do the Israelis envisage a governmental vacuum, as in Somalia?
It seems that the action is no more thought through than the invasion of Iraq. It is simple to win a war, if you have military supremacy and you do not have any scruples about killing civilians, but to win the peace is a more complex matter.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Dogs: man's best friend for preventing death by bullets
Today's letter
Ms. Laura Haigh
UN Liaison International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA)
5th Floor 777 United Nations Plaza New York, NY, 10017-3521 USA Dear Ms Haigh
I understand that you are the NGO point of contact for the Open-Ended Working Group on Tracing Illicit Small Arms and Light Weapons (OEWG). Although I am not formally a speaker for any NGO, I am a long term activist with the Green Party of England and Wales, which is effectively an NGO since the electoral system in the UK excludes us from government, so I hope that you will be open to the following proposition. Guns are durable goods that can be easily hidden. They can be transported across borders. They have no distinctive smell, apart from the oil that coats them, which is indistinguishable from the smell of any other machinery. Investigators have to make a visual or X ray inspection to confirm that a package contains armaments rather than common machinery. In short, it is difficult to control arms transactions, arms transfers, arms exports and arms caches. Ammunition has a distinctive smell. Sniffer dogs are routinely trained to identify the presence of ammunition. Countries and agencies that invested in sniffer dogs could prevent the transfer of lethal products across their borders. They could also use the dogs to lead searches for ammunitions caches and munitions factories. Sniffer dogs are an established and effective way of identifying the presence of ammunition. Therefore the many agencies with an interest in preventing the suffering and death that follows the use of small arms should concentrate on controlling the ammunition, as well as the arms.
Regards...
[please feel free to copy and paste this one, to add weight to it. It is an important matter.
Between 10 and 14 billion bullets are manufactured every year. Of these, there is an official trace for only 17%. Ukraine and Belarus alone are known to have stockpiles of around 3,000,000 tonnes of ammunition. There is an effort going on to secure an international agreement on small arms and light weapons. The main NGOs lobbying on this are Oxfam, Amnesty International and IANSA - International Action Network on Small Arms. Oxfam published a report, Ammunition: the fuel of conflict, 15 June 2006. Governments in the UN are trying to negotiate a new international Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) to regulate transfers of all conventional arms, including ammunition. There are several UN bodies dealing with the matter, but it is at the moment unclear what the next step will be. Real political and practical action will be difficult because of the powerful vested interests involved, and because the USA, with its pathologically strong gun lobby, is the main arms exporter.]
Ms. Laura Haigh
UN Liaison International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA)
5th Floor 777 United Nations Plaza New York, NY, 10017-3521 USA Dear Ms Haigh
I understand that you are the NGO point of contact for the Open-Ended Working Group on Tracing Illicit Small Arms and Light Weapons (OEWG). Although I am not formally a speaker for any NGO, I am a long term activist with the Green Party of England and Wales, which is effectively an NGO since the electoral system in the UK excludes us from government, so I hope that you will be open to the following proposition. Guns are durable goods that can be easily hidden. They can be transported across borders. They have no distinctive smell, apart from the oil that coats them, which is indistinguishable from the smell of any other machinery. Investigators have to make a visual or X ray inspection to confirm that a package contains armaments rather than common machinery. In short, it is difficult to control arms transactions, arms transfers, arms exports and arms caches. Ammunition has a distinctive smell. Sniffer dogs are routinely trained to identify the presence of ammunition. Countries and agencies that invested in sniffer dogs could prevent the transfer of lethal products across their borders. They could also use the dogs to lead searches for ammunitions caches and munitions factories. Sniffer dogs are an established and effective way of identifying the presence of ammunition. Therefore the many agencies with an interest in preventing the suffering and death that follows the use of small arms should concentrate on controlling the ammunition, as well as the arms.
Regards...
[please feel free to copy and paste this one, to add weight to it. It is an important matter.
Between 10 and 14 billion bullets are manufactured every year. Of these, there is an official trace for only 17%. Ukraine and Belarus alone are known to have stockpiles of around 3,000,000 tonnes of ammunition. There is an effort going on to secure an international agreement on small arms and light weapons. The main NGOs lobbying on this are Oxfam, Amnesty International and IANSA - International Action Network on Small Arms. Oxfam published a report, Ammunition: the fuel of conflict, 15 June 2006. Governments in the UN are trying to negotiate a new international Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) to regulate transfers of all conventional arms, including ammunition. There are several UN bodies dealing with the matter, but it is at the moment unclear what the next step will be. Real political and practical action will be difficult because of the powerful vested interests involved, and because the USA, with its pathologically strong gun lobby, is the main arms exporter.]
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