UK wants restrictions on small arms to match NBC weapons

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw doesn’t get it.  There are just so many things wrong with this guys thinking.

Jack Straw has vowed to lead a global drive to force the world’s arms exporters to sign a treaty controlling the £15bn-a-year trade in conventional weapons.

Warning that a person is shot dead every minute in the world, the Foreign Secretary said “more misery and destruction” was caused by smallarms than by tightly controlled weapons of mass destruction.

Mr Straw said legally binding controls could be drawn up on conventional arms exports to match those on nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. He promised to put the issue on the agenda of the June meeting of the foreign ministers of the G8 group of politically powerful nations, which he will chair.

A LETHAL BUSINESS

* In 2003, global military expenditure and the arms trade was estimated to be $950bn

* One person a minute is killed by small arms

* 14 billion ammunition rounds and eight million small arms are made every year.

* There are 639 million small arms on the planet, 60 per cent in civilian hands. There are more guns in the world than cars. In the Democratic Republic of Congo there are 800,000 illegal guns.

* 300,000 child soldiers are involved in conflicts.

* About one million guns are lost or stolen every year.

Guns aren’t the cause, people using the guns are.  And assuming the point about one person a minute is by someone using small arms is true–So what?  If those were all people that needed to be shot then we should be working to increase the rate.  By itself that statistic is totally meaningless.  Beyond that guns and ammo are too easily made and too easily smuggled to restrict any more than you can restrict recreational drugs–including alcohol and tobacco.  Other than increasing his personal power I can’t imagine what he thinks he can accomplish with such an agenda.

Liberate the Mideast, the Midwest, Canada, and then the UK.

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