The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #95190   Message #3367859
Posted By: Rapparee
25-Jun-12 - 03:28 PM
Thread Name: BS: Great Britain's gun laws - Do they work?
Subject: RE: BS: Great Britain's gun laws - Do they work?
Let's see. The Small Arms survey (SmallArmsSurvey.org) reports:

Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Germany, Italy, and the United States routinely report annual exports of small arms, light weapons, their parts, accessories, and ammunition worth USD 100 million or more. The Small Arms Survey estimates that China and the Russian Federation also routinely achieve this level of activity although Beijing and Moscow do not report doing so. In 2007, customs data alone indicated that these eight countries, along with Canada, Switzerland, Turkey, and the United Kingdom, exceeded USD 100 million in exports.

and

An analysis of customs data suggests that for the period 2001 to 2007 five countries—Canada, France, Germany, Saudi Arabia, and the United States—routinely imported small arms, light weapons, their parts, accessories, and ammunition worth USD 100 million or more per year. Customs data also suggests that eight additional countries imported at least USD 100 million or more in at least one year during this seven-year period: Australia, Cyprus, Egypt, Japan, the Netherlands, South Korea, Spain, and the United Kingdom. A review of customs data shows that Italy routinely imported more than USD 50 million per year from 2001 to 2007.

I am not in any way saying that the US is blameless -- far from it! But it's not the only player, even if it is the biggest (and that doesn't thrill me either).

The United States is by far the biggest documented importer of small arms. During the seven-year period under review, US imports ranged from USD 571 million (in 2002) to more than USD 1 billion (in 2007). The next-largest recorded importer was Germany, averaging USD 110 million. The largest single-year value recorded for imports by a country other than the United States during this seven-year period was USD 261 million by Saudi Arabia (in 2001).