Stockpile and Inventory Dynamics

Gun Theft

Theft of privately owned guns is one of the most important sources for illegal markets and criminal gun use. Insecure private storage makes gun theft a relatively easy crime. Based on data from a few countries, at least one million guns are stolen from civil society annually around the world. Because this includes only a few countries, and because there often are legal disincentives against reporting gun theft, the actual total almost certainly is much higher. Declining theft in Canada (below) illustrates the impact of legal requirements for secure home storage.

South African Firearms Reported Stolen/Missing and Recovered, 1994-2002
 
 
 

 
Note: Includes weapons reported lost by the South African Police Service and the South African National Defence Forces.

Sources: 1994-8, G. Lamb (2000); 1999: Hennop (1999); 2001: Cross et al. (2003, p. 40); 2002: W. Hartley (2003)
 
 
 
Canadian Firearms Reported Stolen or Missing, 1994-2001
 
 
 


Source: Hung (2003)
 
 
 

Stockpile Security: Theft and Pilferage

Just like civil society, official owners suffer from continuous theft and pilferage. Anecdotal reports give a hint of the nature of the theft and pilferage problem. Among illustrative reports of losses from state-sponsored armed forces in recent months:

• The British government reported in 2005 that Royal Army units in the United Kingdom lost ten weapons in the previous year, including one SA-80 automatic rifle and four pistols.
• In Uganda, 86 out of 872 newly recruited Local Defense militiamen ran off with their weapons while still in training.
• China reported in April 2005 that, since 1996, it has recovered 30,000 stolen military weapons, although it did not reveal the full scale of its losses from PLA inventories.
• Russia reported that its Ministry of Defense lost 66,679 "rifled arms" during 2004 alone.

 

Stockpile Security: Catastrophic Loss

Catastrophic loss is a dramatic but poorly understood phenomenon. In the worst scenarios, hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of firearms have been looted from government facilities within a few weeks. These episodes typically mark major shifts in domestic politics, affecting all aspects of ordinary life and regional stability. The list appears to confirm the cliché that the worst thing most governments can do in the post-modern era is to collapse. Catastrophic losses almost always occurred unexpectedly. These are dangers that all states and the international commonity must continuously be attentive to. Examples include:

• The looting of approximately 50,000 weapons from Ugandan military arsenals in 1979 during war with Tanzania contributed to the collapse of Idi Amin's authority in Uganda and enabled dissident groups to establish enduring autonomy within the country.
• Better known was the loss in 1991 of about 300,000 small arms, pillaged as the government of Somalia evaporated.
• The looting of 640,000 small arms from Albanian government arsenals in March 1997 was a critical event precipitating full-scale warfare in neighboring Kosovo in 1998.
• An estimated 4.2 million firearms were lost from Iraqi state control following the 2003 invasion.

 

Trends in Disarmament

Although they are often well publicized and visible, civilian gun buy-back and turn-in programs tend to be relatively small. The largest disarmament programs tend to be institutional, most often organized by national armed forces to eliminate surplus inventories. In lieu of an international reporting mechanism, the total number of guns destroyed this way is unknown but numbers at least 8 million guns since the end of the Cold War. Examples are listed below.

Sources: America: Stout (2001); Australia: Parnell (2003); Bulgaria: Hirst (2002, pp. 5, 11); Canada (2003; China: Small Arms Survey (2003); France (2003, p. 10); Germany (2003, p. 59); Netherlands: Wezeman and Wezeman (1996, p. 8); Romania: Barbulescu (2003); Russia: Itar-Tass, 8 July 2003; Serbia (2003, p. 5); South Africa (2003)

Small Arms Disarmament, 2004-2005

** Planned
* Approximate

Sources: ANBP 2005, AP 2004d, Hooper-Box 2004, Hudson 2004, IRIN 2004b, Nato 2005, News 24 2004, News 24 2005, UNDP 2004.