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State Stockpiles

Law Enforcement

In all, authorities have disclosed or confirmed the existence of 910,615 current law enforcement (mostly police) firearms. The total excludes data for the former Yugoslavia, which no longer exists. Extrapolating from average police arming rates and force levels suggests that approximately 25.4 million additional law enforcement weapons can be estimated to exist, for a combined total of some 26.3 million law enforcement small arms. This includes the weapons of sworn police officers, as well as all known gendarmeries and paramilitary (domestic security) forces. It does not include other law enforcement agencies, such as secret police, specialized police forces, wildlife management officers, or prison guards.

Armed Forces

Government declarations and similar highly reliable statements confirm 16.3 million military firearms (see table below). These represent 22 out of the 196 sovereign states in the world today. Combining these formally declared military inventories and historical cases with extrapolations reveals that the world harbours approximately 200 million official military firearms. Approximately 141 million military firearms are automatic rifles, some 27 million are pistols and revolvers, some 12 million are machine guns, and roughly 20 million are other types. These figures do not include older weapons like bold-action rifles still in storage. When distributed to compensate for a statistical margin of error (plus or minus 25 per cent), the range of global military firearms appears to be between 150 million and 250 million. The estimating procedures used here are deliberately conservative, which suggests that actual global totals are more likely to be closer to the upper parameter.

Military Firearms Inventories of Twenty-Four Countries

	Country	Total Military Personnel	Total Firearms	Year	Ratio	Sources (for a selection of links to useful resources, click on)
	Albania	21,500	148,742	2005	6.7	Holtom, 2005, pp. 36-37.
	Australia	96,612	280,000	1987	2.9	Ezell, 1988, p. 45. Requirement for AUG rifles only
	Bosnia-Herzegovina	84,600	450,000	2001	5.3	Zivalj, 2001
	Bulgaria	100,000	504,096	2004	5.0	Rynn, 2005, pp. 11-13
	Canada	102,400	233,949	2000	2.3	Canadian DFAT 2001, in SAS 2001 p. 73
	Central African Republic	4,442	5,552	2003	1.3	SAS 2005, p. 312
	Czech Republic	49,450	500,000	2003	10.0	Macha, 2003
	Estonia	15,300	83,550	2005	5.5	Combined statements; rifles only
	Finland	462,000	531,000	2003	1.1	Finnish MoD, 2003
	German D.R.	460,700	1,205,725	1990	2.6	Nassauer 1995, p. 57; Faltas and Chrobok, 2004, p. 41
	Jamaica	3,783	7,000	2004	1.9	Jamaica, 2004
	Macedonia	33,000	85,446	2003	2.6	Grillot, 2004, p. 16; reserves from IISS
	Malaysia	156,600	255,000	1987	1.6	Ezell, 1988, p. 257. Rifles only
	Norway	248,700	295,070	2000	1.2	Norwegian MoD in SAS 2001 p. 73; rifles and pistols only
	Papua New Guinea	3,100	7,200	2004	2.3	Alpers, 2005 p. 51, 52
	Serbia	345,300	789,016	2004	2.3	Taylor, Living with the Legacy, pp. 18-20; reserves from IISS
	South Africa	115,750	350,636	2004	3.0	Gould and Lamb, 2005 p. 155
	Sweden	289,600	920,000	1999	3.2	Justiedepartementet 1999 pp. 27, 36, 74, 112-115
	Switzerland	175,000	324,484	2004	1.9	Personnel from IISS; Swissinfo 20 Oct 2004
	Togo	6,950	12,850	2000	1.8	Togo to the UN Arms Register, 2001
	Ukraine	1,187,600	7,000,000	2005	5.9	Polyakov, 2005 p. 9, 49; total may be higher
	United States of America	2,515,300	3,054,553	2002-05	1.2	Stout, 2005; other services SAS, 2002, p. 85
	Venezuela	67,300	100,000	2005	1.5	Stratfor, 2001. Rifles only
	Yugoslavia	705,000	3,115,000	1989	4.4	Gorjanc 2000

	Average for 25 known cases				3.2

Note: The combined total is 16,328,144 for 23 existing countries; 20,648,869 including the former German Democratic Republic and Yugoslavia

Estimated Regional Military Firearms Totals
		Declared	Estimated	Combined	% of Global Total
	Americas	3,295,502	10,286,328	13,581,830	7
	Asia-Pacific	967,200	93,777,734	94,174,534	47
	Europe	11,627,550	62,302,738	73,930,288	37
	Middle East	0	13,887,304	13,887,304	7
	Sub-Saharan Africa	369,038	3,506,118	3,870,000	2

	Global Total	16,360,000	184,000,000	200,000,000	100


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