MISSING PIECES - Inter-Parliamentary Union

THEME 5
THEME 5 TAKING WEAPONS OUT OF
CIRCULATION
Simply strengthening controls on the supply of guns will be of limited
value in locations already saturated with guns: it is important
to simultaneously reduce the number of unregulated weapons in
circulation. This is especially the case in nations recovering from
violent conflicts or with high rates of armed violence, where there are a great
many risks associated with small arms circulation. Guns end up on the illegal
market, where they are easily available for criminal or political purposes,
and government-owned weapons not adequately managed and secured
may be looted or sold by authorities illegally. It is now widely accepted in
these circumstances that unless they are confiscated and collected—and
preferably destroyed—guns will often end up back on the streets.
ELEMENTS FOR SUCCESSFUL DISARMAMENT
Efforts to remove weapons from circulation have been part of strategies to
prevent armed violence and reduce insecurity in different contexts, including:
• disarmament at the end of an armed conflict, usually including a formal
DDR process and sometimes further efforts to mop up guns remaining
after the formal disarmament;
• voluntary firearms collection as a crime prevention tactic;
• gun amnesties due to legal reforms on private possession of firearms;
and
• forcible confiscation of illegal weapons.
Past and on-going efforts provide a growing body of experience from
which to learn and improve future programmes. Part of the reason why
our knowledge of what works and what does not work is still far from
complete is that there is no systematic method to make such assessments.
There is growing recognition of some key principles.
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