Cox News Service
July 7, 2003

By Michelle Orris

WASHINGTON - Most of the world's governments are not adequately monitoring illegal arms sales, according to an international advocacy group dedicated to halting weapons trafficking and promoting peace.

In a report distributed Monday at a United Nations conference in New York, the International Action Network on Small Arms criticized several nations, including the United States, for allowing small arms smugglers to ship guns across borders and failing to create new policies to counteract the trade.

According to the report, about 500,000 firearms are stolen in the United States each year. Guns smuggled from the United States to Canada, the Caribbean and Latin America are a "significant problem," especially because the United States supplies most of the world's weaponry.

Small arms include handguns, rifles, machine guns and shoulder-fired missiles.

The global review and report on small arms regulation comes two years after a worldwide agreement on the United Nations strategy to restrain small arms smuggling.

Rebecca Peters, the director of the advocacy group, said Canada has strict gun laws to keep weapons from criminals. But the United States' lax policies, including unregulated gun sales between individuals at gun shows, allow criminals to smuggle weapons into Canada, impeding the country's progress.

Peters also criticized the Bush administration's insistence in 2001 that the U.N. small arms trade recommendations apply only to illegal trade across international borders rather than legal trade within nations.

"The U.S. forced such a low standard that they do not have to do much to apply it," Peters said, complaining that the United Nations was forced to comply with Bush's requests because they wanted worldwide consensus. "When you look at their overall practice, then the irony shows up. They do not stop criminals from acquiring guns."

The Bush administration refused two years ago to endorse the original U.N. recommendations to curb the world arms trade, saying they would infringe on the public's constitutional right to bear arms. The United Nations eventually accommodated the Bush administration to win full acceptance of the strategy.

The United Nations' benchmarks for progress are not mandatory for any countries, which may account for some of the discrepancy in fulfilling the recommendations. Countries in the Middle East, China and Russia did not fare well by the advocacy group's standards, an indication of political will, according to Peters, who said their refusal to comply was disappointing.

Peters said progress is "definitely moving slowly," and said she had expected all countries to accomplish at least the recommended tasks to designate a committee to handle the watch over small arms trade and begin a review of current legislation. The world's nations also agreed to destroy stocks of surplus weapons, track illegal weapons by marking all guns with their manufacturer and make illicit gun production and possession a criminal offense.

The report, conducted by nearly 100 different organizations around the world, determined that one-third of the 111 nations had appointed an official to coordinate efforts against small arms trade and only 19 countries reviewed their small arms legislation.