Google Visualization Of Small Arms And Ammunition Imports & Exports

The legal (not illegal) trade:

Small arms, such as revolvers, assault rifles and light machine guns, and ammunition represent a $8.5 billion industry, and three quarters of the world’s small arms lie in the hand of civilians—more than 650 million civilian arms.  The app was produced by Google’s Creative Lab team in collaboration with the Igarape Institute. More than 1 million data points on imports and exports of small arms, light weapons and ammunition between 1992 and 2010 and across 250 states and territories across the world were provided by the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) small arms database.

You can fool around with the web app over at Google.

Main teaching point: USA! USA! USA! USA!…  Other countries need to step their game up.  Actually never mind, it’s better if they have less guns/ammo. ;)  Google sure knows how to make a good looking / fast web app.

Robert Muggah, Principal of SecDev group and Research Director over at Igarape Institute talks on the topic.  (among other things, he is the guy that helped google get the data for their visualization.)  Disrupting the small arms trade:

HA! He makes a point (7:27 min) that since the ban of land mines was agreed upon by governments in a treaty, we are almost in a land mine free world. Yea good luck doing that with guns. I don’t think comparing guns to land mines (something you bury in the ground and forget about until it kills or maims some random person) is valid.

Sylvia Longmire… good looking woman but she called H&K “Heckler & Cook” (19:40), and she didn’t mention ATF Project Gunrunner *facepalm + eyeroll*

Okello Sam – (22:25) – The WHAT that? (22:33) – Oh ok.. that’s what I thought. LOL I love it. One more time Okello? (28:42) – LOL thank you kind sir.

Side note: I really like this Okello’s shirt. Looks like chambray, but that style is some next level stuff you cant even get here yet as far as I know.

Oh yea and Fonderie 47? I’ll make fun of that in a whole other post, don’t you worry.

Thoughts?


Comments

13 responses to “Google Visualization Of Small Arms And Ammunition Imports & Exports”

  1. skeptic Avatar

    I’m half way into the video.

    About the import/export;
    that only counts international transfers.

    It looks like “civilians” in the U.S. bought a lot “civilian weapons” (i guess that includes semi-auto for civilian/police/swat/military).
    How many of the “civilian weapons” are police purchases?

    And this study doesn’t include U.S. made, U.S. bought weapons.
    (i.e. the military buys many U.S. made Colt M4s)

  2. we are almost free of land mines? umm hardly. most american soldiers die from landmines (AKA “IEDs”).

    you never heard of IEDs when land mines were still around

    1. I came to the comments to say this exact same thing! They just arn’t called landmines anymore they just say IED and now it is the biggest threat we have today. The enemy doesn’t use direct confrontation much but instead uses homemade or improvised landmines!

  3. They actually compared land mines to firearms?

    Y’know, aside from the little fact that land mines wholly consume themselves in the process of their function, and thus a finite number of land mines will eventually get smaller and smaller over time since you cannot “maintain” after their use, those two objects are perfectly comparable.

    *headdesk*

  4. They forgot the glowing trails from Sig factories to Amazon warehouses to random people’s doorsteps.

  5. considering there are still enough landmines in play to keep clearing organizations busy for probably the next hundred years i think he is full of shit

  6. Jon Hutto Avatar
    Jon Hutto

    2:25 “Majority of the people around the world are being killed, not by bombs, but by guns and bullets.”
    I would add.. Fired by their military and police at the people.

  7. D Larsen Avatar

    Cant wait for the antigunners to get a load of vigilant derptre. This latest video he posted should have us all just waiting for msnbc to throw it on national tv and call for gun confiscation.

  8. Helloooo Sylvia Longmire!I have no idea what she said.

  9. Oh yeah.. Whagt a great idea.. Lets attempt to hamstring the only god damn business making money… *HUGE FUCKING FACE PALM* – Firearms are one of the few industries that hasnt posted insane losses… Look at Ruger(RGR) 2 years ago their stock was at 13points a share, now… 47.45 a share. NSSF says sales have gone way way up, reports are coming out showing that shooting sports is the fastest growing sport for women, up 40% in the last 10 years. Oh but… a few thousand deaths every year means anyone with a gun is going to go ape shit at some point or not. Like saying if you smoke you’re going to kill me.. Never mind the fact that deaths from automobiles, cigarets, alcohol, prescription drugs cant shake a stick at “firearms related deaths” to top it off, I think gun deaths are one of the few statistics where they lump any and all deaths into one giant number. If i drove my car off a cliff, did I die from a fall from great heights? Gravity? Vehicular suicide? Who knows… That wouldn’t be considered an automobile accident, but a guy puts one to his head and suddenly the “gun deaths” ticks up. Excuse me? No… The poor bastard was tired of all the bullshit so he said, “fuck it, i’m out of here” and frankly more power to him, tired of this, leave. Not the cleanest way to go, but in no way can that be considered part of “gun violence” maybe if you twist the words a little… “Well, the act of suicide by gun results in a violent mess” but well let the brady bunch handle the semantics.

  10. Doyletoo Avatar

    OMFG! These people probably sit and stare at their organic, sustainable, vegan dinner every evening and just cry into their plate over how much more good they need to do so they can get an invite to Sean Penn’s house for a save the world party.. I just about physically wretched watching this crap…

  11. I also agree on the IED/land mine bullshit.

    I made it to about the fifteen minute mark before getting totally disgusted and giving up.

    My questions:
    What are the civilian gun laws in the countries that are above 7 in 100K violent deaths?
    How many violent deaths are firearm deaths and not some other item like a machete?
    When you are comparing the dollar amount of exports are you considering that the wholesale for an AK from Russia is probably $300 while an AR is going to probably $550 wholesale?

  12. What costs US$ 8.5 billion and goes BANG?

    The figure of an $ 8.5 billion small arms industry — cited on this page and in Muggah’s presentation — will be explained in the forthcoming Small Arms Survey 2012: Moving Targets, to be launched on 27 August at the United Nations headquarters in New York.

    This volume will provide the latest information on the global authorized trade in small arms and present new findings on small arms proliferation and armed violence worldwide.

    A full press release, along with chapter summaries and additional materials, will be released on the Small Arms Survey website at 1 pm Eastern Daylight Time (US) on 27 August. To learn more about these new findings, as well as pioneering research on armed violence, piracy, and state transparency in the arms trade, please visit http://www.smallarmssurvey.org at that time, or sign up to receive email announcements from the Small Arms Survey.

    To sign up for updates on the Small Arms Survey and our other publications, go to: http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/de/publications/sign-up.html or email [email protected]
    For previous editions of the Small Arms Survey: http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/de/publications/by-type/yearbook.html
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