Completing the circle: Building a theory of small arms demand

Abstract

This essay presents a theory of small arms demand and provides initial evidence from ongoing case studies in the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, South Africa and Brazil. The theory revolves around the motivations and means to acquire arms, addressing issues such as contrasting acquirers and possessors and differentiating between acquirers and non-acquirers, consumers and producers, and final and intermediate demand. The essay also studies characteristics of small arms that make them so desirable as compared to other means of conducting violent conflict. The overall goal is to provide a theoretical framework and language that is common to a variety of social science approaches to the study of small arms use, misuse and abuse.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank David Atwood, Peter Batchelor, Jackie Cock, Phil Cook, Nic Florquin, David Hemenway, Caroline Moser and Andres Villaveces for comments on an earlier draft of this essay. An early version with methodological appendices was published as R. Muggah and J. Brauer, Diagnosing Small Arms Demand: A Multi-Disciplinary Approach, Discussion Paper No.50 (Durban, South Africa: School of Economics and Management: University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2004).

Notes

1. Armed violence is a global phenomenon, differently encountered over time as well as across geographic space and personal experience (geographic: cross-national, national and sub-national; personal: ethnic, familial, household, and individual). Temporal, spatial, and personal variations suggest that the behaviors that lead to armed violence may be modifiable, perhaps even preventable, for while conflict is an inevitable part of being human, there is no behavioral logic that prescribes violence – armed or otherwise – as the necessary response to conflict. But armed violence requires prior arms acquisition, and we therefore primarily examine factors that shape choices regarding arms acquisition.

2. For an exhaustive review of this literature, consult the Small Arms Survey (annual since 2001).

3. With respect to conventional weaponry, consult Jurgen Brauer, ‘Arms Production in Developing Nations: The Relation to Industrial Structure, Industrial Diversification, and Human Capital Formation, Defence Economics, Vol.2, No.2 (1991), pp.165–175 and Jurgen Brauer, ‘Potential and Actual Arms Production: Implications for the Arms Trade Debate’, Defence and Peace Economics, Vol.11, No.5 (2000), pp.461–480. [Reprinted as J. Brauer, ‘Potential and Actual Arms Production: Implications for the Arms Trade Debate’, in Paul Levine and Ron Smith (eds.), Arms Trade, Security and Conflict, (London: Routledge, 2003), pp.21–36.] For a review of the literature on the demand for firearms in the US context, consult, for example, Philip J. Cook and Jens Ludwig, Gun Violence: The Real Costs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

4. The 2001 United Nations Conference referred to four areas: development, the promotion of cultures of peace, conflict resolution, and security sector reform. E. Regehr and Kiflemariam Gebrewold, ‘Reducing the Demand for Small Arms and Light Weapons: Priorities for the International Community’ (Mimeo, 2003), also outline specific references to demand in the PoA.

5. These encourage states to improve, inter alia, oversight over arms and ammunition manufacturing, the strengthening of export laws, the regulation of end-user certificates, and legislation and activities related to stockpile management.

6. See, for example, the UNDP web site at <http://www.undp.org/bcpr/smallarms>, UNICEF's workshop on ‘Disarming Children and Youth: Raising Awareness and Addressing the Impacts of Small Arms’ (Ghana, September 2002), and T. Eshete and S. O'Reilly-Calthrop, ‘Silent Revolution: The Role of Community Development in Reducing the Demand for Small Arms’, World Vision Working Paper #3 (September 2000), available at <http://www.worldvision.ca/articles/Global_Issues/Silent_Revolution.pdf>. See also D. Atwood and C. Buchanan, Curbing the Demand for Small Arms: Focus on Southeast Asia, A summary report from the workshop held on 26–31 May 2002 (Phnom Penh, Cambodia: Center for Humanitarian Dialogue and Quakers United Nations Office, 2003).

7. The exceptions come from a growing number of US-based criminologists and economists that have been studying the small arms issue in relation to youths and criminals. This research provides considerable insight into the motives underpinning small arms acquisition, the carrying of weapons in public, and the use of firearms in violent crime. See, for example, the work of Philip J. Cook, ‘The Technology of Personal Violence’, in Michael Tonry (ed.), Crime and Justice: An Annual Review of Research, Vol.14 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991); Philip J. Cook, Mark Moore and Anthony Braga, ‘Gun Control’, in J. Wilson and J. Petersilia (eds.), Crime: Public Policies For Crime Control (Oakland, CA: ICS Press, 2002), pp.291–329; Philip J. Cook and Jens Ludwig, ‘The Effects of Gun Prevalence on Burglary: Deterrence vs Inducement’, in Jens Ludwig and Philip J. Cook (eds.), Evaluating Gun Policy (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2003), pp.74–118; Cook and Ludwig, Gun Violence; Philip J. Cook and Jens Ludwig, ‘Defensive Gun Uses: New Evidence from a National Survey’, Journal of Quantitative Criminology, Vol.14, No.2 (1998), pp.111–131; Philip J. Cook and Jens Ludwig, Guns in America: Results of a Comprehensive National Survey on Firearms Ownership and Use (Washington, DC: The Police Foundation, 1997); and Philip J. Cook and James Leitzel, ‘Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy: An Economic Analysis of the Attack on Gun Control’, Law and Contemporary Problems, Vol.59, No.1 (1996), pp.91–118. In a technical background paper, Jurgen Brauer discusses small arms supply, demand, and the small arms market. See Jurgen Brauer, ‘On the Supply and Demand of Small Arms’, Technical Background Paper (2003), available at <http://www.aug.edu/∼sbajmb/paper-smallarms.PDF>.

8. See Don Hubert, ‘Small Arms Demand Reduction and Human Security: Towards a People- Centered Approach to Small Arms’, Project Ploughshares Briefing 01/5 (2001), available at <http://www.ploughshares.ca/content/BRIEFINGS/brf015.html>. See also Angela McIntyre and Taya Weiss, ‘Exploring Small Arms Demand: A Youth Perspective’, ISS Paper 67 (Pretoria: Institute for Security Studies, 2003), available at <http://www.iss.org.za/Pubs/Papers/67/Paper67.html>; Robert Muggah and Peter Batchelor, Development Held Hostage: The Social and Economic Impacts of Small Arms on Development (New York: United Nations Development Program, 2002); and Regehr and Gebrewold, ‘Reducing the Demand for Small Arms and Light Weapons’.

9. Jacklyn Cock, ‘The Cultural and Social Challenge of Demilitarisation’, in Gavin Cawthra and Bjorn Moller (eds.), Defensive Restructuring of the Armed Forces in Southern Africa (Dartmouth: Macmillan, 1997), p.77. For an extensive example on social embedment of weapons – in Yemen – see Derek B. Miller, Demand, Stockpiles, and Social Controls: Small Arms in Yemen, Occasional Paper 9 (Geneva: Small Arms Survey, 2003).

10. It is frequently thought that arms ‘availability’ (supply) is a component in arms demand. This is incorrect. The determinants of supply are independent of the determinants of demand. Instead, arms supplies enter the demand side indirectly either through the motivations side (one crude example: ‘if everyone has a gun, I might have one as well’) or through the means side (e.g., ample availability usually lowers price; scarcity raises it).

11. Cock, ‘The Cultural and Social Challenge of Demilitarisation’.

12. An interesting contrast is offered by Botswana and Zimbabwe, the former without, the latter with, a gun problem.

13. Powerful statistical tools are available with which to study binary dependent variables.

14. Although the boundaries of the distinction are usually clear, gray zones do exist. Security services, in particular, may be viewed as legitimate or not (e.g., a well-trained, well-functioning police force vs. a corrupt police force).

15. See Lawrence Keeley, War Before Civilization (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), and Steven A. LeBlanc, Prehistoric Warfare in the American Southwest (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1999).

16. Cook and Ludwig, Gun Violence: The Real Costs, p.29.

17. See ibid., and David Hemenway, Private Guns, Public Health (Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 2004).

18. For example, suppose that the use of a Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifle in war-time is superior to any other weapons. If so, this would influence war-time demand that carries over into a post-war stock where that weapon has no legitimate use and yet adversely affects the community in which it is housed.

19. While earth may already have passed the peak of human population growth, we are nonetheless expecting the addition of several billion more people over the next hundred years. This will add hundreds of millions of young men to the population rolls.

20. From 1999 to 2003, the Quaker United Nations Office (QUNO) conducted workshops in South Africa, Kenya, Cambodia, Jordan, and Haiti. Among the findings is the recognition across all communities that proposed interventions need to be well integrated. For further information, contact David Atwood at <[email protected]>.

21. See C. Nelson and R. Muggah, Solomon Islands: Evaluating the Weapons Free Village Campaign (Geneva: Small Arms Survey, 2004). See also A. Kirsten, L. Mashike, K.R. Matshedisho and J. Cock, ‘Islands of Safety in a Sea of Guns’, Mimeo (Geneva: Small Arms Survey, 2004) and B. Lessing, ‘A Case Study on Firearms Demand in Rio de Janeiro’, Mimeo (Rio de Janeiro: VivaRio, 2005).

22. See Muggah, ‘Diagnosing Demand: Assessing the Motivations and Means for Firearms Acquisition in the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea’.

23. Ibid

24. See Kirsten et al., ‘Islands of Safety in a Sea of Guns’.

25. Ibid.

26. See Lessing, A Case Study on Firearms Demand in Rio de Janeiro.

27. Locally, the term traficante refers to drug dealers and anyone else associated in any manner whatsoever with the drug trade.

28. The study states that the average citizen of Rio is more likely to be killed by a policeman than the average New Yorker is to be killed by anyone. This is even more true of favela residents: between 1993 and 1996, police killed 16 per cent more people in these neighborhoods than in the remainder of Rio even though the favelas comprise only about 18 per cent of the city's population.

29. An interesting contrast is offered by Yemen, a culture in which gun ownership is culturally embedded, but gun abuse is not. See Miller, Demand, Stockpiles, and Social Controls, p.40.

30. Cartels, however, rarely can be sustained for any appreciable period of time.