Guns kill 1 000 a day - report

2006-05-16 22:45

London - Gun violence is a global epidemic that kills an estimated 1 000 people a day and stronger international controls on the sale and movement of arms are needed, a report released on Tuesday said.

"If 1 000 people a day were dying of avian flu, the world would sit up and take notice," said the report, published by IANSA, a group of agencies including Amnesty International and Oxfam.

Gun violence, and the heavy toll it takes of human lives, is being ignored, IANSA director Rebecca Peters told reporters.

IANSA estimates that there are about 640 million small arms in the world, 59% of them in the hands of civilians.

As many as 1.8 million people had been shot dead since the last UN review in 2001, it added.

The report said the problem was especially bad in developing countries, where easy access to guns, combined with widespread poverty, often created a lethal situation.

International co-operation

Peters urged the United Nations to impose global regulations on arms distribution and set minimum guidelines for national rules on gun control.

The report recommended international co-operation to control the sale and transfer of firearms.

"The availability and misuse of guns, the high firearm death rates in many parts of the world and the means by which guns are spread around the world, are aspects of a common global problem - the uncontrolled proliferation of small arms," it said.

The perception that there was a difference between legal and illegal weapons was a dangerous fallacy, the report added.

Large numbers of firearms were manufactured legally, then stolen or bought illegally - yet little was done when an arms shipment went missing.

"It should be that when guns move into illegal hands, an alarm should go off," said Peters.

- Reuters