THE GLOBAL MARKET FOR ASSAULT RIFLES

By : Phillip Killicoat


INTRODUCTION
Small arms are estimated to be responsible for between 200,000 - 400,000 deaths around the world each year. Approximately 20,000 – 100,000 of these firearm deaths occur in conflict settings (Small Arms Survey 2005, Kopel, Gallant and Eisen 2004, and Lacina and Gleditsch 2005). As economic commodities, firearms are subject to the forces of demand and supply and are actively traded on legal and illicit markets. The small arms market may be viewed as a function of the incentives and constraints faced by buyers, suppliers and regulators. This paper introduces cross-country, time-series data on assault rifle prices thus making it possible to quantitatively examine the nature of the small arms market.


"Small arms are attractive tools of violence for several reasons. They are widely available, low in cost, extremely lethal, simple to use, durable, highly portable, easily concealed, and possess legitimate military, police, and civilian uses. As a result they are present in virtually every society. (Boutwell and Klare 1999)"

Despite being a key component in conflict, small arms have only recently begun to receive academic attention. So far research has been almost exclusively case-study driven making it difficult to draw general empirical lessons. Book length treatments of small arms which follow this trend include Boutwell and Klare (1999) and Lumpe (2002). Brauer (2007) surveys the small arms literature in the forthcoming Handbook of Defense Economics and concludes that the small arms market has not been well examined theoretically, or empirically. The first tentative steps towards generalizable models of the small arms market are currently underway. Brauer and
Muggah (2006) develop a conceptual theory of small arms demand as a function of means and motivation, an adaptation of the standard determinants (income, prices and preferences) of neoclassical consumer demand theory (Varian 1992).

On the supply side, Marsh (2007) develops a conceptual model for the illicit acquisition of small arms by rebel groups. Among other hypotheses, Marsh’s model predicts that the more liquid is the arms supply in a particular country, i.e. the more easily individual combatants can obtain weapons through independent suppliers, the more difficult it will be to mount and maintain a united and coordinated insurgency.

There are a number of reasons why small arms have been all but ignored in the quantitative analysis of conflict. The historic state-centric bias of defense economics led to an almost exclusive focus on inter-state military strategy. In relation to military weapons, research has principally been concerned with the development and acquisition of large-scale military technology, such as nuclear weapons. Perhaps the most important reason for the dearth of attention given to the role of weapons in civil war is that usable data have been unavailable. The policy research community, led by the Small Arms Survey (SAS), the UN’s Small Arms and
Demobilisation Unit, the Bonn International Center for Conversion, and the Norwegian Initiative on Small Arms Transfers (NISAT), has produced a great deal of survey and case-study work. However, no statistical analysis of the growing volume of survey information has yet taken place.

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