Monograph 22: Buy or Barter: The History and Prospects of Voluntary Weapons Collection Programmes, Sarah Meek

The number of weapons circulating freely in communities in recent years has occasioned a growing awareness and a deep concern. These arms, both legal and illegal, are seen by some as being responsible for increases in violence, crime and fatal accidents. In countries undergoing post-conflict transformations, the number of weapons and the lack of control over their possession and use have disrupted social and economic development, endangered the security of citizens and forced people to arm to protect themselves.

Traditionally, actions to curb the prevalence of weapons have either been focused on gun control, at national level, or arms control, in a regional or international context. Each has tended to focus on measures to limit or restrict supply by implementing legislation to circumscribe ownership of firearms, and limitations on their import and export; or regulations to ensure the safe use, storage and carrying of weapons by individuals. In particular, the arms control community has, in the past, been more concerned with weapons of mass destruction or larger conventional weapons systems than machine guns, pistols and hand grenades. "For too long it has been assumed that small arms were inconsequential. It is becoming increasingly evident that in reality they are the most dangerous of all." In addition, these gun control and arms control measures generally focus on the proliferation of weapons, while "[t]o a large extent, the proliferation has already occurred which leaves the problem of reversing rather than of control".

The complexity of collecting weapons already circulating cannot be underestimated. As noted by T Naylor, "tertiary supply-side control ultimately bumps up against the fact that the arms supply business is subject to the law of entropy - the further the material moves away from the primary source and the greater the degree of dispersal, the greater the problems of putting the process in reverse." Internal instability, the breakdown of civil order and economic imperatives induce people to possess weapons. In addition, countries which were caught up in the fighting of proxy wars during the Cold War created an arms market previously unknown. The remnants of these wars still exist in the form of light weapons ranging from 9 mm pistols to shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles. These weapons are now circulating internally within countries or within regions: there is no need for the import of more weapons and so traditional supply-side restrictions (for example, export bans by supplier states) become irrelevant.

There is thus a need for "new thinking at the conceptual level ... Some solutions may lie in the grey area between arms control and gun control."