La Voz de Galicia – July 8, 2022 →
Tomorrow, July 9, the International Small Arms Destruction Day is celebrated. It is one of those days that is born out of the idea of what it means being conscious of the illegal arms around us, and that helps us see the numbers in the illicit market of small arms. For example, in 2020, the Spanish Military Police destroyed a total of 49,100 firearms in the country.
The truth is that because of the ephemeris, I learned a little about firearms in different places around the world, about the work of different organizations that promote actions to end elicit weaponry. But I also began to reflect about the reality of legal firearms and about what it means knowing that, in some parts of the world like in the United States, there are more guns than people. According to the Small Arms Survey’s independent research project, in 2018 it estimated that in the world there were “a thousand million firearms in circulation: 857 millions in civilian hands, 133 millions in military arsenals and 23 millions in security forces,” and the truth is that those numbers make one think about the passion for destruction in the human condition, and about the origin of the need to own a tool that ends life.
Every place in the world has its own peculiarities, and even though it makes no sense to generalize, the truth is that the complex subject of firearms in the United States is one of the greatest problems in American society. But looking at the numbers in the Small Arms Survey, one can’t stop thinking about life in other, less visible communities, and in the fact that we civilians have been able to obtain 857 million instruments to end life…
