The dying art of Pakistan’s gun makers … United Nations talks seeking to curb the global weapons market have been postponed until Tuesday over a dispute on the status of the Palestinian delegation. World leaders are trying to hammer out the first ever binding treaty, and it is one that could affect Pakistan’s thriving arms trade. In part two of our series to coincide with the talks, Al Jazeera’s Kamal Hyder reports on the dying art of traditional gun-making in Peshawar. – Al Jazeera
Dominant Social Theme: We need to get rid of these weapons. Then only the drones will fly.
Free-Market Analysis: The UN and its various, often-thuggish members are back at it again – trying to negotiate a “global weapons treaty.”
This video provides a glimpse into the weapons industry in Pakistan that, like other gun industries around the world, may be negatively affected by a ban on the US$ 60 billion weapons industry.
Here’s an excerpt from a Wall Street Journal article, “UN Pursues a Global Weapons Treaty”:
Delegates from around the world gathered in New York on Monday for the start of monthlong U.N.-hosted negotiations to hammer out the first-ever binding treaty to regulate the global weapons market, valued at more than $60 billion a year.
Arms-control campaigners say one person every minute dies as a result of armed violence around the world and that a convention is needed to prevent illicitly traded guns from pouring into conflict zones and fueling wars and atrocities.
Most U.N. member states favor a strong treaty. If they get their way, all signatories would be charged with enforcing compliance to any treaty by companies that produce arms and with taking steps to prevent rogue dealers from operating within their borders …
“Why should millions more people be killed and lives devastated before leaders wake up and take decisive action to properly control international arms transfers?’ he said. There is no guarantee that the July 2-27 negotiations will produce a treaty, let alone a firm one. In February, preparatory talks on the ground rules for this month’s talks nearly collapsed due to procedural wrangling and other disagreements.
It is encouraging to anyone who believes in freedom that the thugs who preen and strut in the over-expensive and blood-drenched halls of the United Nations are falling out amongst themselves when it comes to this treaty. Hopefully it will languish once more as it has before. The UN is the last organization that ought to be involved in this sort of treaty given its history of corruption and violence.
Gun-banning itself has a history – and not a good one. The more guns that are banned, the more blood is spilled sooner or later, or this is what the past teaches the present. If the government has guns and the “people” have given them up, then the chances are, sooner or later, people will discover they have given up freedom as well.
Stating this is not to encourage gun violence, only to make a historical observation. It is very clear that most of the violence in the world is generated via government not private individuals. A person with a gun is probably not apt to use it; a government with a drone is more than likely to send it up into the sky as a spy or hunter-killer – these days anyway.
Watch the video here.
(Video from AlJazeeraEnglish’s YouTube user channel.)
© Copyright All Rights Reserved. The Daily Bell is an informative compendium of independent economic views and analysis, which is published by The Foundation for the Advancement of Free Market Thinking (FAFMT).