WAR, MILITARY CONFLICTS, TERROR ATTACKS, HOMICIDES – What to do?
War, military conflicts, terror attacks, homicides – can only be carried out because we, the human race, allow that weapons are manufactured and are commercially traded. It is estimated that in 2015 alone the number of deadly casualties of war, military conflicts and terror attacks worldwide exceeded 200 000. To this, we must add a similar number of permanently injured, handicapped, amputated, blind, lifetime traumatized persons and their relatives. In addition, there are worldwide about 450 000 homicides every year, roughly two thirds of them by shooting. For the last hundred years, the total number of casualties of war and military violence is estimated at 150 to 200 million, 25 to 50 million since the end of the Second World War. [1]
War, military conflicts, terror attacks, homicides – what is needed to carry it out ?
Weapons, firearms and explosive devices in particular.
Who is producing these weapons ?
Privately operating commercial companies of the weapons and arms industry.
From what countries originate the manufactured weapons ?
Weapons, small arms in particular, are manufactured worldwide. However, the by far biggest producers and exporters of weapons and armaments are located in the US, Russia, China, Germany, France and UK. As long as demand is created, these goods are traded either legally, via third states or reach illegally any place on the planet.
Why do these companies produce these weapons ?
To generate commercial gains, meaning to accumulate financial wealth. For 2014, the value of sold weapons and armaments of the industry’s hundred biggest companies alone is estimated at far over USD 400 billion. [2]
Why do we allow that weapons and arms are produced and commercially traded ?
Because we live worldwide in a “free” economic system based on demand and supply, where weapons and arms are nothing but one of innumerable other traded goods. Because it belongs to our belief and understanding of a free individualistic development being able to exercise trade with everything that is not explicitly forbidden. Because we say that it is important and a matter of priority when economic sectors create and secure jobs, generate income for its shareholders and employees, and tax revenue for the state budget – and equally so by the most lucrative sector of the weapons and arms industry.
And beyond this, why is there a demand for weapons and arms at all ?
Because we have created a world, values, objectives, so called desirable necessities of us humans that all too often cause – at the individual as well as the level of social groups and states – envy, hatred, demarcation and exclusion, fierce competition at all costs, exploitation, injustice, serious social and psychological aberrations, and thereby lead to violence, terror and war creating the demand for weapons and arms of all kinds. Moreover, these dynamics formed over centuries of our human evolution have created the socially overarching argument of self-defence in case of aggression, triggering perpetually anew the absurd spiral of justification and violence between attacker and self-defender.
As part of the aspired global System Change, GLOSMO demands in this specific context the following successive reforms:
- Expropriation of all private weapon and arms companies worldwide and their respective socialization (transfer into ownership and control of the civil society)
- Prohibition of firearms and explosive weapons in private hands worldwide.
- Prohibition of production and trade of deadly weapons and arms worldwide.
- Hardest prosecution in breach of the above prohibitions.
[1] Global Peace Index.
[2] Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.