The UN statement also noted that the organization was inviting 177 nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) from five continents to offer their views and opinions. These included anti-gun groups such as the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA) as well as pro-gun groups such as the National Rifle Association. All NGOs had the same rights and privileges.
Despite these clarifications, the U.S. pro-gun groups’ fears were not assuaged, and they pressed Bolton to take his hard line at the United Nations. Not that Bolton needed any persuading. He was widely known as a strict constitutionalist and someone who had shown great disdain and disrespect in the past for the United Nations. “If the UN secretary [secretariat] building in New York lost ten stories, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference,” he had told a conference seven years earlier. “There is no such thing as the United Nations. There is an international body that occasionally can be led by the only real power left in the world, and that is the United States when it suits our interest and we can get others to go along.”
At a press conference during the UN meeting, Bolton refuted the constant din of allegations that his delegation’s position was scripted by pro-gun groups. “I am not a member of the NRA. I have never been a member. Let me start over,” he said firmly. “I am not now and never have been a member of the NRA, and I have no idea who on the delegation is a member of the NRA. The NRA did not write our position and that’s that.”
Tensions were rising among delegates. Just as the pro-gun groups could not be convinced that the UN had no designs on their weapons, anti-gun groups believed that the NRA wrote the U.S. stance.
NGOs played a more pronounced role in this conference than in most other UN proceedings, and their participation was a major factor in how the two-week confab worked. A coalition wanting to stem the proliferation of small arms was the largest group present, representing about three hundred groups. The second largest was represented by the World Forum on the Future of Sport Shooting Activities, with the NRA as its most outspoken member. One of the more interesting facets was how some countries, China and Algeria for example, sought to restrict participation by NGOs, because they feared these groups would bring up human rights issues. Other countries, like Canada, Ireland, and the United Kingdom, included NGO representatives in the delegations because they were a source of data and information. One thing that most anti-gun delegates believed was that the pro-gun NGOs exerted a large influence on the U.S. position. For the NRA, the UN conference represented an opportunity to raise funds and enter the international arena in a way never before possible. Although the NRA had been active internationally, the UN conference propelled it to a higher level.
The U.S. hard-line posture seemed out of place considering that the United States was a world leader in transparency of arms sales and accountability. Compared to many countries, U.S. domestic gun laws were solid and workable, and the country was in the forefront of monitoring weapons transfers, maintaining security of weapons caches, licensing of brokers, and setting standards for weapons markings. The U.S. delegation did not push for international standards even in cases where U.S. laws exceeded worldwide proposals. To some people, it seemed as though the U.S. delegation was being confrontational for no apparent reason.
Perhaps this should not have been a surprise to astute observers, however. The Bush administration regularly took pains to dismiss any UN initiative that it felt would limit its future options. For example, the United States has not signed the Kyoto Protocol on limiting greenhouse gases despite the fact that the nation’s air was actually getting cleaner and many U.S. environmental laws are tougher than those elsewhere. And the United States has repeatedly refused to sign agreements that ban the use of land mines although it has not used antipersonnel mines since 1991. (President Clinton failed to sign the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty, but he did create a policy that would put the United States on track to join the treaty by 2006. The Bush administration has rejected the treaty outright.)
Although the United States appeared to go it alone with its stonewalling stance, other nations such as Russia and China tacitly agreed. For example, China, which supplied more AKs to the world than any other country, fought UN standards to mark weapons so they could be traced. Behind the scenes, Russia opposed restrictions on sales to nongovernmental entities, but was content to let the U.S. delegation take the heat. These three nations were not necessarily aligned on all issues, but the U.S. delegates were publicly vocal, distracting attention from the other two, who kept a low profile.
As the conference progressed it was becoming clear that the entire exercise might come to nothing over two main sticking points: supplying nongovernmental entities with weapons, and restrictions on civilian ownership of military-type weapons, issues on which Bolton would not compromise. The African bloc of nations, which had suffered the most from small-arms proliferation, held fast, insisting that these two provisions remain.
At 6 a.m. on the conference’s last day, the African states capitulated to the U.S. position rather than have the conference go up in flames. Some positive changes had come from the meeting, and they did not want to lose any momentum, albeit small. They knew that the U.S. position was absolutely intractable, because Bolton would be content if the conference did not produce any agreement whatsoever. In return, however, the African bloc insisted that conference president Camilo Reyes of Colombia publicly describe why they gave in and who was to blame. Reyes agreed and noted in part, “I must . . . express my disappointment over the conference’s inability to agree, due to the concerns of one State [the United States]. . . . The States most afflicted by this global crisis, Africa, had agreed only with the greatest of reluctance to the deletion of . . . these vital issues. They did so strictly in the interests of reaching a compromise that would permit the world community as a whole to proceed together with some first steps at the global level to alleviate this common threat.”
Although the conference’s final document, the Programme of Action, did little to stop the illegal trade in arms, some considered it a success anyway, because it raised awareness of the issue on a global level. This consciousness-raising may have been the conference’s most important legacy, according to many delegates who were optimistic that the meetings put in motion a long-term commitment to address the issue.
ONE TOPIC THAT DREW MUCH attention was that of universal standards for weapons marking to make tracing possible. At the time of the conference, the issue was thwarted because it could not get buy-in from countries like China, which sold many arms that ended up in the wrong hands. In fact, UN experts suggest that because more than 60 percent of illegal small arms started out as legal transfers, a marking and tracing system could go a long way to stop human rights abuses perpetrated at the end of a gun. Because no state was willing to institute worldwide restrictions at the national level on civilian possession of arms, this too was left out of the final document, but there was some movement at subsequent biennial meetings.
Unlike during the original conference, the United States became supportive in this area, mainly because U.S. gun makers already adhered to strict marking and record-keeping of firearms. Publicly, countries like Egypt, Syria, and China opposed marking and record-keeping because of increased scrutiny of their legal gun sales. Weapons from these countries often find their way into illegal channels.
For a worldwide marking system to be useful, each weapon must have a unique serial number that designates the country of origin, the manufacturer, and the year of production. As arms are transferred, a marking upon importation is also helpful. It offers investigators a starting point for any search by telling them the last country of import and also acts as a backup to the original markings if they become obliterated or if registry data become faulty or missing. Even if a trafficker were to imprint a false import marking, it could still be traced to the original country.
Politics asides, marking is a technical issue. Stamping is the traditional and most common marking technique. It is cheap and simple. Curren
t-day marking usually takes place on large, flat areas such as the side of the receiver. On the AK, for instance, some typically seen symbols are an upward arrow within a triangle, which designates the Russian Izhevsk factory, and a five-pointed star, which is stamped on AKs from Russia’s Tula Arsenal. There are several variations of these symbols, such as placing them inside triangles and other geometric shapes. Another common AK marking is the number 66 inside a triangle, which designates AKs produced by China’s North China Industries (NORINCO), and the number 21 inside two concentric circles, placed on AKs from Bulgarian arms factories. Along with these shapes are numbers, letters, and other characters that identify the firearm and its point of origin.
AK-47 MANUFACTURER MARKINGS
Izhevsk Factory
(Russia)
Tula Arsenal
(Russia)
North China Industries
(NORINCO)
Bulgaria
Stamping has limitations, however. Newer, harder composites won’t accept stamping at all, and imprinting through injection molding does not allow enough detail in a small area to be practical. Laser marking has become the state of the art because of its precision and ability to imprint a lot of information, even bar codes. NASA and private industry have developed a two-dimensional digital image matrix that contains tiny black and white squares representing binary digits that describe a part number. NASA’s goal was to place these identification markers on even the tiniest parts used in the space program. Unlike bar codes, these matrix Unique Identifications, or UIDs, are scalable; they can be produced very large or microscopically small and still maintain their readability. They can hold more than one hundred times the amount of information of a typical bar code. The U.S. Army Armament Research and Development Center is testing these UIDs on M-16s and other matériel, because they can be read even after they have been damaged.
Lasers also allow marking on more expensive-to-replace, harder-to-reach parts of a firearm so that any grinding down of the area to obliterate the marking would make the firearm unusable. Some suggest placing laser markings on the breechblock or bolt. This would serve several purposes: it would be hidden until the gun was broken down; erasing the marking might render the part unusable; and replacing it with an unmarked bolt would be costly.
Many U.S., Canadian, and European gun makers routinely employ laser marking to imprint weapons quickly, about three firearms per minute. Costs are low, too, a few cents per weapon in large quantities once the imprinting machine is amortized at a cost of between $40,000 and $60,000. Stamping is less susceptible to erasures because the molecular structure of the metal is deformed much deeper by stamping than from a laser. On the other hand, laser marking is faster and some companies imprint markings with tiny laser holes that can go much deeper than a stamped imprint.
Although marking is one solution to illegal arms trafficking, it would be meaningless without a worldwide database and registry. Such a registry would require that all markings become standard—harmonization, as it’s called—but chances are slim of this occurring in the near future because mandatory participation among all nations would be difficult to obtain.
At the 2001 UN meeting, Bob Barr noted that the United States has some of the world’s most stringent laws concerning firearms marking, mandating the inclusion of the location, manufacturer’s name, and serial number. He suggested that other countries would do well to follow the U.S. lead in controlling exports. Barr held firm against an international registry, though, which he compared to internationally forced gun registration. “That is completely unacceptable, and I and others in the Congress will work to ensure any system of marking firearms focuses on eliminating illegal firearms trafficking, and does not allow the United Nations to create any system which registers or tracks U.S. gun owners or sales.”
At a June 2005 UN small-arms working group meeting on marking and tracing, attendees spent a great deal of time discussing the subject of ammunition marking. Proponents argued that while firearms were rarely left at the scene of crimes, shell casings often were, and bullets could be retrieved from victims’ bodies. If these bullets could be traced to the buyer, investigators would have a solid tool at their disposal.
Although many ammunition makers argue that marking each round would be prohibitively expensive, those in favor of marking note that cartridges are already imprinted successfully with some letters and numbers, sometimes the caliber size, manufacturer’s symbol, or some other identifier. German and Brazilian military ammunition buyers insist on further identification from their suppliers. They require that 5.56 × 45mm rounds for AK-102 and M-16 rifles be marked with the caliber and a ten-digit code composed of six numbers and four letters identifying the manufacturer, year and month of production, lot size, and a unique lot identifier.
Such intricate marking does impose additional expense. Simple markings such as manufacturer or year are traditionally applied by a piston that mechanically presses numbers and letters when the primer pocket is being formed by the same thrusting motion. These stamps only need changing annually. Not so with stamping of lot numbers. Assembly lines, which can hold up to ten thousand cartridges during the assembly process, must be stopped, current cartridges taken off the line, new stamps inserted, and the process begun anew. This is the only way to make sure that lot numbers are not mixed together, but it is time-consuming and slows production lines.
Brazil has decided to buck convention, however. Effective in January 2005, a Brazilian law required identification of eleven different calibers of ammunition to include the lot number as well as a code that identifies the buyer as armed forces, police, private security services, or sport shooting organizations. The calibers were those used in small arms including handguns, assault rifles, and machine guns. In addition, ammo boxes had to contain a bar code so the manufacturer and purchaser could be traced.
This move was in response to Brazil’s high rate of domestic gun-related murders. About thirty-five thousand to forty thousand Brazilians are killed annually by guns. Gun murders, mainly using handguns, are the leading cause of death in that nation, according to a recent study of fifty-seven countries conducted by the United Nations.
At the time of writing many of these shootings take place in the favelas, or shantytowns, of Rio de Janeiro. The government has lost control of these makeshift neighborhoods, some eight hundred or so with 1.2 million inhabitants, and gangs have taken over. Armed youths carrying automatic weapons patrol their turfs; some belong to paramilitary groups, while others are part of drug gangs. Still others belong to loose amalgams of poor people trying to protect what little they own with whatever small arms they can afford. Often, military police raid these shantytowns, looking for drug dealers and criminals, and hundreds of innocent people are killed each year by stray bullets from both government and nongovernment shooters.
Amid this dreadful situation, Brazilian officials have instituted some of the most restrictive gun laws in the Western Hemisphere. Only police and other law enforcement officials are permitted to carry firearms in public (some hunters are exempt). The minimum age for owning weapons has been raised from twenty-one to twenty-five, and those caught carrying weapons are subject to prison sentences of two to four years. The government also established a gun buyback program that made it more expensive to register a weapon than to turn it in for cash, $30 for handguns to $100 for assault rifles. One woman reportedly received $65,000 in 2004 for her deceased father’s collection of more than twelve hundred guns.
More important, at the time of writing, it is now possible in Brazil to trace ammunition used in crimes. One manufacturer, Companhia Brasileira Cartuchos (CBC), has already begun imprinting ammunition in compliance with the new marking law. The company uses lasers to imprint a five-digit code into the cartridge’s extractor groove, which provides a tiny grip for the gun’s extractor to pull the empty case from the chamber after firing. Using computer-directed lasers to imprint the codes does not slow down the assembly process, because onc
e a lot has been produced, it is set aside for imprinting. Once the lot is finished, another lot can be imprinted with its own specific code. Numbers are recorded automatically by a computer for record-keeping purposes. Because marking is accomplished after production, even imported ammunition can be easily imprinted once it enters the country. To ensure tracing capabilities and prevent stealing, producers and importers are required to give “read-only” database information immediately to police and military commands. It is too early to tell if the new gun- and ammunition-marking laws will prevent gun violence, but legislators have high hopes.
So do California legislators and law enforcement officials who are scrutinizing the Brazilian ammunition-marking law for ideas. Instead of focusing solely on the firearm, they decided to look at ammunition for solutions to the state’s poor homicide closure rate. During 2003, 45 percent of California’s homicides remained unsolved. Although law enforcement officials in the state, as elsewhere, routinely collected bullets and empty cartridges left at crime scenes, nothing linked these remnants to a particular weapon until the shooter and the weapon were apprehended.
AK-47: The Weapon that Changed the Face of War Page 19