Global Arms Export Leaders Filling the World With Lethal Weapons

Last month, the US Government’s President signed into law the 2019 Fiscal Year budget coming in at $1.5 Trillion.  The Defense Department got the lions share of the budget at nearly $700 Billion, or according to the Congress, about 54% of the appropriations.

Guns in America

The United States leads the world in gun ownership, with more than 300,000,000 guns in circulation, or at least two guns for each person over 18 years old.  We have created a gun society, and we only have to watch TV to know that mass killings (an incident in which 4 or more persons are killed) have become a new normal.  There have been 98 mass killings in the last 35 years, according to research by Mother Jones.  The US government has done little to curb gun availability, and all they seem to be able to do is offer sympathy to the victims and their families.  High school students, who are the notable victims of mass killings, have shamed the Federal Government and state legislatures.  It’s taken thousands of school students to turn the recent killings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School into a national protest as shown by the coordinated movement for gun control organized by students to not only call attention to mass murders, but to take it directly to elected officials and demand change.

Conventional Weapons Shared Around the World

Just as our country has outfitted itself with semiautomatic handguns, rifles, shotguns, and revolvers, we now must call the same kind of attention to how countries are arming each other with conventional weapons of war.  And the United States is leading the way in making a more dangerous world. You might sit down when you look over the list of “reported” conventional weapons that were bought and sold by the International Military Industrial Complex as reported by Amnesty International.

• Battle tanks
• Armoured combat vehicles
• large-caliber artillery system
• Combat aircraft
• Attack helicopters
• Warships
• Missiles and missile launchers

SIPRI

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), established by the Swedish Government, is an independent international institute dedicated to studying conflict, armaments, arms control and disarmament.

The graphs and charts in this post are based on SIPRI’s arms transfers database.  The data in the graphs were last updated on 12 March 2018.

Firstly, there is a long list of countries that buy and sell these weapons to each other.  The leading exporters of conventional weapons is the United States, followed by Russia, China, France and Germany. Look at the is graphic to see who else is selling weapons.

The graph below shows the 20 largest arms exporters as reported by SIPRI.

To whom do the leading arms exporters sell their weapons.  Below are three graphics from SIPRI that answer the question for the USA, Russia and China.

The USA ships most of its weapons to the Middle East, followed by Asia and Oceania.  If you go to this link, and scroll down the page, you will find a drop down menu in which you can select the name of a country and see where the weapons go and the relative size of the sales.  I’ve selected the United States, Russia and China to give you an idea where these countries ship their weapons.  When you look these three countries’ results, you will soon understand how the world is being populated with a constant barrage of conventional weapons.

The world has been saturated with arms for decades.  The endless wars, not only in the Middle East, but in other parts of the world, continues.

United States

Russia

China