The Use of Small Arms in Conflict

INTRODUCTION 7 Throughout history, people engaged in armed conflict have employed many tools of violence, from rocks and sticks to rifles and guided missiles. These armaments have been used to kill, wound, and destroy physical infrastructure, but not with equal effect. What factors affect people's choice of weaponry and targets? Many variables have a bearing on how small arms and light weapons are used, both within an armed conflict zone and within ostensibly peaceful societies. The answer to the question, therefore, may be as complex as the causes of violent conflict itself. Past studies have highlighted various dynamics, including: the development of gun cultures (Khakee and Florquin, 2003); the presence or absence of social and legal codes to control the use of weapons (Miller, 2003); 'arms racing' among rival groups (Cook and Ludwig, 2003); and links between violence and masculine identity (Cukier, Kooistra, and Anto, 2002). This chapter does not look in detail at these elements, but instead analyses the broad facilitating factors that may encourage or discourage the use of different types of weapons in contemporary armed conflicts. It offers a framework for answering the following question: what are the primary factors that enable or limit the use of weapons? The aim is to provide policy-makers with a checklist of variables with the potential to contribute to the most destructive or indiscriminate forms of weapons use, as a starting point for thinking about how such use might be restricted. While many subtle social phenomena interact to determine when, if, and how weapons are employed in a particular context, this chapter examines the main influences on the use of weapons with respect to: • the types of weapons available to armed groups (state and non-state); and • the kinds of goals espoused by each group. The first category considers, for instance, potentially strong material controls on where weapons can be used and for what purpose. Essential here are availability factors, such as the size, weight, and capacity of the weapons, the climatic, topographical, and infrastructural issues that condition their movement, and procurement costs. The second category takes account of social constraints or shared understanding of acceptable limits to the scale of armed violence. These are organizational factors. The chapter concludes that, by assessing various combinations of availability and organizational factors, one can acquire a better appreciation of an organized group's capacity to engage in armed violence, and of its potential …