What is the international arms trade and who are the major players? | Hacker News Reader

What is the international arms trade and who are the major players?

blog.priceonomics.com

34 pointsrdl19 comments

The whole first half of the post is kind of off-target, IMO, because it is dollar weighted, vs. type of weapon weighted.

The US predominately sells two things: big "weapons systems" (radars, aircraft, etc.) to middle tier countries, and a comprehensive range of small arms both domestically and to allied countries.

The weapons which primarily affect individuals and civilians in conflict are small arms, landmines, and certain ISR and ground attack resources. As a percentage of the total, it's about 1%. It doesn't hurt the life of a guy in Jordan that his neighbors have F-16s with top-end avionics. It does matter to a guy in the Congo that a box of cheap AK-47s has arrived.

Within the US, arms are both an economic issue (LockMart, etc. are huge employers, and wisely spread production/employment across congressional districts), and a civil rights issue (for small arms; no one really cares about F-16s for private ownership). Either issue is more than enough to keep the industry safe.

Russia, etc. are the same.

What I'd really like to see is a great analysis of the domestic small arms market -- who makes primers, who makes powder, brass, rifles, importation permits for foreign mil surplus, foreign current manufacture, etc. That is vastly more relevant to the 2A issues than who makes radars.

I think you're right - the post fails to address how big of a necessary / not necessarily negative component of our foreign policy/diplomacy is centered around arms trade. I'm no expert on the subject, but have worked with people with experience in this area. One thing I remember is hearing that the US has the distinction/disadvantage in the business of refusing to work with bribes.

My question to you - if you thought the article was off-target, why submit it? Seems pretty disingenuous to me.

The foreign policy aspects are just that we give financial aid to countries who then are only allowed to buy our weapons -- in some cases we give aid to our enemies (Pakistan, Egypt) to turn them into dependent friends, or to "sterilize" our air to our actual allies (e.g. Israel). Outside of our top end weapons systems (many of which, like the F-22, we refuse to sell), no one is clamoring for US small arms or other weapons; if we weren't giving them money, they'd be just as happy with Russian or Chinese arms.

They addressed the issue in the second half. But, this is the world of TL;DR.

> Approximately $11.7 billion worth of guns are sold in the United States and there are 30,000+ deaths in America each year tied to gun violence.

That first number is a more important than the second by more than an order of magnitude. Keep in mind George Will's statistic that the US spends more than $2 billion on Easter candy each year.

The 30,000 number is BS. They are likely including suicides. Here are the homicide numbers for 2011 - http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/c...

Actual total for 2011 is 8583.

It's funny how much money is in weapons and how the media reports it.

http://www.economist.com/news/world-week/21576445-kals-carto...

Is this really appropriate for Hacker News?

I blindly post any priceonomics blog entry because they tend to be awesome, not specific to the subject matter.

The numbers and analysis are interesting, but the article seems to me to have some anti-NRA, pro-gun/arms control bias. I think they're usually fairly neutral.

I predict we'll see another re-hashing of the gun control / second amendment debate here in the comments.

There have been a few submissions lately that make me wonder if Hacker News is headed in the direction of Reddit. I don't mean to pick on yours particularly, the timing was just convenient.

Yeah, I agree it wasn't the best priceonomics blog post. I'd be fine with a really strong/insightful analysis of the firearms or weapons industry (the way all their other posts have been in the past), but this one looks mostly political.

Interesting "priceonomics-worthy" aspects of the global arms trade would be:

1) Longevity of weapons -- I mean, I saw maxim guns in Afghanistan. 2) The weird market in EUCs, embargoes, etc. 3) Stuff like Brown Moses/CJ Chivers where they analyze the weird origins of weapons used in current conflicts (e.g. Syria and Libya) -- weird low-volume US prototypes found in Libya, and Croatian knockoffs of other designs as part of some "elimination of stocks" by post-Balkan countries.

The NRA/domestic politics parts are the least interesting. Outside of small arms, the NRA has basically no relationship to the munitions industry, either.

It isn't, and I don't know why you're being downvoted for asking.

Too soon.

Too soon since what?

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