A Gun Sale Gone Wrong

A Sig Sauer model S P2022 pistol. (Photo from Sig Sauer website)

It seemed to be yet another routine United States arms sale to Colombia: 64,485 Sig Sauer model S P2022 pistols, with a price tag of $28.6 million.

But this sale went wrong - in two different ways.

A military equipment shop in central
Bogotá advertises Sig Sauer products.

Several months ago, the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung reported that German-made Sig Sauer pistols, part of a lot shipped here between 2007 and 2012, were in the hands of Colombian security forces. That meant a violation of German law, since Germany has not authorized the sale of such arms to Colombia out of concerns about human rights violations and Colombia's internal conflict.

The sale put the U.S. government into hot water with the Germans because the U.S. had apparently promised the Germans not to resell the arms to a third country. Ironically, the U.S. government could have legally sold Sig Sauer pistols to Colombia - if they were made in Sig Sauer's plant in New Hampshire. However, the pistols shipped to Colombia were reportedly a mix of U.S.- and German-made arms.

German officials told Semana magazine that the case was "very grave," but that it required more investigation.

Whatever the human rights challenges of Colombian security forces, this apparently illegal sale underlines the importance of regulating and monitoring international light weapons sales, as the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty, which is awaiting ratification, would do.

Perhaps the U.S. and German governments are monitoring these weapons to determine whether Colombian security forces employ them in human rights violations. However, they will not be able to monitor all of the pistols, because last November 100 of them were stolen from the police even before their importation process was complete.

Authorities reported recovering 36 of the pistols and arresting six people, including pawnshop owners, who'd participated in the robbery and black marketing of the guns, reports El Tiempo. A police official had sold the guns for 500,000 pesos, about US $260.00. each. But the other 64 guns are out there, likely in the hands of criminals, who may use them to rob, rape or murder civilians - or even to kill the police the guns were intended for.

By all accounts, Sig Sauers are well-made, long-lasting guns. So, Colombians will have reason to fear these weapons for many years to come.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The UN's Vital Arms Control Treaty!

You probably haven't heard of it, but at the United Nations headquarters in New York they're discussing a treaty on arms traffic which could someday make Colombia a much safer place.

Unfortunately, a few confused fanatics in the United States make the treaty's passage unlikely anytime soon.

A Swedish-made AT4 anti-tank missle launcher
like those sold to Venezuela and then transferred to
the FARC guerrillas.

Incredibly, no international treaty exists on arms trade, despite the fact that small arms such as handguns and automatic rifles kill a half million people every year, while they together with heavy weapons can destabilize governments and carry out wholesale repression and massacres of civilians, as we've seen in places like Syria, Sub-Saharan Africa, Mexico and Colombia.

Regulating the trade in weapons, which cause so much havoc and killing, seems like a no-brainer. And it would help Colombia, not only by keeping weapons out of the hands of illegal groups, but also to reduce Colombia's extremely high homicide rate.

The treaty under discussion would, according to ArmsControl.org, prohibit international arms transfers when they would cause:

• The undermining of global, regional, local, or internal peace and security;
• Violations of international humanitarian law or human rights law;
• Involvement in genocide, crimes against humanity, or war crimes;
• Risk of diversion to organized criminals or terrorists;
• Impairment of socio-economic development;
• Risk of unauthorized re-export from the recipient state.

It's predictable that authoritarian governments which want weapons to repress and kill their own people would oppose this treaty, as would the governments which earn billions of dollars selling arms to human rights trampling dictatorships. (Recent sales and attempted sales of weapons by China to Zimbabwe and Russia to Syria come to mind.)

Illegal arms seized by Colombia's military. 

Colombia has helped write the new treaty. But neighbor Venezuela, which has made huge weapons purchases and is building an AK-47 factory, abstained from a vote on the issue, as did China and Russia, two big arms exporters. The U.S. voted against the proposed treaty, altho the Obama administration has expressed support for it.

Undoubtedly, the most powerful opponents of this treaty are the United States' fanatical domestic organizations - even tho they actually have nothing to fear from this treaty (altho I wish they would). The evidence, from both common sense and scientific research, is overwhelming that more guns in circulation usually mean more crime and violence, and the drop in homicides following Bogotá's recent ban on carrying weapons is even more evidence of that. U.S. organizations like the notorious NRA choose to ignore the evidence because of their paranoia that any sort of arms registration will end up taking away their handguns. That's ridiculous. Nevertheless, for the time being, they appear to have won their war in Washington. But the proposed treaty says explicitly that it wouldn't affect nations' domestic gun laws, but regulate only international transfers. In addition, the U.S.'s controls on weapons exports are already quite strong, meaning that treaty's impacts would be small. 


The U.S., as the world's largest arms exporter, is critical to this treaty. But ratification by the U.S. would require a two-thirds vote by the Senate, and far more than one third of the U.S. senators live in fear of the NRA.


Standing in the way of sane gun laws in the U.S. is bad enough. But gun-rights fanatics should be ashamed of themselves for blocking a treaty a treaty which could save millions of lives and stabilize nations around the world. By taking this position, the NRA and its allies make themselves passive accomplices to mass murder on a global scale. 

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Arms, The Man and Uncle Sam

Bout: Locked up. 

In his United States prison cell, Viktor Bout probably doesn't want to hear anything about Colombia.

Bout, a Russian nicknamed 'The Merchant of Death,' had been the world's most successful smuggler of arms, altho he also traded in drugs and legal products, including even humanitarian supplies.

But Bout tried for one deal too far - an arms sale to Colombia's FARC rebels, for which Bout left the safety of Russia for Thailand to seal the deal. But the supposed FARC representatives were actually informants working for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, who got Bout arested and eventually deported to the United States for trial.

And perhaps it was appropriate that Bout was tried and convicted in the U.S., even tho his weapons killed mostly Africans, because it was the U.S. which, in lots of ways, created Bout. 

A Soviet soldier uses a surface-to-
air missile. With the Soviet
Union's collapse, its weapons
flooded the world. 

Bout flourished in the free-wheeling, uncontrolled illicit arms market, shipping mostly small arms to different warring groups, primarily in Africa. Bout cared only about money. In some conflicts, he sold weapons to both dictators and insurgents fighting them, single-handedly creating arms races. But Bout also shipped humanitarian and other supplies, and was even hired by the U.S. government to supply U.S. forces in Iraq.

Bout's planes also reportedly carried Colombian cocaine north.

Bout's business was successful, in part, because of the U.S. government's traditionally strong opposition to an international treaty regulating the trade in small arms. Those are the weapons which kill about 2,000 people every day, including many Colombians, in insurrections, gang battles and street crimes. Colombians, for example, murder each other at a rate more than double that of war-torn Mexico. The U.S.'s position has shifted somewhat during the Obama administration, but not enough.

The Merchant of Death may be locked up, but, like the drug trade, where there's money to be made, other merchants will appear to make it. And, even more than illegal drugs, weapons should be regulated and controlled. 

FARC fighters carry
black-market weapons. 

Bout had offered the supposed FARC representatives an arsenal of weapons including 100 surface-to-air missiles, armor-piercing rockets and even helicopters. The U.S. indictment focuses on harm to the U.S. and its citizens. But, if the FARC had actually gotten ahold of those weapons, they would have caused lots of carnage against both Colombian soldiers and civilians, even downing passenger planes. 

After Bout's conviction, campaigners called for a U.N. treaty controlling the arms trade. But the U.S.'s National Rifle Association, a paranoid gun-rights lobby which seems to have U.S. presidents terrorized, says that "In most cases, agendas for the elimination of private ownership of firearms are disguised as calls for international arms control to stem the flow of illicit military weapons." I'd like to see how a treaty blocking an African dictator or a Colombian terrorist group from buying a surface-to-air missile is going to take away a rifle from a deer hunter in Montana, but the NRA has apparently convinced itself of it.

And that's fundamental, because Bout is a small fish in the pond. The United States is the world's biggest arms merchant. And a recent U.S. sting operation showed that guns smuggled across borders go directly into criminal hands - including Colombian hands.

And while weapons (along with drugs) remain unregulated, terrorist groups will continue arming themselves and conflicts in Africa, Colombia and elsewhere will drag murderously on.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours