The Guardian:
Rifles and submachine guns assembled in the UK could be exported for use in conflicts involving child soldiers, according to a report by European children’s charities.
The report accuses Heckler & Koch (H&K) – a German company that is among the world’s largest producers of small arms – of sidestepping obstacles to exports at home by using its subsidiary in the UK, where a “lack of transparency” has frustrated attempts to scrutinise arms deals.
H&K and another major German firm, Sig Sauer, turn to UK and US operations when guidelines and political pressure in Germany are likely to block exports to conflict-affected countries, according to the report – entitled Small Arms in the Hands of Children (English, German pdf) – by the Berlin Information-centre for Transatlantic Security.
The cases cited by the study include H&K’s attempts to export thousands of guns to Nepal in 2000-01. “When it became obvious that Germany would deny such an export deal due to public pressure because of the ongoing civil war, Heckler & Koch quickly applied for an export licence for 6,780 rifles in Great Britain, which was then granted,” said the report’s authors.
The point I’d like to make has nothing whatsoever to do with arms shipments, or selling arms on the open market, or H&K (whom I don’t like), or the British people per se.
The point is simply this. Governments disarm those they fear. They send arms wherever they can make a pound, but disarm their own people with gun control laws that are more extreme by a wide margin than those in Russia.
They have yet to latch on to the danger posed by Islamic migration. Sending arms overseas and disarming their own people is an open and honest admission that they have a greater fear of being toppled by their own people for their infidelity to the citizens and malfeasance in office than they do Muslim gangs of rapists.
