Letter to MP about Ammunition Control
Dear
Many smaller wars and conflicts are conducted by militias of one kind or another.
The UN rightly passed the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) in 2014, and the UK has rightly ratified it, despite being among the world’s top 10 arms producers. The ATT could now be strengthened by an Ammunition Trade Treaty.
Between 10 and 14 billion bullets are manufactured every year. Of this enormous quantity, there is an official trace for only 17%. Guns are items that can be easily hidden and transported across borders. Guns have no distinctive smell, apart from the oil that coats them, which is indistinguishable from the smell of any other new, oiled machinery, so investigators have to make a visual or X ray inspection to confirm that a truck contains armaments rather than common machinery. In short, it is difficult to control arms transactions, arms transfers, arms exports and arms caches.
Ammunition on the other hand, has a distinctive smell. Detector dogs are routinely trained to identify the presence of ammunition and explosives. Countries and agencies that invested in sniffer dogs could prevent the transfer of lethal products across their borders, swiftly and easily identifying consignments of ammunition by walking a sniffer dog in the vicinity.
I would be very grateful if you would ask the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office if they would examine the advantages of a treaty on the control of ammunition.
Many thanks for your help
….
A More Peaceful World 