The effects of small arms and light weapons (SALW) trafficking has come under scrutiny in the past decade due to the amount of weapons U.S. SALW manufacturers are hemorrhaging overseas primarily because traceability, culpability, and transparency of information are difficult to come by. Small arms are for personal use and include, “pistols, rifles,... assault rifles and light machine guns.” Light weapons include “heavy machine guns,... portable antiaircraft guns, portable antitank guns,... and explosive
For several decades, there have been many cases where small arms and light weapons have been used to kill and injure people on an enormous scale. In the United States, according to the Gun Violence Archive, firearms killed around 13,286 people and 26,819 people were injured in 2015, 1 as recently reported by the BBC in January 2016. However, this does not limit such issues only to the larger nations, but also to smaller nations in South East Asia, such as Sri Lanka. Over the past few years, Sri Lanka
There have been assertions amongst some that the Westphalian nation-state system is dead. The truth of this statement is somewhat obscure and may be a bit extreme to what we are seeing in the international arena today. The fall of the bipolar world of the Cold War and the now diminishing power of the United States which is coinciding with the rise of smaller powers have many questioning what the world system is going to look like. Add to this the rise of the non-state actors that are having more