17 March 2013 “…Commissars and pin-striped bosses roll the dice

“Any way they fall guess who gets to pay the price.
Money green or proletarian gray, selling guns instead of food today.
So the kids they dance, they shake their bones
While the politicians throwing stones
Singing ashes, ashes all fall down…”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-nra-square-off-over-small-arms-treaty/2013/03/16/ae495dae-8d76-11e2-b63f-f53fb9f2fcb4_story.html?hpid=z1

NRA opposes U.N. small-arms treaty

By Peter Finn, Published: March 16

The National Rifle Association, which is battling a raft of gun control measures on Capitol Hill, also has an international fight on its hand as it gears up to oppose a U.N. treaty designed to restrict the flow of arms to conflict zones.

Negotiations open Monday in New York on the Arms Trade Treaty, which would require countries to determine whether weapons they sell would be used to commit serious human rights violations, terrorism or transnational organized crime.

3380Cassi Creek:  Picture Wayne LaPierre atop the Lenin Mausoleum in Red Square.  The former USSR was one of the world’s largest exporters of firearms to dictatorships, failed states, and terrorist organization.  Foremost among weapons sales today, the U.S., followed by Russia. 

          The United Nations is making an effort to reduce and limit firearms exports to areas and nations in armed conflict.  The Obama administration is tentative but favorably disposed to sign the treaty.  The NRA, of course, is vehemently opposed to the treaty, claiming it will be used to abrogate the 2^nd Amendment and to seize firearms owned by U.S. citizens. 

          This is simply more of the same organized paranoia that the NRA spews so widely and, unfortunately, so effectively among its members and minions. 

          One has to wonder how the NRA’s leadership would look arrayed atop the Lenin Mausoleum on May Day.  They would also fit in quite well with the troop review parades held in Teheran, Beijing, and Pyong Yang. 

World's largest arms exporters

The unit in this table are so-called trend indicator values expressed in millions of US dollars at 1990s prices. These values do not represent real financial flows but are a crude instrument to estimate volumes of arms transfers, regardless of the contracted prices, which can be as low as zero in the case of military aid. Ordered by descending 2000-2010 values. The information is from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.^[1]

2001-12 Rank	Supplier	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010	2011	2012	2013
1	United States	5908	5229	5698	6866	6700	7453	8003	6288	6658	8641	9984	-
2	Russia	5896	5705	5236	6178	5134	5095	5426	5953	5575	6039	7676[2]	7967[3]
3	Germany	850	916	1713	1105	2080	2567	3194	2500	2432	2340	1206	-
4	France	1297	1368	1345	2219	1724	1643	2432	1994	1865	1834	2437	-
5	China	499	509	665	292	303	597	430	586	1000	1423	1830	2100[4]
6	United Kingdom	1368	1068	741	1316	1039	855	1018	982	1022	1054	1070	-
7	Netherlands	203	239	342	209	583	1187	1326	530	545	503	538	-
8	Sweden	880	191	526	314	538	432	366	454	383	806	686	-
9	Italy	216	426	341	212	774	502	684	417	514	627	1046	-
10	Israel	407	436	368	628	368	299	438	281	807	472	531	-
11	Ukraine	700	311	442	200	290	553	728	330	320	201	484	-
12	Switzerland	193	157	181	243	246	285	301	482	255	137	297	-
13	India	7	120	150	56	108	39	100	235	478	670	1450	-
14	Bulgaria	200[5]	32[6]	48[6]	16[6]	66[6]	5[6]	9[6]	286[7]	198[8]	354[9]	-	-
15	Canada	129	170	263	265	226	226	334	227	169	258	292	-
16	South Korea	165	N/A	100	29	48	94	220	80	163	95	225	-

The information is also from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute or from the national defence commissions where available and is updated at least