Iraq - Gun Dealer's Paradise

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There is no right to keep and bear arms in the Iraqi Constitution. Exception is only made if you get permission from the government to buy arms.

So the people mentioned in the article are either VIPs that the government has chosen to allow to have guns, or they have acquired them illegally.

The US has done well, creating this great, free democracy in Iraq.
 
For all the talk of how illegal it is to own a gun in Iraq, I've yet to see a story about the government preventing a peaceful Iraqi from keeping a gun.

There is no mention of RKBA in the Iraqi constitution (which the Iraqis created for themselves based on a UN model, BTW). But that fact doesn't seem to prevent people from owning weapons when they want to.
 
You can even have an RPG. May not be legal, but man that thing would be fun to shoot. Imagine going plinking with one of those. "Hey Roger, look at that rabbit." "Oh my gosh! He's coming right for us!"
 
Really, it's not a bad thing. When everyone has access to guns, yes, you have bullet-riddled walls and an eternal gunfight, but really not THAT many deaths in comparison to what it could be.

It's when only ONE side has guns and the other doesn't that you have genocides, and horrendous body counts overnight.

A long scuffle of evenly matched factions ends up killing a lot less people than a one-sided mass killing.
 
This article was one I started another thread about after I spotted it on a hard copy but later could not pull it up on the web.
Iraqi leaders are increasingly worried about this gun glut.

"We collected most of the heavy weapons out there, but we should have collected all the light weapons," said Haider al-Abadi, an aide to the prime minister. "This is not good."

But the reality is that Iraqi politicians have been reluctant to disband militias or to disarm the populace. The Shiite leaders who control the government rely on militias to stay in power. And guns have become so embedded in Iraqi culture that they are now as ubiquitous as palm trees.

Under Saddam Hussein, Iraq was one of the most militarized societies. He issued rifles to Baath Party loyalists and set up summer camps for Baathist boys to learn how to kill. One of his favorite photographs was of him firing an antique hunting rifle — with one hand.
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Now we know it is not just Ms Rice that wants to disarm them all.

The "Baath Party loyalists" referred to under Hussein would mean practically everyone, since it was only the dangerous Shiite nuts and communist Kurds who had an ax to grind and were actively trying to undermine the government. Notice the inference that the summer camp boys were all being "trained to kill"; sounds like what the gun grabbers in this country would try and say of Boy Scouts, NRA youth and others being taught to shoot.

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http://ussliberty.org
http://ssunitedstates.org
 
The disclosure highlights growing US and British concern about the role of militias in sectarian killings, and their links to senior Iraqi politicians. "You can't have in a democracy various groups with arms - you have to have the state with a monopoly on power," Condoleeza Rice, the US secretary of state, said at the end of her two-day visit to Baghdad yesterday.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1746102,00.html
 
For all the talk of how illegal it is to own a gun in Iraq, I've yet to see a story about the government preventing a peaceful Iraqi from keeping a gun.
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I think the Iraqi government has its hands full right now handling other problems right now. I am sure they will get around to civilian disarmament when things cool down a bit.
 
When I was over there, every household was allowed a machinegun of the assault rifle class(AK47 and such). They wouldn't get into trouble over light arms until they had a bunch of them. Explosives, mortar shells, etc are what we were after.
 
Sshhh... Don't tell 'em that. They enjoy thinking that Bush and friends are vile archenemies of RKBA. The "lack of personal weapons" in Iraq is some of their prime evidence. Don't disillusion them. :p
 
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