Brits Exported Over 40k Firearms to Off-Shore Armories

By Robert Farago

Remember Captain Philips? Yeah, well, that doesn’t happen anymore. “Last July the International Maritime Bureau reported that in the first half of 2015 no vessels had been attacked in the Gulf of Aden or the Red Sea,” theferret.scot reports. Why’s that? You guessed it: guns. The pirates got tired of return fire. Here’s an interesting fact: the firearms used by ships sailing though formerly pirate-infested waters are stored on floating armories, ships anchored in international waters by private maritime security companies (PMSCs) not subject to local gun laws. The Ferret reveals that the Brits exported a lot of guns to PMSCs. Check this out . . .

A report by Omega Research Foundation (ORF) in December 2014 called Floating Armouries: Implications and Risks, said that between April 2012 and September 2013, the UK Government granted licences for the export of 34,377 assault rifles, 5,100 shotguns, 28 machine guns, 2,976 pistols, 12,816 rifles, 1,401 sniper rifles, and 5,294 sporting guns [to 50 British PMSCs].

And this is a problem because . . .

The dramatic fall in piracy has prompted fears that some PMSCs could go bankrupt and guns could fall into the hands of …Read the Rest

Source:: Truth About Guns