Small Arms Survey Deconstructed by WeaponsMan

Going through some of the high-minded but empty-headed writings of the Small Arms Survey, an NGO sponsored by a Swiss do-gooder institute that’s an offshoot of the League of Nations that prevented European war (wait… what?) one is shocked by some of the moronic drivel written there. All the usual suspects of hack advocacy are there: “many experts say” without naming one such expert; “it is generally accepted” followed by some tendentious, extreme, and woolly-headed assertion; or “the peer-reviewed literature generally” prior to repeating some assumption that underlies a raft of bad research.

It is hackery wrapped in bad faith,  shackled by an anchor chain of dishonesty to an anchor of cold-rolled fable, and then dropped into the trackless depths of the Sea of Lies, taking you along for the ride if you’re so unwise as to latch on.

We’ve seen this clown show before.

And that’s the supposedly factual bit. We particularly howled at the assertion that the widespread availability of military arms and the provision of arms and training by Russia, France and Egypt, led to the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Rwandans by machete and club. Because the eeeevil assault weapons made ‘em do it — never mind that the bulk of the foreign weapons provided to the state of Rwanda before the unpleasantness were complex crew-served and support weapons, machinery of wholesale warfare of no use to unlettered militiamen perpetrating retail mass-murders of civilians. But these guys have an agenda and an ideology, and they live in that deep place in the Sea of Lies where the lights of truth, fact and logic cannot penetrate.

But they don’t end with making questionable factual assertions. They also editorialize, or reprint others’ editorial opinions, which are obviously their own opinions, even though the author’s own institution (then ICRC) flashes a fig leaf saying, “The opinions expressed above are those of the author and are not in any way to be attributed to the ICRC.”

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