The World's Biggest Arms Dealer

This is an interesting chart, showing that in just the last few years the United States has begun to corner the market on arms sales to the countries of the Near East. Between the years of 2004 and 2007, the United States only supplied about 30% of those arms. But from 2008 through 2011, the United States share of arms sales and shipments jumped sharply to about 79%.

That's a very large increase in arms sales, but it isn't just in that part of the world that the United States is the leading arms dealer. In fact, in 2011 United States corporations made 75% of all the sales in the international arms market -- that's 75% ($66 billion out of a total $85 billion sold worldwide). Russia was the second largest arms dealer worldwide, registering just a measly $4 billion in sales.

It turns out that the United States weapon makers are not just arming Americans to the teeth, they are trying to do the same in the rest of the world. There's just too much profit in supplying the guns so people can kill other people (and don't even try to tell me we are just supplying "hunting" weapons to the world). Wherever there is conflict, U.S. corporations will be there to supply the killing weapons (many times to both sides of the conflict).

Could this have something to do with how vehemently the gun makers and the NRA (which is nothing but a shill for the gun makers) have opposed any kind of sensible restrictions on guns in this country? Could it be that they know it would look bad to be arming the rest of the world while disarming American citizens? Wouldn't that seem to be particularly ghoulish?

It's food for thought. Maybe it's time the United States stopped acting like the world's premier trouble-making death-dealer, and started truly working toward world peace.