Free Gun Baby Gun: A Bloody Journey Into the World of the Gun by Iain Overton Page A

little too loudly, and you can’t believe every fact you are told, not least because, in this case, the Geneva Declaration, a diplomatic initiative endorsed by 100 countries, has a much lower figure for those killed by all weapons of violence – bombs and guns included. It estimates that, of over half a million people killed globally by armed violence every year, only 10 per cent of violent deaths, about 55,000, happen in conflict or a terrorist attack. An even lower number, then, would have been killed specifically by guns. 5
    Of course, these statistics don’t include the numbers of those injured by guns in wars. This should concern us because, as I had seen in South Africa, it is clear that there have been marked improvements in trauma surgery. So the death toll today in some wars might be lower than it would have been years ago, but this does not mean that wars are getting less violent. We are just better at fixing people.
    What we are pretty clear about, though, is that the role of the gun differs markedly from war to war. The AK47’s popularity in the Republic of Congo meant over 93 per cent of deaths were from gunshots there. 6 We know thousands of civilians were killed by guns in Iraq – all too often the result of kidnappings and assassinations. But in Uganda, the conflict waged by the Lords Resistance Army – a militant cult led by Joseph Kony, which seeks to establish a theocratic state based on the Ten Commandments – shows that knives and clubs are also frequently used to murder and terrorise.
    The widespread military use of explosive weapons has also had an impact. In Cambodia in the mid 1990s and in Thailand in 1980 more civilians were killed by mines than by guns. And, at the other end of the spectrum, the sheer quantity of air-dropped bombs in Lebanon in 2006 meant that less than 1 per cent of people were killed in that conflict from gunshots. 7 In general, though, it’sestimated that guns account for between 60 and 90 per cent of all direct casualties in war – a heavy toll however you look at it.
    The harm guns cause has also changed over time. In the American Civil War, guns accounted for about 75 per cent of combat casualties. By the Second World War only about 18 per cent of military casualties had been shot. This shift is down to a few things. The nature of warfare has changed over time: explosive weapons are much more likely to be used now than they once were, and this pushes down the proportion of those injured by gunshot. Soldiers are also now much better protected: improvements in bulletproof vests, armoured personnel carriers and helmets mean getting shot is now less likely to kill you. And soldiers are increasingly taking on targets from miles away – as the use of drones makes clear – further reducing their chances of being caught in the crossfire.
    If a soldier from a relatively developed military force is unlucky enough to be shot, the swiftness of getting treatment to them has massively improved their chances of getting off the field of battle alive. Gunshot lethality prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom was about 33 per cent. Now, according to US military data, it’s less than 5 per cent. The only thing that has not changed over time is the lethality of headshots. 8
    The impact of guns in war also changes during the course of each conflict, and not only because surgeons are getting better at what they do. At the start of the Russian involvement in Afghanistan in 1980 about two-thirds of conflict casualties were from gunfire. By the end of the decade the Russians had learned the hard way about the skilled marksmanship of the mujahedeen, and so they kept their heads down. By 1990 only 28 per cent were from gunshots.
    All of this shows one thing: that the role of the gun in soldiers’ lives has changed as much as the nature of war itself. As part of my work, I have walked beside troops around the world and I have seen that each military deployment is unique. From filming the menacing