The number of weapons circulating freely in communities in recent years has occasioned a growing awareness and a deep concern. These arms, both legal and illegal, are seen by some as being responsible for increases in violence, crime and fatal accidents. In countries undergoing post-conflict transformations, the number of weapons and the lack of control over their possession and use have disrupted social and economic development, endangered the security of citizens and forced people to arm to protect themselves.

Traditionally, actions to curb the prevalence of weapons have either been focused on gun control, at national level, or arms control, in a regional or international context. Each has tended to focus on measures to limit or restrict supply by implementing legislation to circumscribe ownership of firearms, and limitations on their import and export; or regulations to ensure the safe use, storage and carrying of weapons by individuals. In particular, the arms control community has, in the past, been more concerned with weapons of mass destruction or larger conventional weapons systems than machine guns, pistols and hand grenades. "For too long it has been assumed that small arms were inconsequential. It is becoming increasingly evident that in reality they are the most dangerous of all."1 In addition, these gun control and arms control measures generally focus on the proliferation of weapons, while "[t]o a large extent, the proliferation has already occurred which leaves the problem of reversing rather than of control".2

The complexity of collecting weapons already circulating cannot be underestimated. As noted by T Naylor, "tertiary supply-side control ultimately bumps up against the fact that the arms supply business is subject to the law of entropy - the further the material moves away from the primary source and the greater the degree of dispersal, the greater the problems of putting the process in reverse."3 Internal instability, the breakdown of civil order and economic imperatives induce people to possess weapons. In addition, countries which were caught up in the fighting of proxy wars during the Cold War created an arms market previously unknown. The remnants of these wars still exist in the form of light weapons ranging from 9 mm pistols to shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles. These weapons are now circulating internally within countries or within regions: there is no need for the import of more weapons and so traditional supply-side restrictions (for example, export bans by supplier states) become irrelevant.

There is thus a need for "new thinking at the conceptual level ... Some solutions may lie in the grey area between arms control and gun control."4 This new approach includes involving more issues and actors, including development, human rights, justice and public security processes and agencies. It also means looking at ways of reducing the number of weapons available and changing the demand for weapons.

Programmes to reduce or change demand tend to either focus on education or changing behaviour and attitudes. Education programmes for both children and adults have focused on improving awareness about safely handling firearms and learning conflict resolution techniques that deflate tense situations before they become violent. The public health approach to guns and gun violence tries to change behaviour and attitudes, as did the anti-smoking campaign in the United States. A final necessary element in changing demand is those programmes which address the lack of services or conditions which cause people to possess weapons in the first place.

The options for collecting weapons are more limited, being either coercive or voluntary. This monograph will focus on voluntary weapons collection programmes (VWCPs), often known as gun buy-backs, as one way in which governments, communities and individuals have attempted to make available a means of disposing of illegal or superfluous weapons. These programmes have been used in diverse settings: urban communities in the United States, nationally in Australia, South Africa and El Salvador, by the United States army in Haiti and the United Nations in Eastern Slavonia. They are not without controversy, and a meaningful evaluation is complicated by the conditions under which they are generally run: amnesty from prosecution and anonymity.

Thus rather than attempting to evaluate the utility of these programmes in terms of what they hope to achieve, be it a reduction in the supply of weapons or gun violence or a change in public attitudes towards guns, this monograph presents information collected on different types of VWCPs, a series of case studies of collection programmes, and a discussion of some of the issues surrounding these programmes. It concludes with a description of factors to be considered in planning a VWCP.