The recent deadly shootings in American schools can nearly make us think that the circulation of weapons does not concern the entire world. And yet…

According to a survey carried out by the Small Arms Survey a couple of years ago, more than one billion firearms would be circulating in the world…And most of them would be possessed by casual civilians (85%). You do not need to be waging a war to buy a gun, and this is what must be pointed out from such figures. 

Led in 2020, this survey may even be underestimating the reality we are experimenting in 2022 with the Russian invasion of Ukraine in last February.

What do we do once we know that one person out of eight is carrying a gun on this earth? Yuri Orlov would say that we should do better and try to provide even more people, but fortunately he is just a movie character…Surely based on true facts (and genuine cynical people).

In Lord of War, the Andrew Niccol movie released in 2005 and starring Nicolas Cage and Jared Leto, Yuri Orlov starts from scratch and becomes little by little one of the most powerful gun dealers in the world, neglecting his family and human values to fulfill his dreams and get the more money he can. The blood money will send him to West Africa, where he will do business with the president of Liberia in a country undermined by civil war in the late nineties.

The end of the movie is not positive, but this is, to a certain extent, the way the world story unfolds: Yuri does not mind the death of his brother and the loss of his son and wife, and does not exploit such tragic events to change and do something else. He will carry on the firearms traffic and continue to sell guns that will destroy innocent lives and families, but that is not his business.