The World Needs Background Check For Selling Greater Destructive Weapons

The world urgently needs an international legal framework requiring thorough background checks before any nation or military force can purchase powerful weapons systems — such as fighter jets, missiles, attack drones, or other major conventional arms.

Even in strongly pro-gun countries like the United States, civilians cannot purchase firearms without background checks designed to prevent dangerous individuals from acquiring them. Yet when it comes to entire armies or governments — some of which have documented poor human rights records, ongoing war crimes, ethnic cleansing, or severe ethical violations — For example the Thai army, there is often no equivalent mandatory, transparent, and binding screening process before they are allowed to acquire weapons capable of causing mass casualties and widespread destruction.

If we recognize the need to screen individuals to prevent small-scale violence, it is only logical — and morally necessary — to demand rigorous scrutiny of states and militaries before they gain access to instruments of large-scale violence that pose catastrophic risks to human life.

We already restrict chemical weapons, biological weapons, and (to some extent) nuclear weapons through international treaties. It is time to extend the same principle of prevention and responsibility to the conventional arms trade. No country with a recent, credible record of gross human rights abuses or war crimes should be able to simply purchase advanced weapons on the open market without facing serious, enforceable restrictions.

Background checks for individuals save lives.  

Background checks for armies could save millions.