Trying to produce intelligent policy responses to, and informed public debate around, the proliferation of small arms across the world requires that the information about the trade be as understandable as possible. Databases, such as the Norwegian Initiative on Small Arms Transfers, tracks over one million small arms sales across the world, but don’t – in and of themselves – make interrogating the information particularly straightforward.
Now, thanks to a collaboration between Google, the Peace Research Institute of Oslo, and the Igarape Institute, data about the world’s small arms trade over the last twenty or so years is now beautifully visualized using Google’s WebGL Globe tool.
The Mapping Arms Data system that resulted can be found here, and you can watch a discussion of the broader project at the Google Ideas Info Summit below: