1,900 units lost
More than 1,900 small arms disappeared from armories and warships in the United States between 2010 and 2019. The investigation into whose hands the American weapons could have fallen was conducted by the American news agency AP News.
Photo: pixabay.com
Some soldiers took additional weapons for themselves, others lost them in public places. But most of the weapons are stolen for the purpose of subsequent sale. Corrupt people responsible for the security of weapons find weaknesses in the supply of the US armed forces and try to make money on it by selling army weapons to criminals and members of street gangs. It is resold directly, in pawn shops or via the Internet.
They stole not only firearms, but also explosives: armor-piercing grenades, mortars and grenade launchers. In California alone, more than 110 weapons were lost.
Rifles (1,179) and pistols (694) were stolen the most. In addition, machine guns (74), grenade launchers (36), rocket launchers (34), mortars (25) and shotguns (11) also disappeared from military depots.
Despite the large amounts of lost weapons, they are very rarely found. Military investigators simply close the cases, as they can not find either the weapons themselves or the perpetrators. For example, the theft of a 65 Beretta M9 pistol in Afghanistan, after the criminal cut the lock on an army container, went unnoticed for two weeks.
The reason for this negligent attitude is a problem with the documentation. Reports of gun theft incidents are only kept for three years. Of course, this helps to reduce the number of documents and facilitates the work of officials, but old cases of loss of weapons are simply forgotten.
The U.S. Air Force declined to release the data, saying it had no record of missing weapons. In addition, the AP complained about the attempts of the US army to mislead them by giving underestimated values of lost weapons.