This article was taken from the May 2013 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by <span class="s1">subscribing online.
These globes (see gallery) are snapshots of the world's legal arms trade in 2010. "There are thousands of data points for arms and ammunition transfers," says Robert Muggah, research director of the Igarapé Institute, a Rio de Janeiro-based think tank that specialises in security issues.
Muggah worked with Google to visualise one million transfers of small arms, light weapons and ammo from 1992 to 2010.
If you click along the years in this interactive graphic, you can see the overall rise in global trade -- worldwide imports and exports rose 25 percent in the period, bringing the total to £5.5 billion (£3.5bn) in 2010.
Muggah's data is from the United Nations' COMTRADE database, to which countries voluntarily report their trades, supplemented by published reports by individual countries. "COMTRADE data does have gaps, but it is the best single source out there," Muggah says.
During a United Nations conference to curb illicit trade of small arms in New York last July, Muggah's tool was distributed among NGOs and used by activists and campaigners. They could see, for example, a $15m (£9.9 million) spike in exports in 2003 from Iran to Sudan, during the Sudanese genocide. "It helped them understand trends among countries."
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
