The man in the red T-shirt carried a bag with two cans of beer in it. He went up the stairs to his cozy office in Chiyyah. He wanted to celebrate the deal. He had just sold three Kalashnikov machine guns for $700 each. His storage room was now empty.

“In Lebanon, if you buy 1 million guns, you sell 1 million guns. There is no security, and people want to be able to defend themselves,” he told NOW. “All parties, Christian or Muslim, have weapons now. They are all buying again,” he said.

The gun dealer, a militia member during the civil war, said he was satisfied with his trade. The government void,sparring political parties,  sectarian rivalry and shootouts in mixed neighborhoods such as Aisha Bakkar and Tariq al-Jdeideh are all factors that contribute to the success of his business.

He buys smuggled weapons from Palestinian camps and resells them, around 15 pieces a month in insecure times like these. Kalashnikovs, M 16s, 7 MMs, RPGs; “everything and anything sells,” he said.

He has been doing especially well since the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, he said. “The prices went skyrocketing after Hariri died.” For instance, he said, a Kalashnikov was $50 before February 2005. Now the price is up to $700. An M16 went from $100 to $1,200, a Smith and Wesson from $40 to $500, a type fourteen pistol from $500 to $1,500, and a 7mm from $200 to $700. “The small guns you use in civil war, in internal fighting,” he noted.

The Lebanese gun mentality

There are few households without a gun in Lebanon. Around 2 million guns are on the loose in the country judging by the population and the reach of the black market, according to Fadi Abi Allam, president of the Permanent Peace Movement, an NGO advocating against the proliferation of illegal small arms in Lebanon. “It’s just estimation; it’s difficult to count them,” he told NOW.

"The problem is mainly in the villages," he said. “Ninety percent of the people there are armed. In the cities it is closer to 50%. Therefore, there is a high possibility that we use guns in our simple daily conflicts.”
 
But separating people from their guns is not as simple as removing the firearms from the market. Guns are part of the Lebanese mentality, Abi Allam said. “Guns are commodities to satisfy our security needs. When there is a lack of trust in the government’s ability to provide security, we have to take care of our own protection. And if you have weapons available everywhere, you get addicted to them.”

Some Lebanese do go legal. They buy rifles from the numerous shops specializing in hunting weapons, the only ones civilians can legally possess in Lebanon.  Marwan, 30, is one of them. He says he needs his rifle because he goes hunting every week, but he also feels safer having it around in case of emergency to protect his house and his family. “I wouldn’t kill anybody, but I would shoot his leg or threaten the attacker,” he said. He wouldn’t call the police either. “They take hours to reach the incident anyway, and then they never catch anybody,” he said.

But many Lebanese rely on the black market for their weapons purchases. Bassam, 24, got his new M16 as a present from his father. It is his new toy, he said; he even lets his eight-year old cousin play with it and has taught him how to hold it. “I’m so excited about it. I want to use it to defend Lebanon against our enemies. And to defend my house, of course.” 

Bassam says he’s heard “all of the useless talk” about not letting children play with guns. “But we are in the middle of a war here!”

The loopholes in the law

The root cause of the illegal gun trade in Lebanon is that there is no single authority to snuff out the many channels through which illegal weapons have been entering the country since the civil war, according to Abi Allam. Also, “There are many loopholes in Lebanese law. For example, you can legalize somebody’s gun once he has it, but you can’t legalize a dealer. There is no license to import guns.  Plus, if you go to turn in an inherited gun from your father, you’re risking being put in jail.”

Corruption is another factor. “The way you issue a license is again blurry. People have papers for Kalashnikovs, although the law does not allow it.”

Legalizing gun ownership is the only way to find out how big the problem is in Lebanon, Abi Allam said. “Why not give amnesty to people who want to give their guns away? Give them information on where to go and what to do. And we also need to know what happens to the confiscated weapons. The process needs to be more transparent.”

Peace is “no profit”

But it seems nobody is willing to give up a gun in times like these, when there is no formal government and tension on the streets can boil over into fighting with one shot.

This means good business for the arms dealer, whose profits tumble in peaceful times. But peace is never going to happen, he said. “When you have Israel close by, you’ll never have peace. And if there is a conflict between Sunnis and Shia in Iraq, there will be one in Lebanon too.”

But being a gun dealer is not an easy occupation. “There is friction between the people in the business. Rivals turn each other in to the police; some get arrested and the guns get confiscated. They go to jail for three years.”  But he says he’s not afraid. “Where would they take me? I have my boys inside. Even if they put me in Roumieh Prison, I can still get everything I want inside. I can still sell guns from prison and have my phone and my whiskey. What is there to be afraid of?”