The circulation of those weapons became a nightmare for Iraqis, since many were used by militias and insurgents in bloody terrorist attacks, and later during the furious sectarian war from 2006-2007.
"There are a lot of weapons in circulation, a lot of trafficking – of cars, medicines.
Many countries in the region had recent civil wars, resulting in a large number of weapons in circulation.
Yemen is the source of a significant number of weapons in circulation in Somalia, according to the United Nations' monitoring group on the 1992 arms embargo to Somalia.
Successful political scare tactics have buried open discussion of the most obvious of simple truths: that the wide circulation of powerful semi-automatic weapons will inevitably result in a lot of preventable deaths.
Large numbers of weapons are in circulation in Kyrgyzstan.
For campaigners and those watching the US gun epidemic from abroad, such steps may appear as woefully inadequate attempts to deal with the millions of weapons already in circulation.
That is, has the application of modern military design to civilian firearms produced a class of weapons too dangerous to be in general circulation?
A Greenpeace nuclear expert, Tom Clements, said the plan would leave Russia with a factory that -- after the weapons plutonium is processed -- could turn additional plutonium into reactor fuel, encouraging the creation and circulation of material that could be diverted into weapons production, or be stolen by a terrorist or militant group.
It addresses hundreds of millions of weapons, ranging from pistols to shoulder-fired rockets, that the United Nations says are in circulation worldwide.
