Guns for the palace guard in Honiara: we should worry

Bringing guns back to the Solomons, Alpers argues, would reverse a life-saving regional trend begun in Bougainville, and seen most recently in East Timor, where the first Australian peacekeeping commander declared: 'We will be disarming everybody in Dili'. Moreover, across 20 Pacific nations, and now in East Timor, the most destructive firearms used in crime and conflict were leaked from lawfully imported police, military and civilian holdings. It's this diversion of lethal weapons from licit to illicit use that is the concern of police and peacekeepers around the world.