#Report

Recently, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives published a major report entitled the National Firearms Commerce And Trafficking Assessment (NFCTA). This report looked at the state of the firearm industry in the United States. It contains information on many interesting trends in America’s gun trade and is worth a detailed study.

Conflict Armament Research has released a report featuring the results of in-person findings of what the so-called Islamic State has been using in the past three years. These findings (40,000 items, 845 small arms) have resulted from personal visits to the frontlines and carefully scrutinizing captured weapons caches. If you can, I would highly recommend  reading it yourself over on the organization’s website in the PDF form. We are going to summarize some of the more relevant findings of the report when it comes to small arms use and development here in this essay.

The US Army’s “Punisher” XM25 Counter-Defilade Target Engagement (CTDE) weapon program is in danger, says a report released earlier this week by the Department of Defense Inspector General’s office. The program has been riddled with delays and cost spirals, as well as three accidents in 2013, but beyond that the Army has failed to outline a plan for procurement and basic issuance of the weapon, putting the program in jeopardy. From the (heavily redacted) report:

Last week the CRS Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations, 1999-2006 report was released. I had a bit of trouble finding it online.