MOSUL: Hunting rifles, pistols and towers of ammunition magazines: new gun shops are popping up in Iraq’s Mosul, where residents are keen to own personal firearms in the unpredictable aftermath of IS rule.
The IS group reigned over the city for three years before being ousted by Iraqi forces in mid-2017.
But with militant sleeper cells still active across the broader province, the new half-dozen licensed gun traders in Mosul are seeing impressive sales.
“We’ve got a lot of customers,” said one shop owner in his 40s, who was granted a weapon-trading license from Iraq’s interior ministry a few months ago.
All his customers have gun permits, and “many also carried membership cards in the armed forces”, he said.
His most popular item? Hunting rifles, said the trader. “They make up 70 per cent of all my sales,” he said proudly. Iraq has one of the highest rates of civilian gun ownership in the world, according to the Small Arms Survey, which estimated about 20 guns per 100 Iraqi civilians last year.
Gun ownership was expected to increase since Iraq altered legislation in 2018 allowing civilians to purchase pistols and semi-automatic weapons, after they had only been allowed to buy hunting guns.
In Mosul, newly-licensed shops are the latest addition to the roughly 130 gun shops across the rest of Iraq.
They offer a wide spectrum of weaponry to Mosul’s residents, from machine guns and hunting rifles to US, Chinese or Croatian pistols. They range from $50 to $5,000, a hefty purchase in a country where the average monthly income is $500.
“We sell to civilians, but also to members of the military,” said another gun shop owner in Mosul, who also preferred to speak anonymously.
The civilians included recreational hunters but also “businessmen and journalists” who felt they may be targeted for their profession, he said.
One of them is Abu Nizar, a Mosul resident who keeps a pistol on his belt and a Kalashnikov assault rifle in his exchange office.
“A number of money-changing offices and other traders were attacked,” the 45-year-old said, so he requested a gun license to keep himself and his business safe. But it’s not just civilians who are determined to be armed. Hamed Hassan, a 21-year-old member of Iraq’s security forces, carries a weapon while on duty but has to turn it in when he goes home.
“The security situation is still fragile,” he said while weaving his way between glass cases of rifles and ammunition stockpiles in a Mosul storefront.
“I need a weapon for my personal protection.” Hundreds of militants are believed to be hiding in the rugged mountains and open plains around Mosul, with deadly hit-and-run attacks reported every few days against military installations or offices. After the US-led invasion of 2003, Mosul became a stronghold of the anti-American insurrection, with Al Qaeda seizing control of parts of the city. — AFP
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