Mountains of missing guns

Despite daily drug seizures and underworld killings in the country, Inspector General of Police Priyantha Weerasooriya highlighted the significant amounts of narcotics intercepted, such as 1,416 kg of Crystal Methamphetamine, 946 kg of heroin, and 1,282 kg of cannabis, alongside the apprehension of 1,612 illegal firearms, encompassing T-56 assault rifles and pistols.

Sri Lanka grapples with a pervasive issue of illegal firearms gained through various sources. Post-2024 regime change, politicians who obtained repeater guns from the Defence Ministry were prompted to return them, but these weapons represent merely a minuscule fraction of the firearms distributed to politicians and others over time.

In January 2019, Defense Secretary Hemasiri Fernando disclosed that around 4,700 pistols and revolvers were licensed. However, the identity of the recipients remains undisclosed. During the 2023 tenure of State Minister Pramitha Tennakoon, it was revealed that the defense authorities had provided approximately 700 firearms to 154 politicians in the late 1980s during the JVP’s violent spree; yet, there is no documentation of their returns.

These numbers are likely inaccurate, as anecdotal evidence suggests that thousands of firearms were handed out under coercion during this period, and the majority have disappeared. In the late 1980s, the JVP did not hesitate to eliminate anyone who dared to defy their unlawful commands. This brutal campaign was countered by political activists who banded together to protect themselves, forming armed groups like the PRRA (People’s Revolutionary Red Army), which eventually emerged as ruthless as the JVP’s killing squads.

Some of these groups later aligned with the UNP, serving as its shock troops. Leftist parties, along with the SLFP, also had to safeguard themselves against JVP hit squads. The UNP orchestrated a Caravan of Death, scouring the nation to eliminate JVP activists and suspects. The fate of the firearms utilized by pro-UNP vigilantes during these extrajudicial killings remains a mystery.

According to Chris Smith, an expert on firearm proliferation, particularly in South Asia, the weapons granted to politicians in the late 1980s numbered over 11,000, with many not returned. The National Commission against the Proliferation of Illicit Small Arms (NCAPISA), established in 2004 by President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, cited a senior police officer who stated that 80% of these weapons had been returned, yet this figure, even if accurate, leaves over 2,200 weapons unaccounted for.

The sources of Sri Lanka’s rampant illicit firearms trace back to various factors, including gunrunning, illegal operations by rogue police and military personnel, local arms manufacturing, and criminals accessing arms caches of the LTTE. Notably, in 2019, before the Colombo Chief Magistrate, the Colombo Crime Division presented 12 suspects for supplying weapons retrieved from buried LTTE arms caches in Kilinochchi to criminal gangs elsewhere.

In January 2025, it was disclosed that 73 T-56 assault rifles went missing from an unnamed army camp. Following the JVP’s military wing’s decimation in 1989, a police sergeant sold a substantial stock of firearms, seized from the JVP and stored at Kuliyapitiya police station, to underworld gangs at Rs. 15,000 each, recovering only a fraction of them.

To locate the illegal firearms utilized by the JVP during its 1987-89 resurgence, the police must intensify their efforts. Many of the JVP’s armories remain undiscovered. SJB MP Dayasiri Jayasekara informed Parliament on February 27, 2025, that more than 2,000 illegal firearms looted by the JVP between 1987 and 1989 are missing.

The JVP attacked numerous police stations and military camps, acquiring weapons en masse. Now that the JVP-led NPP governs and aims to curb gun violence, the Defence Ministry could potentially uncover information regarding the missing firearms, as previously suggested. The NCAPISA extensively analyzed the issue of illegal weapons circulating in Sri Lanka, providing valuable insights that necessitate updating.

The defense authorities are urged to thoroughly review this document and commission a new survey on illicit firearms while undertaking operations to neutralize criminal gangs and seize their weapons. The urgent need for the police and defense officials to implement a broader, strategic approach to eradicating illegal firearms, responsible for daily fatalities, cannot be overstated.