AMID security worries, Gun sales thrive In Iraq’s Mosul

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 jihadist rule.

The Islamic State group reigned over the city for three years before being ousted by Iraqi forces in mid-2017.

But with jihadist 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 weapontrading 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 percent 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 semiautomatic 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 told AFP, 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.