Colombia’s Hydra: the many faces of gun violence

Colombia has long been characterized as one of the most violent countries in the world. Violence arising from a protracted armed conflict and both organized and common crime has claimed the lives of almost half a million civilians and combatants since 1979—almost 17,600 per year—a human security crisis of extraordinary dimensions.2 This chapter finds that while there is considerable heterogeneity in the nature of homicides over time and space in
Colombia, there is a strong contributing factor: firearms. In fact, more than 80 per cent of all homicides in Colombia since the late 1970s have been perpetrated with guns. What is more, this percentage has steadily increased—from about
60 per cent in the 1980s to more than 85 per cent in 2002. By 2005 more than 15 per cent of all deaths by natural and external causes3 were firearm-related