International law forbids merchant vessels to be armed.
Well ok there ya go. I’m a fool and didnt realize and did not know.
So basically one cannot defend oneself when on open water? Isnt this current “pirate” situation an act of war? good lord whats wrong with us? are these NATO rules?
CURRENT international law may forbid merchant vessels to be armed. But there is nothing in the traditional Law of the Sea that would make any such requirement. I assume this is a typical piece of UN/EU/Wimp nonsense, and I think we should work on reversing it--or else ignore it.
In the old days, merchant ships were ALWAYS armed. A few small cannons, cutlasses, pistols, etc. How else would you deal with pirates?
East India convoys might have armed escorts, but ordinary trading vessels certainly did not.
It was not good form to run out your guns when coming into a friendly harbor, but the guns were there, behind the closed gunports.
If we don't rethink this whole business and DO something promptly, piracy is going to revive all over the world. Why not? How can they lose, if no one is going to put up a fight?
As Bumble from Oliver Twist says, If the law demands that, "the law is an ass." And Justice Robert H. Jackson would have added that "International Law is not a suicide pact." The answer is obvious:
1. Ships must ignore the law until it can be made sensible, arming themselves and responding forcefully to pirates - go ahead and pretend to surrender, but then fire simultaneous RPGs into each ship and speedboat when they get close, two RPGs each to make sure the job is a success.
2. All decent governments must work together to kill every pirate on the high seas and in their home ports.
3. Those who ever engage in piracy must be treated like Nazi war criminals in the sense that they should be hunted down and brought to justice with no statute of limitations on their crimes.
You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you. ——Leon Trotsky
(Open war is upon you, whether you would risk it or not.)
This sounds familiar. Where is it from?
I know of no such law. Civilian vessels, commercial or not, often carry weapons for their own defense. The only problem is compliance with whatever laws there are in the ports where they call.
When I did boardings merchant or otherwise, in international waters, our first question for the master was always "where are your guns" not "do you have...". Some company-owned vessels didn't have any, but many did. I don't recall a single privately-owned vessel that was unarmed in open sea.
Mostly I think vessels, if unarmed, are so by corporate policy, not any law. Many of them don't entirely trust their own crews (and if you've seen some of these crews you might agree). Up till now I would suppose that the insurance risks of armed crews have been a big problem. It could be, though, that this could be changing, and soon. For Blackwater-type protective contractors it could be a real good time to be in bidness.