The world is full of armed conflicts, especially in the Middle East, Africa, and other Asian countries, to which in order to inflict damage upon their avowed enemies, arms are used by one party against the other, or one country against the other, or one ethnic group against the other, creating deadly havoc and destruction to all that lie in the paths of those determined sides that are engaged in warfare. It is rather obvious, that the more lethal the weapons, as well as the more sophisticated the technology, the more destruction that will be wrought. The thing is, somewhat lost in all the drama of these conflicts, is that weapons do not spring out of thin air, they must be manufactured by companies within countries that are skilled at this craft, bought, and exported/transported to those that have the means to purchase them.
While it is not particularly unusual for countries that are involved in armed warfare to have access locally to some weapons capacity, for the most part the best weapons and arsenals come from the most advanced military nations, themselves. Additionally, considering that armaments more than mere words carry far more impact in the field of battle, all of these military and paramilitary groups are eager and desirous of getting armaments that are lethal, effective, and more advanced than their opposition, because more often than not superior weaponry is the telling factor than any other separate thing in battles.
The two biggest arms manufacturer exporters by far are the United States and Russia, which means, whether America has a direct or indirect presence in some of the conflicts around the world via boots on the ground or similar, for almost a certainty their weaponry most definitely is used by one side or the other, either by deliberate intention or not. The thing about most weapons is that although they may be legally exported from America to the desired designated country, is that once these are sold and out of American hands, these weapons can easily find a home just about anywhere globally.
This means that American soldiers can be and have been wounded and killed by arms manufactured in America that are in the hands of those that we are in battle with, so that it can be said, that American weapons sold overseas have been used by our avowed enemies against American soldiers to kill them. It is deeply disturbing that American weapon manufacturers, stockholders, and exporters of such are able to reap the revenues and profits of war, while ignoring that there is something fundamentally wrong with American soldiers having to face up against this very same American sophistication in weaponry turned against them.
The American government, likes to believe or purports to believe, that the situations in which our arms get into the wrong hands is simply the cost of doing business in a complicated world, in which, for instance, the arms were initially sold to one group or country, that had misrepresented itself or got defeated or corrupted or changed leadership, and/or the arms were sold to a legitimate country, but unbeknownst to the United States, additional arm trades were made so that the arms ended up in the hands of our opposition. However, that it is sliced, none of this would ever occur, if instead of kowtowing to the military-industrial complex of America, that America understood the direct correlation of the more arms it sells and exports overseas, the more Americans will thereby be put into harm's way, and therefore the more Americans that will die, in a trade of their patriotic blood for true blood money.