Police data released by her shows that the total number of such crimes rose from 94 in 2023 to 109 in 2024. They soared by 40 percent in 2023.
“The 15 more cases may seem a lot, but crimes committed with firearms account for only 0.3 percent of our overall crime statistics,” Sargsian told a news conference.
The 30-year-old Sargsian was appointed as interior minister in November just days after Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian expressed serious concern about a significant increase in gun violence in Armenia observed during his rule. He ordered law-enforcement authorities to do more to tackle what he called a “very big problem.”
In September, Pashinian linked the problem to the fact that thousands of weapons given by the Armenian government to citizens during the 2020 war with Azerbaijan remain unaccounted for. Former Interior Minister Vahe Ghazarian revealed earlier that as many as 17,000 assault rifles “disappeared” during and after the six-week war. Sargsian declined to say how many crimes were committed with such weapons.
The new minister touted a more than 10 percent increase in instances of illegal arms possession detected by the police. She also defended the overall police record, saying that the total number of officially recorded criminal offenses in the country fell by 1 percent in 2024 after years of steady growth.
