ABOVE: USML Category II(a)

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I always tell clients that even an obsolete military item can be on the United States Munitions List (“USML”) and require an export license. Still, not all obsolete military items are on the USML. Maces, catapults, jousting poles, caltrops, scythed chariots, spears, arrows, and siege hooks immediately come to mind. Swords too. Unless, it seems, you are a special agent for U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

According to this op-ed column in The Capital Times by Howard Waddell of Albion Swords Ltd. in New Glarus. Wisconsin, U.S. Customs recently seized an export by him of replica swords modeled after the ones used by Arnold Schwarzenegger in Conan the Barbarian:

I received a telephone call on Friday morning indicating that a shipment we had made to our European distributor was being held by U.S. Customs because of a possible ITAR violation — shipping “weapons of war” without prior authorization from the State Department.

…

When I pointed out that the shipment in question consisted primarily of reproductions of swords from the 1982 film “Conan the Barbarian” starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and were not, in fact, “weapons of war” per se, the dutiful customs officer pointed out that the U.S. Marine Corps still uses swords, therefore swords are still considered to be “weapons of war.”

Oh. Good. Grief. Don’t go searching your copy of the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (“ITAR”) for “weapons of war,” because you won’t find that phrase anywhere. Nor, frankly, will you find a category on the USML which encompasses sword replicas. The closest I could find was “close assault weapons systems” in Category I(c), but, although that term isn’t defined in the USML, it is a clear reference to a now-discontinued type of highly accurate short-range rifle for urban warfare, not to swords, which haven’t been used on the battlefield for, oh, four or five centuries.