Although its revenues exceed US$ 130 billion annually and represents about 7.5% of total world trade in merchandise, the global arms industry rarely features in business research. What has remained particularly unaddressed is the application of corporate social responsibility and sustainability principles to the arms industry, as with other industries. Hence this research questions why the arms industry has been exempt, and how ethical principles may be applied.  Utilising reliable secondary data on the global arms industry, the paper seeks to identify the major arms exporter countries, mostly in the developed world, to uncover the forms of government support and to raise the socio-economic costs of arms in war. Drawing on NGO and IGO sources, this research aims to illustrate how conflicts perpetuated for corporate benefit and in government interests, are invariably at the expense of citizens in both exporter and importer countries, not to mention devastation caused in conflicting nations. The author argues that if the arms industry are not publicly subsidised but instead discriminated against for producing socially-harmful products, its continued growth could be mitigated.