There may be as many as 40,000 Liberians running around with guns, and a lot of them, if not most of them, are teenagers. Most are illiterate, and have no job prospects, except perhaps subsistence farming back at the village they came from. But many of the villages are destroyed or abandoned, and many of these adolescent gunslingers grew up in one of the larger towns. Most urban areas in Liberia have been trashed as well. So taking away guns from these kids is going to be difficult, as the gun is all they have. And they know that with the gun they can get food, sex and all manner of goodies. Back in the 1990s, Nigerian peacekeepers tried to disarm that generation of teenage Liberian gunmen and wound up killing thousands of them. The Nigerian troops suffered over a thousand casualties as well.  This time around, the African peacekeepers are advocating the disarmament technique used in Sierra Leone with some success; bribes. In other words, offer cash and goods for the guns. As long as the kids have guns, there will be no peace.