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submitted 7 months ago by girlfreddy@lemmy.ca to c/news@lemmy.world

"All the guns here are from the US, everybody knows it. If the US wants to stop this, they could easily do it one month!" He pleads: "We are asking the US to give us a chance to live, just give us a chance."

For a country that does not manufacture weapons, a UN report in January found every type of gun was flooding Port-au-Prince: high-powered rifles such as AK47s, 9mm pistols, sniper rifles and machine guns.

The weapons are fuelling the staggering surge in Haiti's gang-related violence.

There is no exact number for how many trafficked firearms are currently in Haiti.

The UN report said some estimates put it at half a million legal and illegal weapons here as of 2020.

It reported that guns and ammunition were being smuggled in from land, air and sea from US states such as Florida, Texas and Georgia.

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[-] Altofaltception@lemmy.world 33 points 7 months ago

Haiti made the wrong choice of demanding freedom from slavery before European powers were ready to adapt to life without human chattel. We've never let them forget that.

[-] JimboDHimbo@lemmy.ca 9 points 7 months ago

Fuck the European powers of old and fuck slavery. I wish that all my ancestors killed their masters tbh.

How can you say it's the wrong choice for anyone to try to defeat an oppressive evil such as slavery?

[-] Sylvartas@lemmy.world 8 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Well, Haiti did kill most of their masters when they rebelled against them. (Which I honestly can understand given the especially awful brand of slavery that was going on there)

Also, while France is to blame for the insane "reparations" that have been forced upon Haiti, they ultimately sold their debt to some wall street banks, who pressured the US government to invade Haiti (on more than one occasion iirc) to force them to take loans with high interest rates in order to repay the debt (and create more).

When I learned about that I couldn't wrap my head around the fact that forgiving the debt was apparently never an option for anyone involved. So, fuck the banks and also fuck the USA.

[-] Altofaltception@lemmy.world 3 points 7 months ago

How can you say it's the wrong choice for anyone to try to defeat an oppressive evil such as slavery?

It was a wrong choice from the perspective of their masters.

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[-] taanegl@lemmy.world 22 points 7 months ago

Also known as the Mexican gambit. Who gave the CIA access to pentagon's stock pile anyway?

[-] nondescripthandle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 16 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Yeah if they're getting machine guns its not from civilians. Civs can't have any manufactured post 1984 and because of that stipulation they go for 20k at least.

[-] vorpuni@jlai.lu 3 points 7 months ago

They are getting smuggled. Full-auto guns are only difficult to do legally in the US. Pretty sure smugglers don't care about the law.

[-] nondescripthandle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 16 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Where do the smugglers obtain machine guns? Because something tells me they're not smuggling individual guns worth 20k to Haiti. The only people with access to newer machine guns would be the government weather its military or clandestine agencies. So your smugglers are government connected.

[-] catloaf@lemm.ee 5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Depends, are we talking full auto AR "machine guns" or actual machine guns like the FN Minimi or bigger?

Because full auto conversions for semi-auto rifles are easy to do. Actual machine guns are harder to come by, but still obtainable if you can get the right FFL and SOT license and either make your own or order them from manufacturers for "resale".

[-] nondescripthandle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 7 months ago

Depends on scale for me. Like if there are a high number of automatic ARs going to Haiti I'd start wondering who has the capacity to alter that many guns quickly and traffic them. If its like one or two rifles a reporter heard firing very rapidly then who knows how it got there or when it was modified.

[-] catloaf@lemm.ee 3 points 7 months ago

Any competent person with a little mechanical ability can do a conversion: https://www.recoilweb.com/turning-your-ar-15-into-an-m-16-150631.html

Given the size of the US, I'm sure you could find a couple guys to do it. Or even in Haiti, if you got the parts. And the parts aren't hard to come by, the whole rifle is harder.

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[-] Buelldozer@lemmy.today 5 points 7 months ago

or actual machine guns like the FN Minimi or bigger?

The UN Report lists all of the above PLUS "Belt Fed Machine Guns". Where da fuk are those coming from?

[-] vorpuni@jlai.lu 6 points 7 months ago

Armies are very good at getting their stuff stolen.

[-] Buelldozer@lemmy.today 3 points 7 months ago

Haiti doesn't have an Army and it's not possible to steal THAT much inventory from the US Military without getting caught. It is possible for something to "fall off the back of the truck" occasionally but that kind of opportunity is extremely limited.

Those AK47s are the same way, they can't be purchased here...at least not in Full Auto form and the weapon that guy in the first picture is holding ALSO isn't available for over the counter purchase in the United States. They may be "coming" from the US in that they are being shipped from Florida to Haiti but the United States itself almost certainly isn't the original source.

[-] vorpuni@jlai.lu 2 points 7 months ago

Well there's stolen and “stolen” if it's actually the CIA sending it over.

[-] catloaf@lemm.ee 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Haiti doesn't have an army now. They had several military branches, and paramilitary groups too, up until 1995. Those groups were definitely armed. Where do you think the guns went when they were disbanded?

I don't know where "here" is for you, but you can definitely buy AKs like that in most parts of the US.

Edit: actually I'm not sure what that rifle even is. It looks like an AK, but has an AR stock and it doesn't look like an AK magazine... But the ejection port is only big enough for pistol rounds like 9mm. Given that, and the variety of guns in the other picture, I think they're just getting whatever they can, wherever and whenever they can, so we're not talking crates full of ARs coming over from the US very recently.

[-] theyoyomaster@lemmy.world 2 points 7 months ago

Well, it piqued my curiosity and now I think I have figured it out, which makes this far more interesting. The Galil Ace civilian version was an extremely limited run with less than 1100 total rifles being made, all for the US market and all chambered in 5.45x39. The rifle in the title picture of this article complaining about the flood of US guns depicts a gun that was never sold to any US civilian nor used by any US government agency (there is a slight chance of a handful of highly restricted and tracked "dealer samples" existing). If you look at the list of users for the 5.56 version of the Galil Ace you will notice that it is used by several Central and South American governments/police forces as well as... Haitian police forces.

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[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 20 points 7 months ago

But I keep being told that an armed society is a polite society!

[-] BestBouclettes@jlai.lu 11 points 7 months ago

Mutually assured destruction only works when none of the parties involved are batshit insane

[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 10 points 7 months ago

I can't think of a real-world example of that.

[-] 21Cabbage@lemmynsfw.com 4 points 7 months ago

Hell I'd argue mutually assured destruction drives people batshit insane.

[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 1 points 7 months ago
[-] 21Cabbage@lemmynsfw.com 2 points 7 months ago

Still, seems like an improvement on the path humanity was on of having periodic global bloodbaths over individual human egos and the nationalism others attach to it. We still have bloodbaths over those issues, don't get me wrong, just smaller scale overall.

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[-] ours@lemmy.world 2 points 7 months ago

And nobody please mention Switzerland as an example. Yes, we have lots of guns but they aren't meant for self-defense outside some very narrow exceptions. Thankfully we can trust our police to do their work and they are usually very well trained.

[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 2 points 7 months ago

Too late.

https://lemmy.world/comment/8873503

Unsurprisingly, he also talked about "gun grabbers" in Switzerland.

[-] SupraMario@lemmy.world 9 points 7 months ago

Considering only the gangs have guns here...not really an armed society is it?

[-] Dudewitbow@lemmy.zip 18 points 7 months ago

which export location is actually exporting AK47s?

[-] Buelldozer@lemmy.today 20 points 7 months ago

The same one exporting Belt Fed Machine Guns. Half of the stuff covered in the article can't be bought in the United States so I'd really REALLY like to know where in the hell its coming from.

[-] TransplantedSconie@lemm.ee 4 points 7 months ago

Starts with a R and rhymes with Ussia.

[-] Buelldozer@lemmy.today 6 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

That's certainly possible but I'd bet that the regular ol' Arms Dealers, think Lord of War, are the ones behind it.

To be fair 9mm Pistols and AR pattern rifles could absolutely be sourced in the US and shipped to Haiti so I'm perfectly willing to believe that part of it, but this other stuff? No way.

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[-] tal@lemmy.today 4 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Heh, good catch.

There actually was a Kalashnikov factory in the US producing Real Authentic Kalashnikov AK-47s. Was one of the very early victims of sanctions over Ukraine.

googles

https://kalashnikov-usa.com/

Looks like they still exist. I think that it was partly owned by someone who was sanctioned, so maybe they divested.

looks further

Kalashnikov Firearms

Russian Heritage. American Innovation.

Man, this was not a good decade for that particular ad campaign.

I don't see AK-47s on the site, so maybe they only do other firearms.

googles

Ah, apparently the synthetic-stock thing, the KR-103, counts and was probably what they were selling.

https://www.pewpewtactical.com/kalashnikov-usa-kr-103-review/

It looks like they got whacked back after the invasion of Crimea, so some time back.

https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jl2572

According to the above Pew Pew Tactical article, it looks like those Crimea-invasion sanctions were what started the US-based factory -- they set up domestic production in the US to provide their US sales, since they couldn't import from Russia any more.

The American company, Kalashnikov USA, was initially an importer of Russian-made firearms until the US government banned importation.

Using their familiarity and know-how, the importers became manufacturers, creating their own firearms based on Russian specifications.

I guess that strictly-speaking, the term should still be "AK-pattern", Kalashnikov or not. Says that it's based on the AK-103, which is really a descendant of the AK-47.

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[-] TigrisMorte@kbin.social 16 points 7 months ago

Hint: all the guns here are from anywhere that makes guns. This is sadly not special treatment for Haiti. The US is the source for all the guns including the Russian made ones. It isn't personal. It's just business. And a business doesn't care whom they maim and kill in their lust for cash unless forced by Law to care.

[-] tal@lemmy.today 14 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

"All the guns here are from the US, everybody knows it. If the US wants to stop this, they could easily do it one month!"

Man, I'd believe that there's arms smuggling from the US, but we can't fully stop drug smuggling through the Carribbean, and we've used aerostat radars, helicopter-borne snipers, satellite surveillance, and you name it, have a ton of resources allocated to it, have been banging on that for decades. Why do you think arms smuggling is more amenable?

[-] spyd3r@sh.itjust.works 7 points 7 months ago

AK-47s coming from the US??? Yeah I'm just going to have to stop you right there, that is complete nonsense.

[-] Sylvartas@lemmy.world 7 points 7 months ago

I mean, maybe not actual AK47s but there are a fuckton of AK pattern rifles chambered in various NATO calibers. Aren't those decently easy to find in the US ?

[-] ours@lemmy.world 5 points 7 months ago

And they don't need to be made in the US to be smuggled from the US. I bet they are Chinese-made clones.

[-] spyd3r@sh.itjust.works 5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

There are AK clones available here, but they aren't "AK47"s, and they aren't full-auto, and they aren't a military surplus item here. Perhaps this is just journalistic incompetence, but this seems more like an anti-US hitpiece.

[-] mycathas9lives@mastodon.social 2 points 7 months ago

@spyd3r @Sylvartas

Ah yes, I had to expand the post as my initial thought was AK47 autoflower. I couldn't have been more wrong.

[-] theyoyomaster@lemmy.world 2 points 7 months ago

The title picture for this article shows a fully automatic gun that is illegal in all forms for civilian ownership in the US and does not come in a semi-auto version that is civilian legal. It is also used by the Haitian police as well as the police and governments of several Central and South American countries. It almost certainly did not come from the US.

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this post was submitted on 27 Mar 2024
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