Every kind of gun is flooding into Port-au-Prince. Haitians are blaming the US.

“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.

  • nondescripthandle@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    171·
    8 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.eeEnglish
      72·
      8 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·
        8 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.

          • kepa
            1·
            8 months ago

            ARs are very easily converted, but some other rifles are not so easy. Ultimately any rifle that as an automatic version will be easy to convert.

      • Buelldozer@lemmy.today
        5·
        8 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?

          • Buelldozer@lemmy.today
            3·
            8 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.

            • catloaf@lemm.eeEnglish
              31·
              8 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·
                8 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.

              • theyoyomaster@lemmy.world
                1·
                8 months ago

                It’s a Galil Ace in 5.56, the ejection port is larger than the small spot you’re looking at. The original Galil was very close to an AK, the ACE diverged quite a bit more but uses the same basic design. I don’t know enough about them to tell if it’s a civilian SA receiver or not, they’re fairly rare in the US. Definitely a boutique gun for collectors and not something that falls into the black market much. No way to tell for sure but I would guess there’s a decent chance it wasn’t sourced from the US.

      • kepa
        1·
        8 months ago

        I have to say there is no such thing as a full automatic rifle. There are Automatics or Semi- Automatics! Just read it to often and started twitching lol!