this post was submitted on 27 Mar 2024
201 points (97.6% liked)

News

30803 readers
3933 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

"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.

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year 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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year 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.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (4 children)

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

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Too late.

https://lemmy.world/comment/8873503

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

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

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

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (2 children)

which export location is actually exporting AK47s?

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago (6 children)

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.

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year 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.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

"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?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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 ?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year 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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year 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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year 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.

load more comments
view more: next ›