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.

  • @catloaf@lemm.eeEnglish
    2•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.