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.

  • @tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
    4•8 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.