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.

  • Sylvartas@lemmy.world
    7·
    8 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.worldEnglish
      5·
      8 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
      61·
      8 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.