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
    13·
    8 months ago

    “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?

    • DigitalDruid@lemmy.sdf.org
      51·
      8 months ago

      I would say because guns are manufactured in a first world factory with serial numbers and should be moved through a modern supply chain/procurement process whereas drugs get grown, produced and transported pretty anonymously by comparison. Guns could be tracked pretty well they just aren’t.

      If every baggie of coke had a serial number I think the war on drugs may have gone different you know?