Full-auto blackmarket?

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AFAIK...

In 1996, the US Customs' "Operation Dragon Fire" lead to the biggest machinegun bust in USA history.

2000 Chinese (China North Industries) AK47s (select-fire Type 56 rifles) and 20,000 AK 30 round magazines were sold to two undercover US Customs Agents by Chinese nationals in the USA.
The undercover agents paid a total of $4,000,000 for everything.
(Breaks down to $2000 for one AK with ten 30 round magazines.)

During the deal, the Chinese nationals told the undercover agents that they could provide them with man-portable SAMs (Chinese SA-7 clones) and RPGs (Chinese RPG-7 clones), if they wanted those as well.

All the blackmarket firearms were suppose to go to Asian street gangs in San Francisco and Los Angeles area.
 
I'm sure one of those crazy documentary filmmakers would be willing to make a film out of this if he could get amnesty. There's a good chance the filmmaker would be killed, but that just makes for good TV.

It might say something interesting about gun control, i.e. how it works about as well as the ban on illicit drugs.
 
My dad brought back a full-auto AK from Viet Nam-- one of many they captured when they busted VC arsenals. He duct-taped it to the inside wall of a mini-fridge he shipped back to the US. Then, he tells me, he gave it to a friend (a fellow vet) because he had no idea he'd have a son who'd turn out to be a gun nut.

It's just as well. Cool as it would be, I wouldn't want something like that around anyway-- especially out here in California, where an 11-round magazine is a felony.
 
The guns T.I's bodyguard bought (on behest of him) were from a ATF agent, I think all the others were semi, if memory serves me there were people comparing the amount he paid to actual black market prices......he got ripped off. smiley_abused.gif

He had a good case against 922o but he was a felon and plead out so nothing came of it.
 
Old WW2 relics 'off paper'....yes I believe there are a bunch of those floating around, but I think there are fewer and fewer every year (constantly the old guys die, or get sent to a nursing home and the gun ends up going to a turnin...or a gun knowledgable person buys the collection, realizes he has an off the books FA, and simply 'disposes' of it in bits rather than take the risk'

Full Auto 'home made' guns by kitchen table gunsmiths? Yes, I think there are a large amount of those out there too.

Full Auto guns as part of your average every-day criminal gun? Absolutely not. Dirt cheap 22 and 25 acp handguns are still by far the most common. This tells me many criminals view 'a gun as a gun' and don't really think much of it past that with the exception of getting whatever caliber the rappers of the time seem to mention most. (Iz gunna getz me a Glock fo-tay fo shizzle!)

handguns are also the preferred weapon simply because of the ease of carrying it and concealing it.

Sure, a large gang may have a stash of a few converted Tec9s or AKs, but these are few and far between, and not the kind of gun commonly bought or sold between criminals.

I also think the vast majority of criminals have no idea how to convert a semiauto to full. It's easier to grow pot than to convert an AK to full auto. For the most part, gangs aren't into doing WORK. They aren't going to grow their own pot, cook their own meth, or convert their own guns.

Also in my experience criminals don't do any sort of maintenance or cleaning of guns, I think this makes it very unlikely they are the type of gun tinkereres who will be able to figure out how to make a gun full auto.
 
Also in my experience criminals don't do any sort of maintenance or cleaning of guns,
Click to expand...

Does your experience include gangbangers who have done a tour or 2 in Iraq/Afghanistan?

Here in the Springs we're seeing a spike of military involved gang related crime. These guys have fire discipline, they know how and why to maintain a weapon and they don't seem to be the "spray and pray" type.

As for the OP's question, I think anything that's illegal has a black market somewhere. My question is this; for the regular thugs if they have them why aren't they using them?

I think the Stormfront crowd has probably got a bucket load of them stashed
 
unfortunatly most drug dealers are smarter than full auto
they may be sneaky underhanded dirtbags but there not ALL stupid

a few of the bad guys in my old neighborhood were known to carry things like glocks and AKs (semi autos)
they were bought on the street but they werent spray and pray
alot of the criminals are getting ideas that practice and accuracy matter
its not the good old days when idiots would hold there gun sideways and "rip the clip" alot of these dirtballs are aiming now
 
There are going to be lots of unregistered machine guns poping up these days as the WW2 generation is passing on/ moving.

I know of atleast 3 people that live with in 25 miles of me that found unregistered FAs while cleaning out thier parents/ grandparents homes. These are from people that I known for well over a decade and are very honest. not some BS talk at the gun store or range.

If you gave me 10k cash, I have little doubt that if I went to oakland, I could come home with atleast 6 FA guns.
 
I lived in the Rio Grande Valley for 2 years about a decade ago.

I wouldn't call it a 'vast criminal underground', but someone I know might have purchased a rather nice FA AK-47 for $350.

Of course, things are much, much different when you live on the other side of the checkpoints and are a scant 10 minutes from the border.
 
Career criminals work out how to do their crimes with the least legal exposure. I'm not sure how much FA would add to the sentence of a perp who was a felon already, but some. The smart crook invades the home when it's empty and doesn't take a gun with him.

Gangbangers are a different story, as is the drug trade.
 
I don't know how common this is, because my experience may very well be isolated, but I once was introduced to someone who made their living by importing full autos(and worse) from eastern European/southeast Asian/middle eastern countries to sell here illicitly. I didn't push for specific details as to who he deals with, but I'll never forget what he did tell me when I asked who buys this stuff: "not your average street n-words and dope peddlers". I don't want to go into detail, but there really isn't much more to the story than that. Plus, I didn't really know all that much about guns at that time. I'm a late-comer into this wonderful world.


But aside from that, I went to junior high with a guy who ended up a wannabe thug (who grew up rather comfortably in the suburbs, by the way) and thought he was the hardest thing around because he sold pot here and there, and because his brother is/was in jail. You know the type. I haven't talked to him in at least 6 years, but we have a mutual friend, and that is how I found this out. Apparently, he went out and bought a cheap AK(although it sounded more like a bubba'd SKS by the description), and tried to "convert" it to full auto by filing down the firing pin, and a few other things, as per the old rumor which I'm sure we've all heard at some point. From what I understand, when he took it out in the woods to try it out, it blew up in his face, and he was injured enough to warrant a trip to the ER.

Other than these two examples, I have not personally seen or heard anything else about illegal full autos, and everything I've seen seems to line up with what I am reading in this thread.
 
I believe there is a black market for full auto weapons, but it is not for the common criminal. However, I disagree that it is because they are getting smart to the possible consquences. Most will be in serious trouble for possession of a firearm, regardless of type. The don't have them as a matter of price and availability.

The only batf illegal firearms I have ever encountered are all sawed off types. Shotguns to SKS to marlin 22's. I have never heard first hand of an officer/deputy/highway patrolman finding/confiscating a full auto weapon. Just rumors from other agencies.

The vast majority of illegaly possessed weapons we pull off of people (or out of their vehicles) are pistols. Here, the Hi-point is king. I can tell you which house to go to and buy a cheap gun for $200, but I wouldn't have any idea where to specifically go in this state to purchase an illegal full auto. I know they are out there, but their owners do a better job of keeping them hidden.
 
as unrealistic as this story sounds it is true.

Years ago our family friend Doug was working for a company that bought and sold commercial property. It was his job to survey the vacant property. On this particular instance, it was a warehouse with a few offices built inside. Doug was on a ladder looking above the offices and saw a towel. He pulled it down only to find a wrapped up Mp38. Doug placed the firearm back above the office and returned by himself later that day to retrieve it. He owned that submachine gun for 15 years until his ex-wife (who had knowledge it was an illegal firearm), schemed to have CPS check him out during a visit with his daughter. Doug caught wind of this and drove his Mp38 out to the lake and dumped it.
 
I have always contended that nearly all criminals are driven to crime by socioeconomic pressures and cultural tolerances of some kinds of crime...Urban "gangsta" crime and culture and the rural or small town meth kind of thing.

As such, the guns that these types of truely common criminal use are beaters. A beat up, pot metal gun works just as well holding up a liquor store as does a Colt Python or for that matter a machine gun. If you are poor, and are committing crimes to either put food on the table or dope in your arm, you are not going to maintain "inventory" that is valuable. If you break into somebody's home and steal his Python or his Sig or his HK, you are not going to keep that. You are going to sell it or trade it for food, rent, dope, or sex and hang on to your beater that is not worth trading for any of the above.

Now there is organized crime of various levels...let's not go so far as to say the Mafia...let's say a prosperous inner city coke/crack dealer with a stable clientele of regulars. A person like that might have a decent gun that somebody traded for dope...and he might hang on to it as he is making his money from dope. That guy is literally one in a million. Most drug dealers are the little guy, scaping buy, usually taking any profit in dope for himself rather than money.

So, as for machine guns, I just don't think there is going to be a market among practicing criminals in the US. If you live in Waziristan...you know what, you are going to need a full auto AK because anybody that you might have to defend yourself against is using one too. In a place like Waziristan (part of Pakistan) or Afghanistan it would be a semi-auto Glock or a Beretta that you'd have to hunt for and pay dearly for...you can buy a real AK-47 in the market place next to the guy selling lamb kabobs!
 
"Does your experience include gangbangers who have done a tour or 2 in Iraq/Afghanistan?

Here in the Springs we're seeing a spike of military involved gang related crime. These guys have fire discipline, they know how and why to maintain a weapon and they don't seem to be the "spray and pray" type."

A couple years ago I read an article in the paper about this. The article stated that the criminals were stealing weapons part by part, and that they'd even stolen body armor.
 
There is a large black market in the F/A sector... just not here in the USA. However, there are parts of Africa in which I could grab a F/A AK and a can or two of mil-surp ammo for just a few hundred bucks (or a crate of chickens for that matter).

As someone mentioned before, where there is war, there is an illegal weapons trade. That is why we see so much in places like Mexico, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and many countries in Africa. They are at war, with corrupt/lax/weak formal governmental powers. The underground arms trade runs rampant as a result.

So, don't worry... if the war ever spreads into our country, you will have plenty of access to F/A weapons. They have a method of magically working their way into every war zone. But for now, whats the point?
 
I've always thought that Hugo Chavez's AK-103 factory is for nothing more than handing out automatics to the various narco-terrorists of North and South America.

I'd expect the rifles to make their way to the Mexican/American border in a few years and quickly disseminate through the country.

Hell, Chavez is already selling missiles to the druggers.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/venezuela/story/1073994.html
 
Well now I'm curious.

There's a lot of posts here regarding "unregistered WWII relic FAs" being covertly sold because they were unregistered.

Is there no way to register such a firearm? If not, you'd think the BATFE fould rather these weapons be "properly registered" than sold and floating around. Plus it would just be another revenue stream for them
 
I've always thought illegal F/A would be pricey, just look at the $2000 AK example, which is a lot for a criminal to spend on a drop gun. Then there's the problem of size, concealment, etc. It's probably cheaper to bring friends with cheap handguns.
 
Is there no way to register such a firearm? If not, you'd think the BATFE fould rather these weapons be "properly registered" than sold and floating around. Plus it would just be another revenue stream for them
Click to expand...
The F Troop offered an amnesty period shortly after the GCA'68 was enacted, but that period has long past. The registry itself was closed to new items in 1986.

I would imagine that the F Troop would need the laws to change to allow them to re-open the registry even to include unregistered 'bring-backs'.
 
Someone mentioned ex-military criminal activity. This is slightly off topic, but about two months ago, a guy who had recently returned from multiple tours in Iraq robbed a Subway restaurant in my town. He came in the back door, immediately shot and killed a local high school senior(who would have graduated this week), and shot another employee in the stomach before fleeing the scene on foot. He ended up in the parking lot of an apartment complex about 1/4 mile away, where he shot and killed another guy, who just happened to be outside checking his mailbox, and stole his car keys. The police arrived before he figured out which car the keys belonged to.

That just goes to show you that it can happen to anyone.
 
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