How easy would it be to smuggle unregistered weapons into USA?

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Avoiding snitches is nearly impossible. Limiting the damage a snitch can cause is quite possible - you simply need to limit the information your potential snitches have access to.

Compartmentalization is one of those things that works better in theory than practice, but the main risk isn't a single snitch unraveling your entire operation (it can happen, but probably won't), it's a snitch or two making it obvious that there's something big going on, causing some ATF agent to decide that this situation smells like a promotion.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by acrosome

Guys, I want to point out that the OP is asking for help for a GM who is having difficulty controlling some player excesses. He's looking for ways to make it harder to sneak the guns into the US. He's not looking for advice on how to do it better. So, throw some potential obstacles at him, eh?

In that department, I think the following advice is best:

Originally Posted by Michael Cule

Why do they want 'thousands of guns' anyways? Do they have thousands of people to give them to? Because that's going to be noticed if the gun smuggling isn't.

. . . and . . .

Originally Posted by Anthony

One of the biggest problems for obtaining off the book weapons is going to be avoiding being cheated; you are pretty much by definition working with criminals, and plenty of them will be happy to just take your money and disappear with it, particularly when dealing with large numbers at once.

When I was running my modern-day secret-agents campaign, I researched this. As it happens, I have personal contacts close to both Canadian and U.S. national defense. Nothing works as well as just asking.

The upshot was that getting hands on the hardware isn't your real problem. There's so much of it, in so many places, that if you want it – if you're really motivated to get it – people checking containers, looking at serial numbers, and all the rest are at best minor speed bumps.

On the other hand, thousands of guns destined for the same end user means somebody somewhere is trying to affect politics. It's a sign of insurgence, insurrection, mutiny, rebellion, revolt, revolution, uprising . . . choose a word. Anybody who gets wind of that is going to act – against you, unless your cause is really, really just and proper and globally supported. And probably even then, because nations prefer to intervene on their terms, so they can establish influence, and loose cannons (as PCs generally are in RPGs) can screw up years of hard work behind the scenes. So if you're arming thousands of people, you have thousands of shots at human error tipping off somebody's intelligence, law-enforcement, military, or security apparatus, and that organization might let you keep the actual guns, but step in and exploit your forces.

And dealing with criminals isn't risk-free, either. Again, you risk stepping on toes, because setting dishonesty aside, it takes a strong criminal organization that's certain of its hold on its territory to decide that it's just going to arm thousands of people. Most mobs don't have thousands of soldiers, outside of bad movies. Even if you actually get the guns your money was supposed to buy, at the prices the mobsters promised (good luck with that), you've just let a criminal group in on your secret – a group that's confident they can manage you if you decide to push back. So you'll very likely be operating in less secrecy than if you just openly bought the guns in some Third World hell-hole, and you will be blackmailed and exploited.

Originally Posted by Anthony

The most likely source for large numbers of off the books military weapons is probably military graft and corruption.

Yep. Ex-servicemen I know personally have recounted many tales of forces from Canada, the U.K., and the U.S. engaging in exactly that, and not even very subtly. Canada is hardly famous as a hell-hole nation that arms criminals and terrorists, but plenty of people who later sell their training to the highest bidder are armed thanks to the entire cases of weapons that go missing from time to time. Probably not thousands, though.

[acrosome]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Not missing the point. Just not answering a question the OP didn't ask. Feel free to have the thread wander to related topics. They all do, after all. But look at the title of the thread. It doesn't ask about who might want weapons, or why they want them, or what sort of agencies and procedures exist to detect subversive armed groups. Just "how easy... smuggle".

Yes, by all means read the OP instead of only it's title. "GM is a bit swamped..." And by asking "how easy" he is also, y'know, asking "how hard". Different verbiage for the same question.

How small is the Empire State Building?

Originally Posted by Anthony

Compartmentalization is one of those things that works better in theory than practice, but the main risk isn't a single snitch unraveling your entire operation (it can happen, but probably won't), it's a snitch or two making it obvious that there's something big going on, causing some ATF agent to decide that this situation smells like a promotion.

This.

I never said that one snitch would unravel the operation. But one snitch certainly would attract more attention to it. Next thing you know, there are AWACS patrolling the Canadian coast... :)

Originally Posted by Kromm

{Damned near everything.}

That all sounds like what I'm saying.

Also, if you buy guns from criminals, then you have to hope that none of THEM are informants, and what are the odds of that? Louie, the low-level lug who helped move crates of guns to the drop off, might be a CI. Or, heck, just decide that he wants to be one and phone the local FBI office. Or been slapped in the face by the capo's son-in-law and want payback. Or whatever.

The pseudo-honorable kiss-my-ring omertà crap that you see on The Godfather DOES NOT EXIST. Any more, if it ever did. Most criminal gangs are just a bunch of greedy lunkheads, quite ready to turn on one another, and you. These guys do not survive because they are honorable geniuses. They survive because the law limits police powers in their favor.

[copeab]

Someone has been reading this thread. Four hundred guns were reported stolen from a UPS facility in Memphis today.

[tshiggins]

Originally Posted by copeab

Someone has been reading this thread. Four hundred guns were reported stolen from a UPS facility in Memphis today.

"I hate being right all the time."

"Why doesn't anyone listen to me? I speak simple English. I don't have an accent, as far as I can tell."

:)

[Randyman]

Originally Posted by tshiggins

"I hate being right all the time."

"Why doesn't anyone listen to me? I speak simple English. I don't have an accent, as far as I can tell."

:)

Cassandra was right.

[DocRailgun]

Seems like it would be easier to set up a company in the target nation, one that supposedly makes high-end bicycles but really makes firearms.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by acrosome

Guys, I want to point out that the OP is asking for help for a GM who is having difficulty controlling some player excesses. He's looking for ways to make it harder to sneak the guns into the US. He's not looking for advice on how to do it better. So, throw some potential obstacles at him, eh?

No, we don't register guns in the US. Mostly. There actually is a half-assed way to find out who owns a given gun by make and serial number if it becomes of interest, but you cannot for instance look up what guns a given individual owns, unless of course you're in a municipality that does have gun registration, which is not uncommon. (I'll provide details if anyone cares.) The government is very persnickety about manufacturing, though, and things like end user certificates. Again, mostly. It's actually totally legal to make your own gun in your home workshop, here. (This is one reason why I don't understand all of the liberal hand-wringing about printing firearms.) You don't even have to serial number it. Probably. You just sure as HELL cannot sell it, because then legally you are a "gun manufacturer" and have to obey all of the very strict rules governing such.

There is a certain for lack of a better word "movement" here in the US made of people who buy almost-completed AKM receivers and a parts "kit" of all of the rest of the parts. (It's an AKM specifically because that model is especially suited to this. You can do it with an AR but it takes a bit more skill.) Usually this receiver is a shaped piece of sheet metal that just needs some holes drilled in the right spots and then bent in the proper places and a block spot-welded in the right spot. So they then get together and have a "build party" at the house of someone with the tooling to finish the receivers as described, and assemble them. This is totally legal. Most places. And you do need to be very careful about knowing the relevant laws, especially in California.

I include equivocations everywhere because local laws differ dramatically, as do the laws for some specific situations, etc.

But, really, you Europeans should be amazed by how little gun violence we have here in the US, not by how much... :)

Now, back to my primary point in my prior posts:

The BIG issue here in any situation where one would need "thousands" of automatic weapons in the US- and which everyone who claims that this is "easy" is missing- is just who the heck are you arming and how can you be certain that NONE of them turn informant? THOUSANDS of people? Even if they haven't been infiltrated by FBI CIs as every significant real extremist group in the country has been?

In conspiracies- just like computer security systems- BY FAR the weakest link is the people involved.

Source: I used to work in military intelligence.

Just give him a Joe Supercop nemisis that is some combination of Sherlock Holmes, Inspector Javert, and Tommey Lee Jones.

[copeab]

Originally Posted by DocRailgun

Seems like it would be easier to set up a company in the target nation, one that supposedly makes high-end bicycles but really makes firearms.

You don't even need a factory if you have a skilled gunsmith, a steel press, and some smaller tools. You won't be producing the guns very fast, but they will have no serial numbers company names, etc.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by copeab

they will have no serial numbers company names, etc.

Might as well fake some other company's name and serial number scheme, just to drag another herring across the trail. The guns will attract less initial attention if they have some maker's marks than if they're obviously anonymous.