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

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Anthony

It runs into the problem of '0.1% chance of being caught, a thousand times, is a 70% chance'.

Sure, but how big a problem is that? If it happens, you just wind up leaving a slightly odd burglary-gone-wrong murder in an isolated rural area, instead of a burglary.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by acrosome

and which everyone who claims that this is "easy" is missing

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".

[tshiggins]

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?

(SNIP)

Ah, okay. Well, rather than focus on law enforcement, then, let's look at the people whose business would be the most disrupted if someone successfully smuggled large quantities of weapons and explosives into the country.

Which is to say, those who use those routes to smuggle other stuff into the country, and who do not want to have to deal with the heat and light that would come from increased scrutiny of those routes.

The biggest obstacles to such a large-scale criminal enterprise might not be the cops; it might just be the other criminals.

Nobody in the Mexican Cartels that control the (declining) marijuana and (doing just fine) cocaine trade will want a Seriously Angry U.S. government that focuses more resources along the southern border and the Gulf Coast. Those involved in human trafficking will like it even less, if for no other reason than their resources are so few, as compared to the cartels.

Over on the West Coast, opium smugglers and those who deal in Asian human trafficking won't want any more attention from U.S. customs inspectors than they already get, either.

While those who control those routes might initially be willing to make their services available for a sufficiently large payment, at some point wiser heads may start to think about the implications.

Once that happens any "businessman" involved in traditional organized crime may realize the best thing he could possibly do is drop a dime on these nutcases, because they're about to wreck his livelihood.

[Phantasm]

Also remember that tracking a single weapon in the United States takes weeks if not months, as we are forbidden by law from having a national database of guns and their owners. (The center that keeps track of that stuff is finally legally able to scan the older paperwork as non-searchable PDFs, last I checked.) I'm not sure about state and local levels.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Phantasm

we are forbidden by law from having a national database of guns and their owners

True, but how is it useful in this scenario? The suggestions upthread seem to be all about smuggling weapons (thus they're not registered in the first place), manufactured in-country (again, unregistered), or stealing them (thus their registered owner is a red herring, slowing you down to investigate rather than speeding things up in finding the actual culprit). Only the "rebels/criminals buy all their weapons lawfully" plan would run afoul of this countermeasure if it existed. If the GM throws in a sudden urge to create a national database as an obstacle, the PCs just shift to one of the uncovered plans (which they can probably do faster than the government can collect all the information on the existing population of gun owners anyway).

[Tenex]

As has been mentioned several times upthread, the problem isn't getting thousands of guns into the US, it's getting thousands of people into the US to use them without being penetrated by a single snitch. Absent a force of people to use said weapons they are useless.

However, to stay on topic...

If you want to derail the PCs, look at the people factor, not the physical smuggling angle. It's probably pretty easy for a single conex box to get across the border somewhere.

The discussion of the people factor is more than I want to type.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Tenex

As has been mentioned several times upthread, the problem isn't getting thousands of guns into the US, it's getting thousands of people into the US to use them without being penetrated by a single snitch. Absent a force of people to use said weapons they are useless.

I do think the question of where you are getting them in the first place is a real issue too. There may very well be more guns already in the US than there are outside of it. Certainly there are a lot more private manufacturers with the capacity to produce big lots, and less ubiquitous surveillance of them. Assuming this isn't an operation put together by a rival national power, I really do think covertly assembling this load and smuggling it *out* of wherever you are getting it from may very well be vastly harder than getting it across the US border.

[Tenex]

Originally Posted by malloyd

I do think the question of where you are getting them in the first place is a real issue too. There may very well be more guns already in the US than there are outside of it. Certainly there are a lot more private manufacturers with the capacity to produce big lots, and less ubiquitous surveillance of them. Assuming this isn't an operation put together by a rival national power, I really do think covertly assembling this load and smuggling it *out* of wherever you are getting it from may very well be vastly harder than getting it across the US border.

Yup. And when you dig deep it's a people problem as well.

[Anaraxes]

You might combine two earlier ideas: a snitch becomes a problem, but he's informing those rival criminals, not the police.

Of course, it will still be useful to have some diligent Feds working on the case to give the PCs more than one thing to worry about, and possibly just to distract them from a more menacing threat.

(If Hollywood has taught me anything, it's that the BATF team has a straight-laced member as foil for a more unconventional one who's actually effective despite his cavalier attitude toward proper procedures. Then the movie doubles down on that theme as Agent Unconventional finds himself joining forces with his traditional adversaries in the drug smuggling ring to take down a more severe threat, making him the squared-away, lawful one of that pairing. The gumshoe's on the other foot, making him more appreciative of his partner's approach. Alas, that makes the PCs the bad guys, thus the losers, so we'll have to think of something else.)

The bit about a national registry might not make a good obstacle, but it could be a little grace note used as a reward for the players. You don't even need to have the government implement one. Just having politicians start talking about it as necessary to combat the PC menace (even if the pols are insincere) shows that the PCs are making their cause felt.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Tenex

As has been mentioned several times upthread, the problem isn't getting thousands of guns into the US, it's getting thousands of people into the US to use them without being penetrated by a single snitch.

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, possibly to the extent of giving them false information. If each cell you establish thinks it's acting alone, each snitch can only oust a single cell, and you make certain your handlers (each of which probably oversees multiple cells, and has more information on the whole operation) are difficult to catch and trustworthy (so even if they are caught, they won't rat you out). We're still talking about a massive conspiracy, of course.