09-30-2018, 08:44 PM | #41 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: How easy would it be to smuggle unregistered weapons into USA?
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.
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10-01-2018, 08:07 AM | #42 | |||
GURPS Line Editor
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Montréal, Québec
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Re: How easy would it be to smuggle unregistered weapons into USA?
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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. 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.
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Sean "Dr. Kromm" Punch <kromm@sjgames.com> GURPS Line Editor, Steve Jackson Games My DreamWidth [Just GURPS News] |
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10-01-2018, 10:37 AM | #43 | ||
Join Date: Aug 2010
Location: The Land of Enchantment
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Re: How easy would it be to smuggle unregistered weapons into USA?
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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... :) 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.
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I'd need to get a grant and go shoot a thousand goats to figure it out. Last edited by acrosome; 10-01-2018 at 10:53 AM. |
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10-01-2018, 01:44 PM | #44 |
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: near Houston
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Re: How easy would it be to smuggle unregistered weapons into USA?
Someone has been reading this thread. Four hundred guns were reported stolen from a UPS facility in Memphis today.
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A generous and sadistic GM, Brandon Cope GURPS 3e stuff: http://copeab.tripod.com |
10-01-2018, 05:10 PM | #45 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Denver, Colorado
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Re: How easy would it be to smuggle unregistered weapons into USA?
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"Why doesn't anyone listen to me? I speak simple English. I don't have an accent, as far as I can tell." :)
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-- MXLP:9 [JD=1, DK=1, DM-M=1, M(FAW)=1, SS=2, Nym=1 (nose coffee), sj=1 (nose cocoa), Maz=1] "Some days, I just don't know what to think." -Daryl Dixon. |
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10-01-2018, 05:19 PM | #46 |
Join Date: May 2009
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Re: How easy would it be to smuggle unregistered weapons into USA?
Cassandra was right.
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10-01-2018, 05:39 PM | #47 |
Join Date: Jul 2006
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Re: How easy would it be to smuggle unregistered weapons into USA?
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.
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10-01-2018, 05:43 PM | #48 | |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Portland, Oregon
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Re: How easy would it be to smuggle unregistered weapons into USA?
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"The navy could probably win a war without coffee but would prefer not to try"-Samuel Eliot Morrison |
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10-01-2018, 05:46 PM | #49 |
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: near Houston
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Re: How easy would it be to smuggle unregistered weapons into USA?
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.
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A generous and sadistic GM, Brandon Cope GURPS 3e stuff: http://copeab.tripod.com |
10-01-2018, 06:05 PM | #50 |
Join Date: Sep 2007
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Re: How easy would it be to smuggle unregistered weapons into USA?
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.
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