[Icelander]

I don't want to give the impression that only takedown rifles will be in these arms caches.

Rather, I have a fairly good idea about the kind of pistols, submachine guns and other smaller weapons that the people involved had access to at this time. The specific tactical niche that remained to be determined was 'what do they do if they need to station someone on overwatch or take out a protected target from a greater distance than submachine guns can handle?'

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

You obviously know the field better than I do, but remember that in the 1980s and 1990s in Afghanistan and similar places (Yemen? Columbia?) it was possible to get high quality custom gun orders with no questions asked and virtually no traceability.

The Afghans specialized in making local variants of common UK WW1 and WW2 era guns as well as Soviet weapons.

Those are hardly 'high-quality', but, certainly, there is the possibility of refurbishing old WWII surplus that has been stored in armouries in various trouble spots for a long time.

The people caching these weapons had contacts on the international grey and black markets even before they contemplated setting up a covert network. In fact, some of them were part of CIA-affiliated arms smuggling in the 1960s, 1970s and, for a couple of them, even into the 1980s (Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Paraguay, etc.).

They already had some stockpiles of arms located in a number of African countries where they had contacts, mostly reserves from various security and mercenary contracts in the 1960s and 1970s. Good contacts in Morocco and among the shadowy world of French intelligence ensured that a plentiful supply of older French weapons was always accessible.

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

Looking outside of Europe, the 1990s also saw lots of Soviet era equipment coming onto the market as former Soviet client states swapped their older Russian equipment for more modern American, German, or French gear.

Yes. Basically, between 1987-1990, the first caches would consist mostly of older WWII stocks, various French surplus and reserves from all kinds of African wars, but after 1990, the vast stocks of former Soviet arms would predominate for any role where such weapons could be used.

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

IIRC, a few years later, the "peace dividend" as the U.S. drew down the size of the Army resulted in U.S. weapons being sent to U.S. allies throughout the world. That, in turn, released stocks of older Cold War or WW2 era weapons on to the surplus market.

Yes, that's true.

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

Finally, then as now, there were plenty of narcoterrorists and guerillas in South and Central America, and Southeast Asia, all with access to ancient but functional to SOTA weapons, all obtained via illicit sources.

That means that it's not so much the make and model of takedown gun that's important so much as good connections to scary parts of the world where "gun control" means "giving the local warlord a cut of the profits from your arms sales."

Add in a few shell companies and illicit international transfers and even a military-grade weapon with serial numbers all over it become effectively untraceable. "This gun was part of a lot of 25,000 given as U.S. military assistance to Insanistan in 1972. The lot was probably sold to Cuban-backed guerillas in Oompaloompa after the Insani central government was overthrown in 1975. After that, there are no good records of who owned it, where it was, or what it was used for."

This is all true. On the other hand, this is an excellent source of pistols, submachine guns, assault rifles, battle rifles and even bolt-action rifles, but in general, none of these will be takedown rifles.

Which is why that specific role in the arsenal might have to be added via commercial purchases and/or custom modifications of surplus rifles.