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Old 01-01-2019, 12:29 PM   #111
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Default Re: Modern Monster Hunting Guns [XM500, MICOR Leader 50, etc.]

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I agree that a lot of shotgun modifications are best represented by Weapon Bond, but does that mean that Fine (Accurate) does not realistically exist for shotguns?
That is obviously up to the GM as it is a border case. But I would say: no
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Old 01-01-2019, 12:41 PM   #112
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Default Re: Modern Stoner LMG

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In GURPS terms, would one treat the KAC LAMG as a rifle with a heavy barrel or a machine gun, for the purposes of the overheating rules in High-Tech?

It's a deriative of the Stoner 86, itself a deriative of the Stoner 63, but I don't know if any changes are game-mechanically significant.
It is likely best represented as light barrel TL 8 machine gun.
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Old 01-01-2019, 01:45 PM   #113
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Default Re: Any Fancy Futuristic Weapon I Should Know About?

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So, given that the fire team of former SOF badasses that the PCs will be assigned to will probably have done their best to secure access to the best available werewolf-slaying, Chthulu-killing munitions, what modern firearms that haven't been mentioned in this thread should the NPC allies be packing, to wow and impress the less technologically sophisticated PCs?
Big enough bang tends to work on many things. So in a way it comes down to how far from the basic "you must be stealthy" idea of monster hunters you are willing to go.

RPG-7s and 40mm grenade launchers(specially fully automatic ones) are always crowd pleasers.

Heavier things than that start to usually be harder to come by and carry.

Mercanary groups with no big state to sponsor them tend to be limited to about that level with some autocannons and mortars thrown in.

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What manufacturers of modern weapons will sell their LE/Military weapons to dubious PSCs, offshore risk-managment firms and individuals with the appropriate licenses, but no demonstrated need other than having fun at the range?
There are basically three about legal ways of getting such weapons: (most of these will however likely require some bribes to get the paperwork processed, but the resulting thing is still a legal right to own)
1) Get official status somewhere and then buy them as normal as if you were a government organization. As long as you have the end user paperwork in order it is not that hard. This is a fairly popular thing in Africa.
2) Get some official organization to acquire them and then borrow them. This is usually done in the form of "we will give you funding to buy 100 of those, but you will have to allow us to use 50 of those forever". This is a fairly popular thing is some Latin American countries police departments and such.
3) Buy them from the less reputable arms dealers and then acquire permits to import them legally wherever you want to use them. There are a quite large number of Russian and similar countries that are quite willing to export to anyone as long as the receiving paperwork is in order. This is the thing that organizations like the south african mercenary companies tend to use.

Then there is the obvious solution of buying them from the black market and then bribing people just to look the other way, but then you have no legal right to own them.


As for companies:
I do not know the policies of specific companies, but one real problem is the export paperwork so it comes a lot down to countries
Russia is mostly willing to export to anyone with money as long as the paperwork looks like it is in order.
China used to be the same, and in fact used to not even worry about the paperwork part always, but has lately been a bit more restrictive in some cases. But because of the lax enforcement getting chinese small arms and light "heavy weapons" has tended to be easiest
Some european countries have fairly light export regulations where the paperwork is the only requirement. But others have more strict policies where they require more from the buyer.
As for the US, exporting is actually strangely the opposite, it is actually easier to export even things like machineguns to private persons/organisations than official ones if you are a private company in the US. Thus the funny way that most military sales are done to other countries from the US is by the US military "buying them" and then reselling them to the foreign country.

But as for specific company policies, cannot say.

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(snip a long thing about US markets)
It is indeed a funny market and you cannot really import or get any new automatic weapons into it.

Thus there are the funnies, like the upcoming conversion kit to use a MAC 10 lower and a new specially made upper to make a fully automatic 5.56 rifle..

Quote:
For the larger gun companies, a small PSC based on some Caribbean island is such a small customer that they are effectively treated as ordinary consumers and receive no special treatment. If something is a hassle, they'll simply not do it. For small companies making custom firearms, still trying to break into the lucrative world of mass government contracts, an order for a couple of dozen carbines, a lot of ammo and maybe a few LMGs might actually be worth pursuing, even if it requires obtaining export licenses and selling to a decidedly odd outfit.
Yes, and if everything else else fails, you can always buy from the Russians.

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So, does anyone know what models of fancy firearms will be both available and desirable?
Depending on the route you want to go and how close to official things they are.

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Is the KAC LAMG the only option for squad automatic weapon?
Squad automatic weapons would likely not be such a important thing for monster hunters and the need for suppressive fire should really not be there as most monsters would likely not either care about it or be bothered by such.

But if for some strange reason they wanted them, then there are quite many possible weapons to chose from. The choice is more a matter of preference and familiarity than real differences.

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What are the odds of getting automatic weapons in .450 Bushmaster or 45 Raptor?
I have no idea if there are any available as real, but .450 Bushmaster should be fairly easy in theory to do as it is supposed to be able to use standard M16 lowers, and getting hands on a M16 is kind of among the easier things if you have things like the police department you mentioned.


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Would SIG Sauer or the US-based SIG Arms be able and willing to sell them NFA-controlled firearms like the smallest versions of the SIG MCX (ideally in a selective fire version) or the FN-SCAR?
US based no at least on the selective fire, as they cannot be really imported to US. But if you have the paperwork, Germans tend to be happy to export to most any official(type) organization in any no warwaring/not too oppressive regime. So if a Caribian police department wanted to buy the selective fire versions they would likely be willing to sell and would not have big issues with permits.

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What are some really cool new monster-hunting weapons?
Things that make big booms.. :)

(sorry could not resist, but I like explosions)
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Old 01-01-2019, 01:49 PM   #114
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Default Re: Modern Monster Hunting Guns [XM500, MICOR Leader 50, etc.]

I am a bit confused about what country they are going to operate in as you keep talking about both the US and unspecified Caribbean countries.

The requirements, limits and methods vary widely by country.
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Old 01-01-2019, 02:29 PM   #115
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Default PCs' Operational Area and Legal Cover Jobs

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I am a bit confused about what country they are going to operate in as you keep talking about both the US and unspecified Caribbean countries.

The requirements, limits and methods vary widely by country.
The Penemue, the yacht where J.R. Kessler (the PCs' Patron) and two PCs make their home, is currently moored at Galveston, Texas. Kessler is from Galveston and likes to spend time there.

Kessler often visits New Orleans, as well, and the Penemue is just at the length where it can sail on the Mississippi, if needed. Gulfport-Biloxi, MS, Mobile, AL, and a number of ports in Florida will also be likely destinations.

Aside from these US cities and their surroundings, Kessler also has homes on a number of Caribbean islands. Indeed, the two PCs who live on his yacht have gotten legal assistance in investing in real estate on St. Lucia and now own luxurious bungalows within a gated community there, centered on Kessler's private compound. This allows them to receive St. Lucian citizenship.

While the characters may be expected to act if something happens within their areas of expertise in the US cities where Kessler has interests and allies, the expectation is that the majority of the true Monster Hunts will take place within the lozenge-shaped Vile Vortex that covers much of the Caribbean (and one side of which is known as the Bermuda Triangle).

Officially, both characters are employed at a number of part-time and consultant jobs. They work for International Yacthing and Racing Inc., a small-to-medium business owned by Kessler through a series of offshore holdings which rents out yachts, organizes very private invite-only races between fantastically expensive super yachts and operates helicopters and small planes to shuttle people between yachts and Caribbean islands. This is good cover for much of what they do, but it will not explain their presence with any weaponry.

As a result, both characters are also employees of the limited company of Integrated Security and Human Intelligence Managment (ISHIM Ltd.), a private security company registered in St. Lucia and licensed to operate in Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Cayman Islands, Domincia, Jamaica, St. Kitts and Nevis and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and the Sentinel Risk Managment Inc., another private security company registered in Galveston, TX.

It's likely that some method exists by which they could be lent to another PSC registered in France and licensed to operate within French waters and on French islands in the Caribbean, if situations required, as they've signed some paperwork submitted by an attorney in French and addressed to some office in mainland France. Both Kessler and one of the PCs, Edward Alvin Smith, actually hold French citizenship, in addition to their US and St. Lucian ones.

These two PCs are also deputies of the Jefferson County Sheriff's Reserve in Texas, which doesn't actually carry with it much in the way of duties (16 hours per month, 40 hours of mandatory training every two years), but provides them with badges, law enforcement contacts and a much improved chance of talking themselves out of trouble if caught doing something dubious in the US, even if they are not actually within their theoretical jurisdiction.

Basically, their billionaire Patron is doing what he can to allow them to be able to operate anywhere in the Caribbean or along the US Gulf Coast, but obviously, it will vary enormously what weapons, if any, they are legally allowed to bring into each jurisdiction.
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Old 01-01-2019, 03:54 PM   #116
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Default Background on Weapons and Contacts

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Big enough bang tends to work on many things. So in a way it comes down to how far from the basic "you must be stealthy" idea of monster hunters you are willing to go.
They must indeed. However, one must always weigh the potential consequences rationally. Some might consider sustained automatic weapons fire and a series of explosions to be intolerably unsubtle, but a counter-point is that the death of a whole strike team and a tear in reality where Things Man Was Not Meant to Know flood through is actually more blatant and significantly more likely to carry with it negative long-term operational constraints.

Having veteran SOF personnel, former French Foreign Legionnaires and mercenaries, naval officers and former intelligence officers as your rank-and-file, team leaders and planning staff means that your people will want to prepare for contingencies that some civilians might regard as too remote to consider.

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RPG-7s and 40mm grenade launchers(specially fully automatic ones) are always crowd pleasers.
I'm not inherently against such items being stashed away somewhere. However, as for actually carrying it on the Penemue, at minimum, I'd want the grenade launcher to be a model that can launch popular Less-Than-Lethal and riot grenades.

They can probably get a St. Lucian police captain to buy such a grenade launcher and a St. Lucian bureaucrat to sign off on ISHIM Ltd. being allowed to have such crowd-control devices in their (not actually) temporary possession and simply ignore the fact that you can also shoot HE or HEDP grenades. Then, as long as the crew manages to dump the offending Destructive Devices into the sea before being boarded, they can perhaps, with the aid of high priced lawyers, get away with fines for wrongly bringing a weapon they legally have access to into a jurisdiction where they are not supposed to have it rather than everybody being arrested immediately as dangerous madmen terrorists.

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Heavier things than that start to usually be harder to come by and carry.

Mercanary groups with no big state to sponsor them tend to be limited to about that level with some autocannons and mortars thrown in.
I'd probably be willing to forgo mortars and autocannon, though I'm wondering whether the campaign might in the future build to some sort of climactic confrontation where part of the preparation for the final mission is obtaining all the gadgetry that they'd previously ruled out as too dangerous to be caught with.

They don't have a fully-loaded Hind or cutters armed with Stingers, Griffins and 25mm autocannon now, but who's to say what the future may bring? After all, with strange aeons even death may die.

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There are basically three about legal ways of getting such weapons: (most of these will however likely require some bribes to get the paperwork processed, but the resulting thing is still a legal right to own)
1) Get official status somewhere and then buy them as normal as if you were a government organization. As long as you have the end user paperwork in order it is not that hard. This is a fairly popular thing in Africa.
Indeed. This is fairly difficult, obviously, but might actually be the best way to acquire some required weaponry.

However, probably more likely is 3), see below for my thoughts on that.

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2) Get some official organization to acquire them and then borrow them. This is usually done in the form of "we will give you funding to buy 100 of those, but you will have to allow us to use 50 of those forever". This is a fairly popular thing is some Latin American countries police departments and such.
Already done in St. Lucia and Jefferson County, Texas.

However, there are limits on how frequently such organisations can purchase new weaponry, even if you are actually funding them under the table. These limits will be significantly more limiting in Jefferson County, where there were significant purchases of patrol carbines, shotguns and SWAT weaponry in 2015 and 2016, so it would be hard to justify to county officials and potential political opponents why new weapons are already needed.

The PCs and their allies have fairly easy access to such weapons as Glock 22/23 (issue service pistol in both real life and my game), Glock 27 (allowed back-up pistol), Mossberg 590A1 Class III SBS (allowed patrol car shotgun in my game), Quarter Circle Ranger SBR carbine in .40 S&W (allowed semi-auto patrol carbine in my game), Glock 35 pistol (SWAT issue in my game), Kriss Vector Gen II SMG KV45 MBL20 in .45 ACP (allowed SWAT selective-fire carbine in my game), KAC SR-16E3 CQB Mod 2 M-LOK carbine in 5.56x45mm (allowed SWAT selective-fire carbine in my game) and FN SCAR-H CQC carbine in 7.62x51mm (allowed SWAT selective-fire carbine in my game).

They can also get Mossberg 590M Mag Fed shotguns, KAC SR-30E3 Mod 2 M-LOK carbines in .300 Blackout and KAC tactical rifles like the SR-25 through the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office, but aside from the SBR barrel they prefer for the SR-30s and maybe 12.5" to 14.5" SBR barrels for the SR-25s meant for short-range urban sharpshooting, these are weapons anyone can buy anyway.

One of the PCs already has Type 1 and Type 5 FFL licenses as a part-time employee at Azazel Arms in Galveston and might renew his Class II and Class III SOT licenses, after his 'short' absence of 23 years lost in the Bermuda Triangle (never declared dead, though, and his Patron kept paying all taxes and fees through his accountants, but unfortunately, was not able to maintain the SOT licenses without the PC present to deal with certain signatures).

I'd welcome suggestions on what weapons one might plausibly have the St. Lucian police obtain for their SWAT team, buying more than they need in order to lend you a couple.

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3) Buy them from the less reputable arms dealers and then acquire permits to import them legally wherever you want to use them. There are a quite large number of Russian and similar countries that are quite willing to export to anyone as long as the receiving paperwork is in order. This is the thing that organizations like the south african mercenary companies tend to use.

Then there is the obvious solution of buying them from the black market and then bribing people just to look the other way, but then you have no legal right to own them.
For some combination of this, I shall introduce Jacques Porcher, Martel Boucher and Simon Leclercq Jr., as amoral a trio of arms dealers, mercenary facilitators and international criminals as ever lived. Porcher is old enough that he should be mostly retired (Kessler knew him in the French Foreign Legion in Indochina, making Porcher probably in his mid-80s), at least from adventuring in exotic locales, if not making various underhanded deals, but his two younger partners are as active as ever.

Martel Boucher, born an Algerian pied-noir who fled to Marseilles after Algerian independence, a life-long soldier and mercenary and still tough-as-nails in his late fifties or early sixties, handles PMC-relations, recruiting, training and personnel, and US-born Leclercq, the son of an old, deceased French Foregin Legion buddy of Porcher and Kessler, is by now running the business side. There isn't a corrupt official or burgeoning warlord in Africa they don't know, or at least know someone who can introduce them. They also have extensive contact in former Warsaw Bloc countries, having made out like bandits after the collapse there and the wild months and years of plundering the state armouries for militaries no one was actually paying anymore.

Porcher, Bouchard and Leclercq might have unpleasant past associations for Kessler, who seems to be trying to make up for his long life of ruthless profiteering and less than legal adventures all over the world while building his vast fortune, but Legio Patria Nostra whether you personally like one of your old brothers-in-arms (or their sons) or not, and it's not like you can save the world from a threat the Powers That Be do not even acknowledge while never straying across lines of legality and even morality.

[cont.]
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Old 01-01-2019, 06:35 PM   #117
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Default Legal or Almost-Legal Monster Hunting Weaponry

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Russia is mostly willing to export to anyone with money as long as the paperwork looks like it is in order.
China used to be the same, and in fact used to not even worry about the paperwork part always, but has lately been a bit more restrictive in some cases. But because of the lax enforcement getting chinese small arms and light "heavy weapons" has tended to be easiest
Yes, these are always good options for those with money and contacts in corrupt foreign countries.

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Some european countries have fairly light export regulations where the paperwork is the only requirement. But others have more strict policies where they require more from the buyer.
H&K has historically been very lax in this regard, but some embarrassing gaffes in the 2000s and earlier 2010s have made them more cautious and strict.

I've heard stories of Swedish firms being actively complicit in subverting end user certificate regulations in the 1980s and 1990s, but, of course, cannot confirm whether that still goes on.

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As for the US, exporting is actually strangely the opposite, it is actually easier to export even things like machineguns to private persons/organisations than official ones if you are a private company in the US. Thus the funny way that most military sales are done to other countries from the US is by the US military "buying them" and then reselling them to the foreign country.
How realistic or plausible would it be to propose that Azazel Arms, the small custom gun-maker (actually an armourer's shop where firearms are professionally modified) controlled by Kessler and friends, had all the necessary licensing to be able to export LE/Military versions of firearms to Caribbean nations?

Not at all, right?

They could sell such weapons to US LE agencies and the US military, but being allowed to fulfill a contract to a foreign agency requires major red tape and, essentially, either working through the Pentagon or State Department, at least the way I understand it.

But I'll admit I haven't looked up the actual regulations yet and this is just my gut feeling based on various sources I looked at for other things.

Can US firms independently chase contracts to provide select-fire military weapons to foreign special forces units or police departments, with just a license of some sort, or must each individual contract of that sort be done through the US State or Defense Departments?

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It is indeed a funny market and you cannot really import or get any new automatic weapons into it.

Thus there are the funnies, like the upcoming conversion kit to use a MAC 10 lower and a new specially made upper to make a fully automatic 5.56 rifle.
Yeah, any fully automatic weapons will have to 'officially' belong to the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office SWAT, be really expensive NFA-registered weapons using a pre-ban receiver or be obtained for a foreign-registered PSC and not legally permitted on US soil.

Or just be illegal, but professionally done, conversions of legal semi-automatic firearms to selective fire. It's not like Edward Alvin Smith, the PC with Armoury (Small Arms) at skill 21, doesn't know how to make a full-auto sear for many common firearms, for all that it is illegal for him to do so.

I'm sure he can do so for nearly any AR-15 and AR-10 derivative without negatively impacting Malf., but I'd like better guidelines for which other gun designs can be made select-fire without changing any other stats except RoF and which tend to be really temperamental and malfunction prone with full-auto sear inserted, perhaps because the civilian legal versions were designed not to be compatible with such sears.

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Yes, and if everything else else fails, you can always buy from the Russians.
Yes, that looks like quite a realistic solution for acquiring good TL8 squad automatic weapons and heavier support weapons.

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Depending on the route you want to go and how close to official things they are.
Not official at all, but with a very locally influential billionaire as their Patron, it turns out that you can approximate officialdom pretty closely, without ever actually telling anyone with the government who is not either a trustworthy ally or already firmly in your pocket anything true about what you actually do.

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Squad automatic weapons would likely not be such a important thing for monster hunters and the need for suppressive fire should really not be there as most monsters would likely not either care about it or be bothered by such.

But if for some strange reason they wanted them, then there are quite many possible weapons to chose from. The choice is more a matter of preference and familiarity than real differences.
Many civilian semi-automatic weapons will overheat and malfunction very quickly during any kind of exciting Monster Hunter firefight. Even military select-fire personal weapons are not designed or built for firing hundreds of rounds in a single extended firefight.

Entirely aside from the fact that such things as military units, police tactical teams, paramilitary forces, guerrillas and heavily armed narco-terrorists or cartel forces, perhaps influenced by angry spirits or unearthly forces, are possible threats, simply very tough and powerful monsters who somehow exist near tears in reality, where the local Mana approaches Normal, instead of No Mana to Very Low Mana, can require mag dump after mag dump to put them down. Having access to firearms that can handle putting a few hundred rifle rounds into such threats is a very desirable thing, even if you don't expect to always get away with carrying such weapons when operating clandestinely or covertly.

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I have no idea if there are any available as real, but .450 Bushmaster should be fairly easy in theory to do as it is supposed to be able to use standard M16 lowers, and getting hands on a M16 is kind of among the easier things if you have things like the police department you mentioned.
Just so.

This is why I'll be making the PCs sad by allowing them to buy or otherwise obain pretty much any gun chambered in .450 Bushmaster and 45 Raptor, as long as 'pretty much any gun' means AR-15 or AR-10 pattern, semi-automatic and either with 16" barrel or longer or legally registered as a NFA firearm to their personal gun trust or one of the cover companies (which makes it really problematic if violent crime is traced to the gun later, so please don't do that, PCs).

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US based no at least on the selective fire, as they cannot be really imported to US. But if you have the paperwork, Germans tend to be happy to export to most any official(type) organization in any no warwaring/not too oppressive regime. So if a Caribian police department wanted to buy the selective fire versions they would likely be willing to sell and would not have big issues with permits.
As far as I can tell, SIG MCX rifles and carbines that are sold in small lots to certain commands of the US military, as well as perhaps to LE customers in the US, have been made in the New Hampshire plant since 2015. 100% of the MCX rifles sold on the US civilian market are made domestically and I was able to find an article where a gun writer visited the New Hampshire factory and reported seeing selective-fire MCX Rattler carbines turned out there. He even got to fire one at the SIG Academy and reports it as US made.

As for FN SCAR rifles, the ones built for the big US military contracts are made in Columbia, South Carolina. It's important to make your goods in the US if you want to get government contracts. :-)

As far as I know, FN Herstal still makes both select-fire and semi-automatic FN SCAR rifles in Belgium and imports the semi-automatic versions to sell on the US commercial market, but they guarantee that any weapons purchased for the US military or any US federal, state or local LE agency will be 'Made in the USA', which, legally speaking, actually just requires them to assemble them from parts imported from Belgium and making just enough new parts to qualify as US-made under the import regulations, which they generally seem to accomplish by making at least the barrels in South Carolina.

What I don't know is how FN Herstal or the US-based FN Commercial Sales, FN Law Enforcement Sales and FN Military Sales would react to a tiny police force in St. Lucia, a minor sovereign island nation in the Caribbean, to purchase an order of ca 50 compact FN SCAR carbines, ideally the FN SCAR-SC or FN SCAR PDW. Or if they'd sell such weapons, select-fire or even semi-automatic only, to Private Security Contractors with appropriate paperwork from small Caribbean nations.

They'd love to sell those to the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office, of course, but given that it's been less than two years since that office bought some FN SCAR-H CQC carbines, as well as other SWAT gear from other manufacturers, it's going to take some time to maneuver through the red tape in Jefferson County and avoid having any potential political opponents of the Sheriff taking notice of too-frequent purchases of too much hardware for his office.

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Things that make big booms.. :)

(sorry could not resist, but I like explosions)
There seem to be basically no plausible ways for private companies based on the US or most Caribbean nations to obtain most of the useful military Destructive Devices legally. For certain companies, buying commercial explosives for blasting and mining is easy enough, but the moment you want military explosives or grenades, RPGs, recoilless rifle or autocannon ammo or any of that fun stuff, just being an oil, construction or mining company is no longer enough to get anyone to sign off.
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Old 01-01-2019, 06:37 PM   #118
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Default True Monster Hunter Weapons and How to Get the Really Fun Stuff

A very few, custom-modified Para USA Tactical Target Rifles exist in .450 Bushmaster in the armoury of the Penemue yacht, available to PCs and their former SOF operators / current private security contractors and monster hunters. These carbines are semi-automatic AR-pattern rifles privately acquired and legally registered as SBRs, owned by a trust under the control of J.R. Kessler, after being re-chambered in .450 Bushmaster and fitted with 12.5" match barrels by an expert gunsmith. Their peculiarity is that their gas system is redesigned so that the buffer tubes no longer extend into the stock, allowing the mounting of a folding stock.

Azazel Arms, the family owned custom firearms manufacturer and gun store in Galveston that is run by an old friend and employee of Kessler (and financed by him), has been trying to get license the design of the Tactical Target Rifles from Para USA ever since they got out of the rifle market. They've not succeeded so far, but negotiations are ongoing and promising. If they ever get the rights, they'll try to get official licenses to develop and market select-fire, short-barreled versions chambered in .300 Blackout and .450 Bushmaster to foreign customers (like, say, Caribbean LE customers and PSC registered in the Caribbean).

There are also a number of flat-out illegal firearms there, like the DPMS Oracle carbines that have been re-worked into entirely new weapons. Bought as innocent semi-automatic, civilian-legal DPMS Oracle rifles in 7.62 NATO/.308 Winchester, these unfortunate Frankenstein-firearms have been re-chambered in 45 Raptor and fitted with improbable free-floating 12" bull barrels, aftermarket handguards and furniture with heavy duty heat shielding as well as extensive rail real estate, fine-tuned gas system and feeding mechanism for reliability when running hot and a receiver with completely illegal select-fire capability. Doesn't like it when you feed it different types of ammo, but runs like a clock with the high-pressure 280 grain JHP handloads it's designed for.

When it comes to true Destructive Devices, it looks like the fun stuff will come through Porcher, Boucher and Leclercq, either directly from suppliers in Russia, Eastern Europe or China with whom they have the kind of relationship where less-than-accurate end user certificates present no problem, or through a convoluted path where they get it at second-, third- or even more numerous-hand from African, Asian or Latin American middle men.

Or, of course, it's not like Kessler knows only these three men on the other side of the law, not to mention the grey area in between. Porcher, Boucher and Leclercq might have the best contacts in the arms dealer trade, but they are far from the only people Kessler might contact about acquiring things on the black market or moving goods between countries without worrying about paperwork.

Back in the day, the way Kessler tells it, he used to know a veritable Who's Who of Galveston-, Houston-, New Orleans-, Vegas-, Florida- and Havana-based mobsters, having been a deck hand on a rumrunner in the 1930s* and successively, a bodyguard, gambler, casino-manager and investor in the 1950s and 1960s.

Kessler has also got some very old Cuban-born friends (now in their sixties and upward), by now established elsewhere, like say Brazil, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Honduras, Panama, Puerto Rico, the Florida Keys and elsewhere in Florida or the US Gulf Coast, and the Bahamas, as well as having a relationship with a few locals from these areas and other places, like Colombia and Suriname, as well as not a few Caribbean islands. Quite a few expatriate Venezuelan friends, too. A lot of these friends seem to be involved in import-export.

In addition to which, Kessler also has extensive contacts in the Texas oil trade and Texas business in general, in the world of international minerals, mining and precious stones, and, perhaps, some very old relationships, friendly or otherwise, with Americans (and others) who did business in Latin America and the Caribbean in the 1950s and 1960s, including some of those involved in the murkiest aspects of US trade and political policy, perhaps even including people who had quasi-official status at that time...

*Kessler was two years old when Prohibition started and fifteen when it ended, so he'd have to have been a really precocious miniature gunsel to have had even a quarter of the rum-running adventures and mob shenanigans in the Free State of Galveston he claims for his early days.
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Old 01-02-2019, 04:18 AM   #119
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Default Re: Modern Monster Hunting Guns [XM500, MICOR Leader 50, etc.]

He could always buy a ski resort. http://www.xgames.com/action/freeski...anche-howitzer
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Old 01-02-2019, 08:01 AM   #120
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Heh.

J.R. Kessler is firmly of the opinion that if the Good Lord had intended humans to ski, He wouldn't have placed snow only where it was freezing cold and He certainly wouldn't have arranged for every American ski resort to be filled with Yankees, dentists, lawyers and adulterers, of whom only the adulterers were decent company.
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