Slashdot Mirror
Small and Heavy Arms Traded On Facebook By Libyan Militants (rt.com)
An anonymous reader writes: A report entitled "The Online Trade of Light Weapons in Libya" on Thursday revealed machine guns, grenade launchers and anti-tank missiles are being traded in Libya via Facebook. Some of the weapons include those supplied by the U.S. allies to their Libyan proxies, while most come from raids by militants on the arsenals of former Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. "Many of the players in this new market began to use new technologies to hawk their wares," the paper says. Online sales from social media platforms such as Facebook "are one of the tools currently being used for this purpose." Machine guns made up the bulk of the Facebook offers, including six Soviet-made 12,7mm DShKMs, 11 14,5mm KPVs, and one Belgian 12,7mm FN Browning M2-type heavy machine gun. Large-caliber anti-material sniper rifles and a handful of other weapons have also been advertised on Facebook, according to the research.
Its crazy to think that people would discuss a business transaction using a web based communication platform.
This is a lie! Trading guns is illegal and not allowed by Facebook!
So can we now finally build a timetravelling delorean with plutonium stolen from libian terrorist ?
I gave them a shoddy bomb casing full of used pinball machine parts.
terror book
How 'bout all of them? Russia's share of the market has dwindled significantly during the Obama years. Hillary's legacy is one to be real proud of, eh?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
FBs day.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
they found me, I don't know how but they found me. Run for it, Marty!
This sig intentionally left blank.
I couldn't find the Facebook bid increment anywhere.
How is Zuck going to monetize this?
This was Hillary Clinton's war to prove her foreign policy bona fides for her presidential run. What a disaster !
Wow: A whole 18 machine guns - man-portable ones from 1933 and 1938, and a vehicle-mounted version from 1949 (suitable for taking potshots at WW II aircraft, if you have a set of four working together, mounted on a trailer behind your Jeep).
There are collectors with far more than that many. I think typical shipments from nation-states to their anti-establishment proxies have more than that many per package.
Somehow I don't think they've found the underground arms market that's arming any major insurgency.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Is there a link to this Facebook weapons bazaar?
BOGO?
The landing of the first stage on a freaking barge was pretty damn impressive.
Central Ohio Home Theater Installation - The Theater People
The Browning .50 dates to WW I. We *still* use them today, and as far as I know there aren't any plans to replace them. Weapons in this class are simply nowhere near obsolete.
Wow: A whole 18 machine guns - man-portable ones from 1933 and 1938, and a vehicle-mounted version from 1949 (suitable for taking potshots at WW II aircraft, if you have a set of four working together, mounted on a trailer behind your Jeep).
There are collectors with far more than that many. I think typical shipments from nation-states to their anti-establishment proxies have more than that many per package.
Somehow I don't think they've found the underground arms market that's arming any major insurgency.
, , , and MANPAD and antitank missiles.
From second link; "The research group recorded 1,346 sales over the course of the last 18 months and found between 250 and 300 sales posts went up each month." That's maybe not huge, but more than you've quoted.
with Facebooks real name policy. /s
Once again Slashdot is citing Putin's propaganda machine.
Cool. Do they take PayPal?
Pentagon's mission accomplished. The world needs to wake up and stand united against the U.S and their proxy wars and illegal invasions.
arms are big money in the USA. From certain point of view you could say our main exports are maiming and death.
My God, the military has failed to integrate into the consumer society! Burn the heretics with a flood of selfie flash lights!
But those particular guns might be if they're that old. Barrels and the moving parts of the system can wear out, rendering them either less than useful or maybe even dangerous to the operator.
It's not like the military is necessarily fielding the *same* .50 Browning machine guns they used circa 1920. Even if they were, it would kind of be like ship of Theseus. The same gun, maybe, but with all new parts.
Eh, about what 2 local-to-me FB groups had for "gun for sale" posts up until the recent policy change... I even bought and sold a couple via them. Only 2 machine guns listed in the whole time I remember... buddy of mine bought one of them, he's still waiting on his tax stamp but the FFL/SOT he's using for the transfer has a range so at least he has "visitation rights" until the stamp comes in. I should buy him a "stamp collector" t-shirt....
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
I wish people would make at least an attempt at informing themselves before they try to be authoritative about things they do not understand.
First of all, the Dushki in questions are Ms, which means that they are not from the Thirties. They date at the very least from the late Forties, and were manufactured well into the Eighties. I remember when we started replacing them in Bulgaria, and we were manufacturing the NSV (Nikitin-Sokolov-Volkov) ourselves. Countries that did not manufacture the superseding machine guns (NSV or Kord) must have kept theirs. In the early 2000s, the DShks were still one of the most common heavy machine gun. They are not obsolete by any means.
Second, those guns have proved themselves against relatively modern planes and helicopters, as the British (for some reason) have been learning through the Eighties, Nineties and Oughts.
Third, this heavy machine gun is a pretty solid piece of work. The barrel you have to keep keep replacing anyway, if you ever use it in earnest, but the rest of it is solid and lasts for long time. I remember tinkering with the three heavies we had in the 80s in Bulgaria, and the dushka was the one with the simplest, most solid inner workings.
Fourth, I am sure that GAU-19 and Kord are much superior, but those are probably orders of magnitude more expensive, and probably impossible to get unless you are well connected (which unfortunately describes the people in whose facilities ISIS goes shopping) So a DShk is still a very desirable machine gun, and in a completely different class from RPKs, let alone good ole AKs and their ilk.
So, no, these are not museum pieces, but rather effective death dealing machines.
No good deed goes unpunished...
Yes. I gave it 18 likes.
Meh. My are has three dealers large enough to do that every month including an occasional small artillery piece or functional tank changing owners.
Excellent post! Unfortunately, you just scared the hell out of these kids on slashdot, and showed that the others have no idea what the are talking about.
I don't doubt East Bloc design heavy machine guns are simple and reliable, but they're still machines, and in the case of Libya, being stored and operated in one of the worst environments for any machine with moving parts and mating surfaces.
And for the last couple of years, used, maintained and stored by irregulars without any specific education in their operation and maintenance. I'm sure even conscripts in Bulgaria were basically mechanical engineers in comparison to their recent Libyan operators.
Basically, they're gonna wear and at best become less reliable and at worst become unusable.
My guess, though, is that as long as any heavy machine gun fires semi-reliably, even if the barrel is shot, it's still a pretty formidable weapon out to a few hundred meters. 12.x mm HMG projectiles are lethal and destructive even at substandard velocity and in a lot of cases volume of fire will make up for what's lost in accuracy, at least at ground targets.
From second link; "The research group recorded 1,346 sales over the course of the last 18 months and found between 250 and 300 sales posts went up each month."
And how does that compare to, say, the classified section of (the somewhat misnamed) Shotgun News?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
rt.com is Russian state propaganda. You should know it is bogus when you see the domain.
I only came in to see if anybody noticed. No, they were too busy making jokes I guess.
Erm, you know this is /., right?
We don't deal with facts or correct info here, we're in for the laughs.