The traders operate in the capital Sana’a and other areas under control of the Houthis.

Weapons dealers in Yemen are openly using the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, to sell Kalashnikovs, pistols, grenades and grenade-launchers.

The traders operate in the capital Sana’a and other areas under control of the Houthis, a rebel group backed by Iran and proscribed as terrorists by the US and Australian governments.

The advertisements are mostly in Arabic and aimed primarily at Yemeni customers in a country where the number of guns is often said to outnumber the population by three to one.

The BBC has found several examples online, offering weapons at prices in both Yemeni and Saudi riyals.

The words beside the weapons are designed to lure in the buyers.

“Premium craftsmanship and top-notch warranty,” says one advertisement. “The Yemeni-modified AK is your best choice.”

A demonstration video, filmed at night, shows the seller blasting off a 30-round magazine on full automatic.

Another offers sand-coloured Pakistani-produced Glock pistols for around $900 each.

  • talEnglish
    138·
    3 months ago

    Kalashinokovs

    A file picture of an AK47 rifle and ammunition

    An AK-47 is an assault rifle, not a machine gun.

    Assault rifles – the main weapon that most countries issue their infantry these days – are a weapon that are typically used in semi-automatic mode, but also have a select fire mode to optionally fire in burst or fully-automatic mode. They can’t sustain fully-automatic fire for an extended period of time.

    Machine guns are heavier weapons that can deal with dissipating more heat and so are more-amenable to be fired in fully-automatic mode for a sustained period of time.

    If you wanted a machine gun that’d go with the AK-47, it’d be something like the RPD.

    I have a sneaking suspicion that journalists intentionally do this to make their articles sound more exciting, because every time I see a weapon term used incorrectly – often calling a weapon a machine gun or some lighter vehicle a “tank” – I saw this done in some media with VN-4s during the Venezuelan political unrest, which is not a vehicle that looks much like a tank – it is substituting a more-powerful weapon for a less-powerful one, and not the reverse.

    • Ellia Plissken@lemm.eeEnglish
      144·
      3 months ago

      taking a word that has different meaning in different contexts and insisting that it can only have one possible meaning just so you can sound smarter than others is not where it’s at.

      according to US legal code,

      The term “machinegun” means any weapon which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily restored to shoot, automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger.

      • talEnglish
        65·
        3 months ago

        Sure, but that’s also not the common-use definition; it includes things like bump stocks. There are plenty of examples in which legal terminology doesn’t reflect plain English, and the journalist obviously isn’t using US legalese.

        • spunge@lemmy.worldEnglish
          5·
          3 months ago

          id call the common use of the term machine gun to be any automatic firearm accurate enough, but you also have a point about inflated language

          • Jiggle_Physics@lemmy.worldEnglish
            13·
            3 months ago

            Just because it is common around you doesn’t mean it is common on a societal scale, which is the one they are speaking to. You know this. You know, that the general public defines guns this way. The technical definition is not the common one.

              • Jiggle_Physics@lemmy.worldEnglish
                2·
                3 months ago

                I apologize, the way my phone collapses a lot of comments to fit the screen made it look like you were @tal@lemmy.today. Which made it seem like you were saying, basically the opposite. I didn’t notice the difference in commenter names until I expanded each little downward pointing chevron on this thread.

        • ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          2·
          3 months ago

          it includes things like bump stocks

          Not anymore! Thanks to a court case, bump stocks, FRTs, and the like are all legal once again. Swiftlinks are still illegal though.

          Also the news is totally doing exactly what you imply, they do it every time. Hell they are fond of calling the AR-15 “high powered” despite the .223 round carrying about as much kenetic energy as a hot .357 mag round, or calling standard capacity magazines “high capacity” because despite it being the standard it’s higher than their arbitrarily set “low” number, or even calling things “fully semi-automatic” which is just word vomit. They don’t care, because the people who are knowledgeable about the subject are already incapable of being manipulated like that sure, but most of the general public is not knowledgeable about it so the percentage works out in their favor to get views. Eventually (and I think soon,) they’ll overuse it and maybe it’ll start to lose its effect.

          That said, most people do just mean “gun that fires full auto” for “machine guns,” including machine pistols like the Glock 18. They’re not typically making a distinction between LMG, SMG, etc, unless they do specify “LMG.” I have no doubt these AKs are full auto (I’d be surprised to learn they were semi-auto actually), and thus they would fit the commonly used definition of “machine gun” enough that I won’t give them guff about it. This time.

    • ayyy@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      4·
      3 months ago

      Actually strawberries are an accessory fruit, not a berry. Ha, now it is I who is smarter than you!

    • xwolpertinger@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      3 months ago

      Weird attempt at being pedantic considering that this is undoubtedly not an actual AK-47

      Also the AK and StG 44 are clearly submachine guns based on their developmental history, and submachine gun is clearly a very small machine gun. And the US legal definition agrees :B