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.
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.