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.

  • 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.

    • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
      55·
      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 @[email protected]. 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.