So, they won’t sell to any country then?
H&K will no longer sell weapons to countries not in NATO. This bit amused me:
The company, one of the world’s best-known gunmakers, will in future only sell to countries that are democratic and free from corruption and that are members of NATO or NATO members’ partners, DPA said, citing company sources.
November 30th, 2016 at 7:17 pm
Countries that are “free from corruption”? What countries, if any, are those? Have any such countries ever existed?
November 30th, 2016 at 7:20 pm
They will only sell to middle men with PO boxes in a NATO country.
December 1st, 2016 at 9:34 am
Actually, this kind of makes sense. In 2007, another European gun company wanted to sell 30,000 pistols to the Iranian Defense Ministry, but the company’s country’s government would not sign off on the end user certificate, lest the pistols be used against them (and us) by the Iranian military. So the company sold the pistols to the Iranian Interior Ministry instead, after Iran promised, promised, promised the pistols would only go to the Iranian police and never, never, never be used in any military capacity. That one sailed right through, and Iran got their guns.
If you want to sell to only the good guys, you have to draw a line. Nobody is a hundred percent good, but selling only to NATO countries is a sensible way to insure that your guns are never used against you.
December 1st, 2016 at 10:44 am
Could NATO please stockpile humongous amounts of modern firearms and ammo, like the Soviets and NATO did back in the Cold War, so that in 20 or 30 years some really nice, well-maintained weaponry gets put on the surplus market for pennies on the dollar? I’d like to pre-order some H&K handguns, and subguns, and maybe a few M-4s for my future grandkids.
December 1st, 2016 at 7:24 pm
Does that make my HK91 more valuable?
December 4th, 2016 at 2:07 pm
@mikee, in that case it’s likely that such weapons would be destroyed lest “they fall into the wrong hands”. I believe that happened a few years back when M-1 rifles originally sent to South Korea were not allowed to be sold as milsurps to us by the Obama Administration lest “they fall into the wrong hands”.