The Secret Online Weapons Store That’ll Sell Anyone Anything

[RedRocco]

http://gizmodo.com/5927379/the-secret-online-weapons-store-thatll-sell-anyone-anything?popular=true

The Armory began as an offshoot of The Silk Road, notable as the Internet's foremost open drug bazaar, where anything from heroin and meth to Vicodin and pot can be picked out and purchased like a criminal Amazon.com. It's virtually impossible to trace, and entirely anonymous. But apparently guns were a little too hot for The Silk Road's admins, who broke the site off from the main narcotics carnival. Now guns, ammo, explosives, and more have their own shadowy home online, far from the piles of Dutch coke and American meth. But the same rules apply: with nothing more than money and a little online savoir faire, you can buy extremely powerful, deadly weapons—Glocks, Berettas, PPKs, AK-47s, Bushmaster rifles, even a grenade—in secret, shipped anywhere in the world.

So I wondered, just how easy is it to get a gun? A semi-auto, 9mm Beretta 92FS with "No scratches or dents, very slight wear from extremely light usage" would hit me for 338.69 bitcoins. At the current Bitcoin/Dollar exchange of roughly 9-to-1, that's a little over $3,000. A stiff markup. But that got me thinking: what if you wanted to go beyond arming yourself? What if you wanted something more powerful, or more plentiful? What if you weren't just interested in self-defense or hunting? What if you wanted to, say, arm a 20-person paramilitary group to overthrow a West African government in a Internet-armed coup d'état? Could a band of anonymous weapon mongers prepare me and 19 imaginary compatriots for illegal warfare? If you've got a spare million or so, looks like the answer is yes.

[d_r]

1. I think there'd be a lot easier

and cheaper ways to arm 20 people than a million bucks in bitcoin and hoping customs doesn't look in the package