[MadMax]

Well, customs duties don't primarily deal with firearms. For the most part they spend most of their time trying to categorize things to figure out how to tax them. Everything thats easily proven permissible for import still has to be categorized and taxed and that takes a shitload of effort. Most of the people in customs do just this and they're not particularly well trained in the handling or identification of firearms components.

Their number one job is categorization and taxation. Number two is interdicting prohibited substances and devices. Number three is permitting things that look prohibited but aren't in a manner which does not damage the thing to be permitted.

I don't mean to understate the frustration in receiving a broken or delayed thing. It's bloody infuriating. It just helps to understand that we import stuff that's just on the good side of legal but looks well into the prohibited side of legal. When I travel with demo hand grenades, I don't bring anything that says grenade and I grind off all the scary words on my demo models so my grenades look like plastic cylinders which are taken apart so they don't look like anything sinister.

Even when assembled, my grenades don't look like real grenades. I just hate the industrial strength laxatives they make you drink and the intense physical and psycological examinations when you do benign but scary looking work.

I've seen a UPS warehouse and the amount of stuff crossing our borders is mind boggling. I can't imagine how a service could be scaled to carefully pick through stuff and never break a thing and also stop prohibited stuff and apply appropriate taxes to said non prohibited things.