2aguy
Diamond Member
- Jul 19, 2014
- 112,243
- 52,465
- Thread starter
- #181
A little more on France.....and fully automatic military rifles....the ones that are illegal on the Continent, in France and in Paris....
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France’s real gun problem
Despite these strict laws, France seems to be awash with guns. The guns used in high-profile terror attacks are really just the tip of the iceberg. In 2012, French authorities estimated that there were around 30,000 guns illegally in the country, many likely used by gangs for criminal activities. Of those guns, around 4,000 were likely to be "war weapons," Le Figaro reported, referring to items such as the Kalashnikov AK-variant rifles and Uzis. Statistics from the National Observatory for Delinquency, a government body created in 2003, suggest that the number of guns in France has grown by double digits every year.
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This is How AK-47s Get to Paris
France outlaws most gun ownership and it’s almost impossible to legally acquire a high-powered rifle such as an AK-47, so where did the weapons in the Nov. 13 terror attack—not to mention the bloody January assault by Islamic terrorists on the Paris office ofCharlie Hebdo magazine and the 2012 shootings by a militant in Toulouse—come from?
Guns soon became a major export commodity in the Balkans. Western Europe is the target market. “Many firearms trafficked in Europe come from the western Balkans after being held illegally after recent conflicts in the area,” Europol reported. In just one case from 2014, Slovakian cops intercepted a truck trying to enter the country with “a large number of grenades and firearms,”according to Europol. “The vehicle was travelling from Bosnia and Herzegovina to Sweden.”
And it’s not like the stream of weapons will end when dealers in the Balkans run out of war-vintage leftovers. “One of the reasons we see a lot of Kalashnikovs and AK-47s on the black market is because Russia has just upgraded the Kalashnikov,” Kathie Lynn Austin, an expert on arms trafficking with the Conflict Awareness Project, told Al Jazeera, “and that has created massive stockpiles of the older models.”
On March 6, 2012, French lawmakers passed a law tightening up gun regulation and increasing penalties for illegal ownership. Just five days later, Mohamed Merah—a French jihadist of Algerian descent—went on shooting rampage, killing seven people in three separate attacks in around Toulouse before a police sniper shot him dead.
Merah’s arsenal included an AK-47, an Uzi, a Sten submachine gun, a shotgun, and several pistols—all illegal. “He could only supply himself on the black market or from crime organizations, that’s clear,” Thierry Coste, a pro-gun lobbyist, told The Christian Science Monitor.
In October 2014, French police raided several homes across the country, breaking up an Internet-based smuggling ring, arresting 48 suspected traffickers, and seizing hundreds of illegal guns. Three months later on Jan. 7 this year, jihadist gunmen wielding AK-47s shot up Charlie Hebdo in Paris, killing 12 people.
