When the Paris terrorist attacks occurred on Friday, the article that got the most traffic on TTAG was this this one about French gun laws. Tens of thousands read it and they learned that France has some of the most restrictive gun laws in the world. Just about all the guns the jihadis used and everything they did was illegal. Semi-auto rifles require a special license which, you’ll be surprised to learn, the terrorists didn’t have. You can only transport a gun to and from approved ranges, which the terrorists most definitely did not. And the list goes on. So now given the success of French gun laws at preventing the carnage, the European Union is apparently preparing to enact more gun control measures, specifically an “assault weapons ban” based solely on cosmetic features . . .
From UK Shooting News:
A Polish newspaper article (in Polish) reveals that a source referred to as “PAP” – evidently some kind of shooters’ association, though its exact identity is lost in translation – disclosed the proposals yesterday.
Central to the proposal is a ban on all semi-automatic rifles “similar to that used by the military”. While UK Shooting News is relying on Google Translate, translations of this concept from other reports on the same topic seem to indicate that the EU wants to go down the American route of banning firearms from civilian ownership depending on their looks.
(Read the entire EU proposal here.)
In the wake of mass murder, EU is preparing a knee-jerk reaction to the Paris attacks, impotently lashing out in the only way they know how: by further restricting law abiding citizens without actually going after criminals.
The concept of an “assault weapons” ban has pretty much been proven to be completely ineffective. In 2013 even the assiduously anti-gun Obama Administration Department of Justice issued a memo detailing why an “assault weapons” ban would do exactly nothing to stop criminals and “mass shooters.” There’s no reason to believe a similar law would be any more effective in Europe.
No one is saying that the attacks in Paris weren’t heinous, and that something must be done to combat the terrorist threat. The difference is in how to go about it. The EU parliament seems to think that further punishing their citizens and restricting their ability to defend themselves is the best way to fight jihadi-perpetrated attacks. A better solution would be to actually go after the people responsible. Or allowing Europeans to defend themselves using deadly force. But no one expects anything that drastic any time soon.