If you have time, click here to read our post Mon Dieu! A Review of French Gun Laws. If you don’t, the summary is simple enough: “You might as well forget about carrying a firearm for self-defense. That requires an entirely different permit process that makes California concealed-carry look like a cake-walk. Think judges in criminal trials, high-ranking politicians, and people with enough political grease but certainly not your average Jacques.” Which brings us to a recent nytimes.com article . . .
A worker at the Nice airport, Franck, who was on a motor scooter, decided in a split second to chase the truck and when he caught up, rammed it — to no avail — and was knocked off. He got up and ran after the truck, managed to climb onto the running boards and began hitting the driver through the open window. As the driver, Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, tried to shoot Franck his gun failed and at the same time, Franck tried to open the door of the truck, then tried climbing through the window, but the driver struck him on the head with the gun and he fell, breaking a rib and badly bruising his back.
Franck said he was satisfied that when the driver was fighting with him, he was not running over more people. “He was concentrating on me; in that moment he could not kill people,” he said.
At least two other men made similar, if less prolonged, efforts and also received medals from the City of Nice: Alexander Migues pursued the truck on a bicycle, and Gwenaël Leriche, a 26-year-old deliveryman, ran after the truck armed with nothing but a penknife and tried to jump onto the running boards as the truck came to a halt.
If any of these “average Jaques” heroes had been armed with a gun, a lot fewer than 86 people might have been killed. What more needs saying about the folly of gun control in general and French gun laws in particular? Or the wisdom of carrying a firearm for self-defense and defense of all innocent life?