If the multiple shooting and hostage situations this week in Paris had occurred in the United States, we would expect more carnage as a result of legal firearms being freely available stateside. So went the opinion provided by Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson on MSNBC today.
“Just to keep it into perspective,” he said as Andrea Mitchell wrapped up an hour of covering the two police raids on hostage-takers in France, “I don’t think we should imagine that the conditions and the threat are exactly the same in the United States as they are in France. They are different.”
Huh? I guess the poor terrorists were hindered by France’s “One Fully Automatic and Illegal Kalashnikov a month” law. God forbid they would have attacked and killed people like this:
Hat Tip to Mark L. A. and John D. F.
So… wait. What does he expect them to be upgrading to? Because if you want to kill a lot of people and don’t really care who, a fully-automatic AK-47 is pretty much the way to go.
French security forces routinely find caches of AK’s in and around the no-go Muslim enclaves. They’re smuggled in from Eastern Europe and Africa, along with the inhabitants of those enclaves, qat, and rafts of other drugs. So the mujaheddin will be well-armed, better armed than the folks Robinson would call “gun nuts” here in the US.
Meanwhile, the average Frenchman has to jump through hoops to be permitted to defend himself.
Since AK’s have been made in the caves of Afghanistan, I would not at all be surprised that many are not manufactured in the “No Go Zones”
is it really a no-go Muslim enclave if the French security forces are routinely there seizing things?
[waves hand] the cognitive dissonance is strong with this one.
Interesting take. We wrote about something similar here: http://nationalcarryacademy.com/regulating-gun-control/ Maybe someone will find it useful.
– Robert M.
As I’m on the road, I haven’t followed these events closely but it appears that on a video by the Vincennes shooter (the one getting extra holes in the vid) he’s showing off a shortened Sa vz 58 which is quite a departure from the typical AK variant sourced from the Balkans.
Gun stores in France have been targeted over the years. Usually a group taking the business owner’s family hostage at home and then taking the owner back to the stop/warehouse and load everything they can.
About two years ago about 40 guns including ARs were stolen that way.
And about 7 or 8 years ago 250 handguns were hauled off by possibly the ETA(Basques) from the S&W/CZ importer.
No later than a month ago, a gunshop owner in the Alps was attacked by two unidentified thugs but he was able to shoot at them and drve them off.
But full auto rifles obviously come from underground sources and not theft as only semi-auto guns can be owned in France.