The European Parliament re-started its maneuvers to impose stricter gun control with what we fear the most: Confiscation without compensation.
Unfortunately the video is in Spanish, but for those of you who can understand it, here you go.
The questions that the woman ask are two: Do we know how many of the Category B under Council Directive 91/477/EEC are out there and what about compensation.
Category B – Firearms subject to authorization
1. Semi-automatic or repeating short firearms.
2. Single-shot short firearms with centre-fire percussion.
3. Single-shot short firearms with rimfire percussion whose overall length is less than 28 cm.
4. Semi-automatic long firearms whose magazine and chamber can together hold more than three rounds.
5. Semi-automatic long firearms whose magazine and chamber cannot together hold more than three rounds, where the loading device is removable or where it is not certain that the weapon cannot be converted, with ordinary tools, into a weapon whose magazine and chamber can together hold more than three rounds.
6. Repeating and semi-automatic long firearms with smooth-bore barrels not exceeding 60 cm in length.
7. Semi-automatic firearms for civilian use which resemble weapons with automatic mechanisms.
The man replies that they do not have an accurate account as of yet due to each countries record keeping issues but that they are working on it. And on the subject of compensation the amount will be a big fat zero.
It is obvious that they wouldn’t be talking about compensation if they were not planning on a continent-wide confiscation order. European Gun Right organizations are pissed off as they were assured that no confiscation would be happening, only some extra controls to make sure guns would not end in the hands of the bad guys… a song we are very much familiar with but they were not.
That there was an raid in Brussels itself where four cops were wounded and a Jihadist asshole linked to the Paris attack was killed might have closed the brains of the politicos and decided to play into the hands of those who do not like regular folks to reply with gunfire attacks on them.
The only issue the European Parliament has in its hands is Finland who has made very clear they will not disarm. Maybe they will be the fly in the ointment and stop this nonsense or maybe not and decided to go against the Crazy Ones. I heard somewhere that there are two major principles in European warfare: 1) Never invade Russia in the Winter and 2) You just don’t fuck with the Finns.
This is going to be a very interesting year in Europe.
(Think Chinese curse.)
You can view yesterday’s IMCO hearing here:
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/news-room/20160310IPR18692/Committee-on-the-Internal-Market-and-Consumer-Protection
Half is English (sometimes painful-to-hear-quasi-Engrish) and there are translations available. Translations are live and are sometimes a bit broken. So don’t get your hopes too high.
There’s a number of governments (Finland, Estonia, Switzerland …) where armies are mostly reserve/national guard where people are expected to keep their rifle at home and practice on their own. There was recently offered to carve waivers for those countries to try and get them to support that shitty project. But it seems they understand the real consequences and that it would still undercut their ability to defend themselves (by weakening/killing the gun culture). And when Russia is one of your close (and angry) neighbor, that’s not something you like.
There was a lot of talk regarding deactivated and blank firing guns and the ability – actual or only in a politico’s head – to turn them to live-fire guns.
Lots of talks on what firearms parts should have S/N. What is or is not an “essential firearms part”.
In terms of outright bans, the sweeping ban based on looks seems hard to implement. They’re still actively pushing to ban semi-auto firearms that were converted from full autos. But there are counter-proposals to implement a standard on such conversions (like in Germany where the conversion has to be approved by the administration). A ban on converted firearms would make lots of historical and surplus firearms unavailable.
There’s also the typical anti-gun proposition: banning standard capacity magazines. One dumbass cop from the Belgian Federal Police even pushed for serial numbers on 10 round magazines with mags registration!
The Finnish MEP quickly pointed out that there are millions of standard capacity magazines across the EU.
Here’s a good write-up of where we’re at : https://www.all4shooters.com/en/Shooting/law/EU-Gun-Ban-update-March-2016/
Things are far from over and we’ll have to mass-mail MEPs during the months to come to dispel the lies from the Commission/anti-gunners and point out. But things are not totally gloomy.
And this is why I have the best readers of the Gunsphere.
You’re making me blush!
@Calimero Great info. Thank you.
Oh my yes, excellent summary. PLEASE keep us up to date with what’s going on?
We get very little “as it happens” news from people who are close to the actual issues abroad so this is awesome information and insight.