Some assault rifles used by the Islamic militants in the Nov 13 Paris attacks and later seized in police raids were produced in the former Yugoslavia’s state arsenal, the company’s director said on Saturday.
Milojko Brzakovic, director of the Zastava (Banner) Arms factory in the city of Kragujevac in central Serbia, said that they were part of a batch of M70 assault rifles, a improved Yugoslav copy of the Soviet-designed AK47, produced in 1987 and 1988.
Source: Some guns used in Paris attacks produced in ex-Yugoslavia’s arsenal | Reuters
Wait! That cannot be! The Liberal Think Tanks were chomping at the bits and waiting for the news that they guns were obtained at a gun shown in the US via the loophole!
Wait, it gets better:
In the 1970s and 1990s the company was also a major arms exporter to the then-Yugoslavia’s allies in Africa, Asia and the Middle East and it is still a exports to a number of markets including the United States.
They were literally giving those away at discount prices and by the boxcar back then. In some cases, they were just “donated for the cause.” As for the imports to the US, they were never than many back then and that stopped dry when Elder Bush slammed the door down on their importation back in 1989 and paid for it by losing the re-election
Most of the Western Balkans is awash with hundreds of thousands of illegal weapons that remained in private hands and organised crime gangs following wars and unrest in the 1990s and weapons smuggling persists.
Nobody is sure how many AK-pattern rifles were built under the old Soviet regime but most agree that it is way past the seven figures. They are so cheap (anywhere but here in the US) that during the filming of the movie Lord of War, produces rented a warehouse full of the real things because it was cheaper than using prop guns.
You can now imagine the tons of soiled undies that populate the European Governments as you read this. No amount of gun tracing will help figure out where the “displaced” AKs went, they can only wait for them to make their appearance at some undisclosed public place in the hands of Jihadists.
But let’s pass some more gun control regulations, if anything to appear we are doing something fruitful, shall we?
Hat tip: Asociación Nacional del Arma de España.
Sadly, that’s been a well known fact (at least among LEOs in Europe since the late 70’s…
Cannot remember if you’ve ever posted on this, so
https://reason.com/archives/2012/12/22/gun-restrictions-have-always-bred-defian
One part:
Well, says the Small Arms Survey, a research outfit established by the Swiss government, the United Kingdom, with just shy of 1.8 million legal firearms, has about four million illegal guns. Belgium, with about 458,000 legal firearms, has roughly two million illegal guns. In Germany, the number is 7.2 million legal guns and between 17 and 20 million off-the-books examples of things that go “bang” (a figure with which the German Police Union very publicly agrees). France, says the Survey, has 15-17 million unlawful firearms in a nation where 2.8 million weapons are held in compliance with the law.