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Damn; that sounds like  it could have been written yesterday.

Controlling human behavior is apparently an age old science.

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Seems about right, but if there's a 'shooting culture' in Western Europe, France is in that camp.



I visited a gun store in Paris -- Armurerie de la Bourse -- on a trip to France.   The inventory they had was probably like what a gun store in Massachusetts might have, I guess.   I managed to stumble in there on a lark after touring The Louvre and decided to walk north a bit to see what that part of the city was like.  I was about to turn around right when I found their store.



I don't speak the language aside from 'Thank you' and 'Goodbye' like a typical American tourist, but they realized I was an American (and not British) immediately and treated me like an honored guest and spoke in pretty decent English which was nice of them.  They had Manhurin pistols (good quality S&W-like clones), MagPul gear for ARs, Hk/Glock/Sig/CZ pistols, and basically a lot of what you'd expect to find in the USA. The ARs were made in Spain and Germany and all seemed to be SBRs (they don't care about length once you have the permit to get a military semi-auto) and the premium price was curiously on the full-length rifles.  They have manual single shot versions of the same.  They did have a lot of 1911 IPSC match crap, like compensated 1911s with frame-mounted rails with red dot sights, etc.  They didn't offer to let me handle anything, but I think I would have declined anyway.  They wanted to know what my gun laws were like and if I owned anything interesting.   They were all 'gun guys' just like us.



I sort of understand how French gun laws work with their categorized 'point' system and it seemed that if there's any firearms that they didn't seem to fret about much it was shotguns.  They had racks of pretty mundane Fudd-type long arms, but down the row there were tactical counter-terror police shotguns with pistol grips and extended tube mags -- Benelli, Franchi, Beretta, Remington.  They were heavy on 'tactical'-type accessories and had the latest stuff priced at about the same prices we pay in dollars.  This gun store was sort of an exception to the typical French gun store in that they carried paramilitary arms where most French gun shops cater to the wealthy tweedy rural elitist goose hunters in knee-high riding boots and shooting caps.



Only thing that really jumped out at me were the prices on firearms and ammo.  Firearms and ammo prices were about 150% of their price in the USA, across the board. What I thought was nice was that American-made firearms were priced and displayed like coveted merchandise;  Americans seem to put a premium on Euro-made firearms, and the French do the same with American-made arms.  People will pay big money for an M1 Garand in France, they said, and they mentioned our CMP program gives M1s away for an outright steal.



Other than that, they also had a curious amount of archery equipment, presumably because that's uncontrolled.  They had goofy pistol crossbows just like in the pics that Islamist terrorist couple took of themselves from the Paris Kosher market attack some weeks back.



Bottom line is that if you lived in France you could own ARs and suppressed Hk pistols and so on if you were diligent about jumping through all the flaming hoops.  You could probably even live in metropolitan Paris owning them.  That alone is better than how much liberty the gun laws now allow in a few coastal US states I could name.

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How ridiculously easy is it? Are there illegal arms dealers that everyone knows how to find, and everybody looks the other way? Do you mail-order them from somewhere where it isn't heavily controlled? Is it more similar to getting Cuban cigars here, where nobody really cares that much, or is it more similar to buying heroin, where it's available if you know where to look, but there's still significant risk involved?

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Lurk long enough in gun communities (forums or shooting range) and you'll make connections.

And I'm not talking about criminals.. Just people who collect guns..

I won't say more.

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Lurk long enough in gun communities (forums or shooting range) and you'll make connections.

And I'm not talking about criminals.. Just people who collect guns..

I won't say more.

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The "deep web" isn't the Internet equivalent of the back room in porn shops like some seem to think it is.



You can spend all day looking around with Tor or some other similar tools and you won't find much of any interest.  The real dark stuff is almost always by invitation only.  You're not going to find a mail order machine gun store and a place to buy heroin by the pound by downloading Tor and doing some searches.

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We've also had a few enterprising individuals who have manufactured SMGs from scratch on a semi-industrial scale, and sold them to gangs all over the country. In addition Com-Bloc surplus is plentiful.

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It is very easy it get illegal guns in Europe.  

Before the Wall fell, it wasn't super-difficult, due to the huge number of WW2 era weapons squirreled away.  But after Eastern Europe opened up  and especially the wars in the Balkans, it became ridiculously easy.

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That number seems extraordinarily high.

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That is not correct.

While firearm ownership is possible in most European countries, there are typically onerous requirements beyond just licensing, and there are often serious restrictions on WHAT you can own.  In numerous countries, semi-auto rifles are simply not allowed, or if they are allowed are limits to 3 shots.  In other countries, you are not allowed to own anything in a "military" caliber.  Sure, there are a few decent countries, like Switzerland, Finland, Czecholoslvaki and to a certain extend France - but for most of Europe, I would disagree with your suggestion that you can get "just about everything"

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You can own pistols and semi-auto rifles in Denmark. There's a lot of hoops to jump through though.

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That is not correct.

While firearm ownership is possible in most European countries, there are typically onerous requirements beyond just licensing, and there are often serious restrictions on WHAT you can own.  In numerous countries, semi-auto rifles are simply not allowed, or if they are allowed are limits to 3 shots.  In other countries, you are not allowed to own anything in a "military" caliber.  Sure, there are a few decent countries, like Switzerland, Finland, Czecholoslvaki and to a certain extend France - but for most of Europe, I would disagree with your suggestion that you can get "just about everything"

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  France has been the host to significant fighting in two major wars...  If the number is accurate I'd expect that's the source of most of them.

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In a 75 year period, France was invaded three times by Germany alone.    



We aren't counting the Spanish Civil War, all the battles of WWI & WWII, the issues in 1920s-1930s Germany and Italy, the Soviet wars of expansion in the 1920s, the Russian Civil War, the Winter War, the Greek Civil War, Anti Soviet Partisans uo to the 1960s, etc....



Europe has been in bloodshed and conflict from 1900 to 2000 with out a break somewhere on that fucking continent. Either major wars or small scale shit. But somewhere at all times; someone was killing someone.

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What do they do when they are being beheaded by Muslims?  Or when youts invade homes?

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Guns walk off battlefields and into people's ownership.  

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A large amount of the illegal weapons are just guns that people had bought before they were licensed and they didn't get the papers for or turn them in. In Sweden most illegal weapons are owned by 70+ y/o

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  Do they go apeshit there if someone finds a couple guns or rounds of ammo, like they do in England?