EU gun control plans under fire

There are about 81 million illicit firearms across the EU.

The European Union made headlines with new gun-control rules this week, but experts say implementing them across the 28 member counties could prove a moving and potentially hazardous target.

Case in point: A decommissioned firearm in Denmark means the weapon has been sawed in half. In Netherlands, its parts have been welded together. In Slovakia, decommissioned guns can easily be restored to kill.

“The Commission took a couple of steps more than I expected. I think this is direct result of [the attacks in Paris],” said Nils Duquet of the Flemish Peace Institute, adding that national police report seeing more military-style guns.

While Europeans tend to see the debate on gun control as a U.S. preoccupation, especially in the aftermath of mass killings, there are as many as 81 million illicit firearms across the European Union, according to a Commission study last year.

Dealing with deactivated weapons will be the first and almost immediate change to the 2009 EU guns directive. The other proposals, including a ban on semi-automatic weapons, will have to be debated and approved by the European Parliament and Council.

Lawmakers should brace for strong resistance from hunters and sportsmen, who fear it will seriously restrict legal owners.

“It seems to be that the Commission now wants to show quick activism after these terrible attacks, but they are going too far,” said Hans Schollen, a lawyer and president of a German sporting association, the VDS.

One of the amendments, for example, calls for “stricter rules to ban certain semi-automatic firearms, which will not, under any circumstance, be allowed to be held by private persons, even if they have been permanently deactivated,” according to a Commission press release.

What’s more, the guns directive doesn’t offer immediate solutions to the most pressing problem of improving coordination and information sharing among law enforcement so guns can be more easily tracked.

Interior ministers from across Europe met Friday in Brussels to discuss security and information sharing, and the illegal guns trade.

This reactivation of firearms has long been an issue in Europe, with guns moving from countries with lax rules in Central and Eastern Europe to countries like France and Belgium, which both have strong gun laws.

The flow of illegal weapons to Belgium is well-known. Over the last couple of years, national police forces have observed an uptick in the number of military-style weapons like AK-47s being used by criminals and terrorists. The weapons usually come to Western Europe from the Balkans in small quantities, but move easily between countries in the EU Schengen zone.

Cédric Poitevin, an arms researcher with the Group for Research and Information on Peace and Security, said the rules for deactivated guns, which take effect in three months and must be enforced in every member state, will raise the standards for how countries decommission weapons. They will bring many EU countries — particularly those in Eastern Europe — into line with the guidance of international organizations like the International Commission for the Proof of Small Arms.

However, some of the other proposed changes to the directive seemed vague, Poitevin said. Along with semi-automatic weapons, there are proposed directives on how guns will be marked so they can be traced, on more information sharing between member states about weapons registries and “tighter rules on the online acquisition of firearms.”

“It’s a real challenge for member states to control online acquisition of firearms,” Poitevin said. “They say they’re intending to do this, but they don’t say anything about how they’re going to do this.”

 Hans von der Burchard contributed reporting.

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