French gunman's arsenal spotlights illegal arms trade

[hack89]

(Reuters) - As France asks itself whether it could have done more to prevent Islamist gunman Mohamed Merah shooting dead seven people in a killing spree that shook the nation, there is one question that refuses to go away: how did he obtain so many guns.

The size and nature of the arsenal amassed by Merah - who stockpiled at least eight guns including a Kalashnikov assault rifle and an Uzi machine pistol - has focused attention on the easy availability of illegal weapons in France and their growing use in ultra-violent crimes.

Just weeks after France tightened gun laws which were already among the strictest in the world, the issue has blown into the political debate ahead of an April-May presidential election.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/23/us-france-shooting-guns-idUSBRE82M14620120323

Criminals will always get guns.

[Johnny Rico]

1. An "arsenal" of eight guns? n/t

[shadowrider]

2. Pretty soon an arsenal will be considered anything more than one

[ileus]

3. Eight.....how much more dangerous can one get?

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

4. +1

Only the law abiding will be limited by the law.

[BiggJawn]

5. "Arsenal"?

Didn't know Reuters was into sensationalism, too...

[PoliticAverse]

6. "how did he obtain so many guns" ? Apparently someone broke the law.

Laws only stop people unwilling to break the law.

[Callisto32]

12. My grandfather always used to say...

"locks only keep your friends out."

[gejohnston]

7. I don't know if France's law are among the strictest

but before the latest changes, it was one of the most complex.
Since both of these guns were full auto we know this much:
they were not stolen from a French gun owner
they were not purchased from a gun store

[shadowrider]

8. No, they were sold at an Arizona gun shop then smuggled

into France so this guy could build an arsenal. I didn't know lax American gun laws could have such far reached effects.

Do I really need the sarcasm thingy?

[oneshooter]

9. I thought one of them came from the NYPD garage sale?

[sarisataka]

10. Check against Fast and Furious

Maybe the cartels are really just a front for French terrorists

[Oneka]

23. Via Mexico, with ATF approval? n/t

[rl6214]

11. Stockpiled 8 guns?

Piker

[CTyankee]

14. I know! We do such a better job at stockpiling and killing ...

pretty funny when you think of those dead kids...what a laugh riot...

[CTyankee]

13. what this proves to me is that Merah was determined, fanatical and found a soft spot in the

tough gun regulations in Marseille, a port city historically known for being a rough place.

We have our criminals getting guns all the time. This was an obvious outlier for France. To compare the ease with which criminals always get guns in this country and the Merah situation is just laughable.

Yep, criminals will always get guns. More so here of course, many, many more...

[gejohnston]

15. not a soft spot in the regulation

unless you are saying that there is a machine gun loophole in the French law. Three of his weapons: the AK (I'm guessing it was a real AK, not a semi auto knock off.), Uzi, and Sten were all full auto. The Sten can easily be made in a 1940s bicycle shop. In fact, a lot of them were in France, Denmark, and Poland.

[CTyankee]

16. my post was meant to address the obvious difference between the way we control guns here and

the way they are controlled in France.

I felt very safe when I was in France. I always feel safe from gun violence in the European cities I visit. I wish I could live there. And I think our gun policies here are barbaric.

[gejohnston]

17. Most of the US is just as safe

I feel as safe in Wyoming and parts of Florida, which is awash with guns, as I did in Japan and Korea.
Most of the US is not that different than Europe. El Paso has a lower murder rate than many Canadian cities. Vermont has the laxed gun laws in the US and always did. Their murder rate is as low if not lower than much of Europe. The problem is concentrated in areas where drug gangs took over the neighborhoods.
The problem would be better solved by dealing with ending the war on drugs, get good jobs back in the cities and the US, and equalize the wealth distribution. In other words, bring back the 1950s.

[CTyankee]

18. I'm not talking about Japan and Korea. Never been there.

Vermont is a liberal and also a very rural state. As such, they like their guns for hunting. So do the Swiss and the Norwegians. They still regulate their guns much more strictly than in the U.S. It doesn't preclude a determined fanatic slipping thru once in a great while, but that is a glaring outlier, not a depressingly familiar occasion, such as what we have seen in the U.S.

I don't know what you mean by "much of Europe." There are countries in Europe I wouldn't go to because of unsafe conditions. I prefer Western and Northern Europe where gun violence doesn't break out on a daily basis. "much of europe" is far too much of a generalization to be useful here. And while I agree with you about the drug gangs to a certain extent, we are not talking about those gangs when we talk about the guys who shot Gabby Giffords or Trayvon Martin, are we?

The Supreme Court decision on gun ownership just exacerbated the situation, IMO. I'm all for bringing back 1950s prosperity but it won't solve our problem of too many guns. Easy access to and excessive and zealous love of guns is the problem.

If I could wake up tomorrow morning in Paris, I would be very happy indeed and I would say to you "bonjour, M'sieu!"

[gejohnston]

19. I have

I lived there, Europe no so much.

Vermont is a liberal and also a very rural state. As such, they like their guns for hunting. So do the Swiss and the Norwegians. They still regulate their guns much more strictly than in the U.S. It doesn't preclude a determined fanatic slipping thru once in a great while, but that is a glaring outlier, not a depressingly familiar occasion, such as what we have seen in the U.S.

liberal or conservative has nothing to do with it. Same with Wyoming. Rural, I'll give you. You read about it more in the US and our population is higher than any place in Europe. They also have affordable mental health care.

And while I agree with you about the drug gangs to a certain extent, we are not talking about those gangs when we talk about the guys who shot Gabby Giffords or Trayvon Martin, are we?

No, not in those two cases. In JL's case, if his parents actually did anything to get his schizophrenia treated, the FBI would tell the sales clerk not to sell. Trayvon, is something totally different. I'm not a fan of trial by media simply because they usually get it wrong. Casey Anthony and Chandra Levy, among others, come to mind. During the Clinton witch hunt, my first sergeant who served on the Chicago seven jury, told us that experience taught him that what the media said and what came out in court were nothing alike. That is not to say I think Zimmerman should or will walk. I don't think he will walk. I also think he will not get a fair trial because the jury pool is poisoned. The jurors will also know about the death threats the Casey Anthony jurors received. They also know they will be accused of being racist (true or not, does not matter.)
Based on the information we have, we all agree with the guy who wrote the law. He said Zimmerman should be in jail and Sanford PD is at best inept.

[CTyankee]

20. I don't agree with the guy that wrote the syg law! Not one damn bit!

forget it, charlie. It still is about more guns in the system and more people believing in this insane Second Amendment theology, IMO.

Sure, IF JL's parents had "done something" about his illness, the clerk wouldn't sell to him. Yeah, and that would stop a crazy guy? Really? I don't think so. It's just too easy for him to get his gun illegally and being a nutcase and being that guns are so readily available and not controlled by reasonable laws, he WOULD have. Same outcome, AFAIC.

You do speak the truth that Western and Northern Europeans have better and more affordable mental health care. And that speaks volumes to me. It means that their societies value mental health care more than we do. So we are surprised when we have more nutcases, coupled with more access to guns, committing these atrocities? Huh?

It doesn't comfort me to know you think Z should be in jail and Sanford PD is inept. It still "is" what it is.

[one-eyed fat man]

21. I worked in Germany for years.

You want to live in France, just go. No one is stopping you but yourself. Well, their immigration laws might be an impediment.

Long stay visas (visa de long séjour) are only given by Consular authorities and they are a prerequisite to obtaining the right to remain in France and to obtain a stay card (carte de séjour).

[CTyankee]

22. Well, thanks so much. You are so right about the immigration laws being an impediment.

I ran into a nice couple in Florence on an art intensive tour who were American doctors that had (early) retired to France. They told me about the amount of money that had to have to retire in a bank there and the hoops they had to jump through. They also had no kids back in the U.S.

I probably couldn't do that, but I sure would like to! I would love it, if I could, and thank you for your good wishes!

Over my cafe noisette I would wish you "bonjour, M'sieur!

And I would like to add, on edit, that if more Americans knew what benefits these Europeans had, they would want to emigrate there also! Esp. women who would have 460 days of paid maternity leave in Sweden! In a country whose treasury is currently running a SURPLUS!!!

[oneshooter]

24. I have an Uncle who is in France.

Went there 8 August, 1944.
He is still there in a very nicely kept area.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhone_American_Cemetery_and_Memorial

I visited him 8 years ago when I was there on business.

Oneshooter
Armed and Livin in Texas

[CTyankee]

26. I, too, had family members who served in WW2. The lessons of totalitarianism were not lost

on them (one a paratrooper in Europe, the other a new West Point grad who served in the Pacific). When Germany had the shit kicked out of it, the lesson got learned there too. Germany today is an industrial model and constitutional democracy for our time, one that also has a social safety net that far exceeds anything lots of Americans don't even know about. I hear some very ignorant Americans decrying "socialism" like it is some sort of political hell and I just shake my head...no use arguing with them since I know they never will get a passport and travel outside the country or at least to another continent. It is appalling...

[one-eyed fat man]

29. To those who never travel beyond the tour bus...

The work I did in Germany would probably not meet with your approval. Except for those who patrolled the inter-German border, most Americans did not realize that the Berlin Wall was just a fraction of the network of fences, mines, and obstacles needed to keep the disenchanted from escaping the "Workers' Paradise."



This delightful gadget, the SM-70 (Splittermine Modell 1970) was an East German directional antipersonnel mine developed specifically for use in preventing defection across the Inner German Border (Grenze) into West Germany. the mines were cone-shaped, trip wire activated, and aimed parallel with the fence line, and intended to kill or incapacitate anyone attempting to climb or cut through the fence with a massive shotgun-like blast of ball bearings.

Approximately 60,000 SM-70s were installed along with additional strips of buried PMN anti-personnel mines on the East German border. International protests over the SM-70's disproportionate lethality led to East Germany slowly phasing the Selbstschussanlage out of service, with the last being removed 30 November 1984. The buried PMN mines, however, remained in place until the fall of East Germany in 1989.

The PMN is unusual in itself, that it contained far more explosive than most antipersonnel blast landmines. The similar US M-14 mine for example held an ounce of high explosive. The VS-50, sold widely to countless Third World tin pot dictators, contained about two ounces of TNT. Either of these mines is unlikely to kill, the explosive charge contained within is quite sufficient to destroy the victim's foot.

The PMN contained about 10 ounces of TNT which can easily destroy a victim's entire leg (frequently requiring amputation high above the knee) in addition to inflicting severe injuries on the adjacent limb, which may also require some form of amputation due to blast injury. So much for the peace-loving and benevolent socialists of the unlamented German Democratic Republic.

Just for good measure, it is considered extremely dangerous to disarm PMN mines by removing the fuze, unless they have only recently been laid and are in good condition. Even if this is the case, what appears to be a standard PMN-1 mine may in fact be the PMN-3 or MC-3 versions, which feature an integral anti-handling device which is specifically designed to kill deminers.

At the time, there were plenty of young Marxists in designer jeans running around western Europe praising Communism, who, tellingly, never did defect East. preferring to blow up stuff and kill people while living off their families' money.

[CTyankee]

35. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

[gejohnston]

30. If you are Roma

moving there might be a bad idea.
http://www.minorityrights.org/10208/press-releases/frances-decision-to-expel-roma-is-discriminatory-says-mrg.html

You might agree with Sarkozy on gun control, but he is still a right wing asshole.

[CTyankee]

34. There are European human rights groups fighting against this discrimination and I would stand

with them.

[Straw Man]

25. Vermont.

Vermont is a liberal and also a very rural state. As such, they like their guns for hunting.

The last time I was in Vermont (which was quite a few years ago) all one needed to buy a handgun in K-Mart was a Vermont driver's license and the purchase price, and one could walk out of the store carrying it concealed or unconcealed without any sort of permit. As far as I know, one still can. I don't think that's about hunting.

[CTyankee]

27. There's definitive proof, all right! Of something...hmmm.

[ellisonz]

31. +1

[gejohnston]

32. oh yeah, the

France needs to close the machine gun loophole.

[ellisonz]

33. Actually what needs to happen is...

...a collective will to stop the extremists, but I don't see that happening anytime soon. Also, I'm not one here who objects to denying the right to bear arms to members of hate groups.

[Atypical Liberal]

28. Wewt! I, too, have an "arsenal"!

The size and nature of the arsenal amassed by Merah - who stockpiled at least eight guns including a Kalashnikov assault rifle and an Uzi machine pistol

How much ya wanna bet the AK and UZI are really semi-automatic, too?