Posted on 11/14/2015 11:53:28 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Late Friday night in Paris, multiple gunmen opened fire on diners and concert-goers as part of what appears to have been a coordinated, city-wide terror attack that also included several apparent bomb blasts -- and which killed at least 129 people.
As bombs exploded and panic spread, one witness described assailants firing Kalashnikov-style assault weapons through the plate-glass windows of the Petit Cambodge restaurant in the north-central part of the city.
France outlaws most gun ownership and it's almost impossible to legally acquire a high-powered rifle such as an AK-47, so where did the weapons in the Nov. 13 terror attack -- not to mention the bloody January assault by Islamic terrorists on the Paris office of Charlie Hebdo magazine and the 2012 shootings by a militant in Toulouse -- come from?
The answer: Eastern Europe, most likely, where the trafficking of deadly small arms is big, shady business. And where local authorities find it difficult to intervene.
The French government and the European Union know they have a foreign gun problem. But as the chain of attacks illustrates, efforts to tamp down on the flow of weapons have, so far, failed to disarm terrorists.
French police reportedly seized more than 1,500 illegal weapons in 2009 and no fewer than 2,700 in 2010. The number of illegal guns in France has swollen by double-digit percentages annually for several years, Al Jazeera reported, citing figures from Paris-based National Observatory for Delinquency.
(Excerpt) Read more at thedailybeast.com ...
I thought so too. They were designed to be mass produced and dropped like confetti. It didn't matter if the Germans captured them, it only mattered that the population would get enough of them to kill Germans, so it produced uncertainty and loss of morale among the Germans, and it produced some dead Germans as well. It was a pretty good investment for the cost.
It gave partisans a tool to get a better gun, which they did.
They aren't terribly valuable because so many of them were made, but a lot of people who collect guns like to have one in their collection just because they are neat.
Oh no, I completely get your point. It just looks like a danger to the user. I recall what they were used for.
But did he pick his toenails in Poughkeepsie?!
” ...It just looks like a danger to the user. I recall what they were used for.”
The Liberator was another “bright idea” from the “dirty tricks” dept of one of the covert/clandestine operations subdivisions. Unable to respond directly thanks to the abysmal state of American readiness, the US government had trouble turning a deaf ear to imaginative civilian feather merchants. The UK government was bedeviled by similar problems, exacerbated by their Prime Minister, a man at once cheered and cursed as an inexhaustible fount of strategic and tactical imagination.
_American Rifleman_ or _New Gun Digest_ published a historical article on the Liberator last year. Something like a million were made in a few months, by GM’s Guide Lamp division, at a cost of around $1.00 each, including 10 ready rounds, a wordless instruction sheet consisting of comic-book drawings, and water-resistant packaging.
By the time they were shipped to forward locations, strategies had altered, or perhaps the enthusiasm for irregular uprisings had fallen out of political favor, and very few were sent to any partisans. Documentation on use and field effectiveness is sparse.
The posted photo - most finely detailed yet seen - is near full size and shows a cutaway demonstration specimen on museum display. The arm was single shot, manually reloaded without even an extractor, so no feed mechanism exists. Posters quite rightly noted it looked flimsy, and postwar tests corroborated that, estimating an extremely short service life. And yes, it might become hazardous for any user, very quick.
But as other posters noted, the gun was intended to let the user do in an armed enemy and take his gun. Anyone inclined to assault even a solitary enemy troop in such a manner had to be desperate and determined, suicidally bold; the psychology and cultural mindset of a combatant matters as much as, or more, than details of armament. Americans might be assumed (by other Americans) to overflow with fighting spirit and initiative, but planners in the Second World War overestimated the willingness of Euro folks to behave so. Outside the Balkans and perhaps Poland, local civil resistance fighters accomplished little beyond raising their own morale.
Yeah. That thought crossed my mind in Munich that day.
Put as much distance between them and me as I could.
It was beautiful that night. We crossed Frankfurt airport just at dusk, and into the Nordsee at Rotterdam in the night.
300 years ago my ancestors crowded into wooden ships, hounded out of Europe for heretics, because they were individualists who believed what John Calvin had said. Europe was hostile to them, and the Edict of Nantes had been revoked.
They were forced to brave a hostile ocean into the unknown New World, where they would be safe. I would make that trip in a little over 10 hours. It took them weeks.
And behind me was a Europe that now tolerated the most bitter of all enemies: the worst of the worst, the very people we had all fought for 800 years.
How can they tolerate them, but not us, their kin? What madness now possesses them?
Show me a photo of a French Concealed Carry Permit. Yeah.
Show me the percentage of French people who own a handgun. It's tiny, and you know it.
“Since when is the anemic little, puny 7.62x39 round HIGH POWERED?
High speed, yes. High Powered? NO!
30.06 is HIGH POWERED
7.62X54R is HIGH POWERED
Relatively speaking, one could argue that the .308 MIGHT qualify for high powered.
.50 is absolutely, most definitely high powered.
But 7.62x39??? ...”
There are no agreed-on criteria for what is high, low, or otherwise-powered. The only thing that matters is whether the cartridge pushes the bullet fast enough to accomplish its mission. And in combat, there can be no hard and fast rules concerning what is “enough”. Too many variables.
The 7.62X51 NATO Ball M80 is identical in velocity to the US 30M2 (30-06) loading, adopted in the 1930s and used through WWII and Korea. No question of “might be” here.
The US 12.7x99mm (50 cal) Browning machine gun cartridge is pretty potent for a small arm, but by 1945 it was obsolescent as aircraft armament.
As F_B notes, 7.62x39mm 01943g Soviet was designed to be less potent than standard-issue rifles of the day. Muzzle energy was a little over half the Red Army’s 7.62x54R. That put it ahead of Germany’s 7.92x33 PistPatr, and even farther ahead of the US-developed 5.56x45mm NATO.
All were intended to arm the individual footsoldier with something affording more range and power than pistol cartridges, but something lighter and less violent in recoil than the “full power” rounds F_B listed. The lighter per-round weight also allowed that footsoldier - overburdened as always - to carry more ammunition for a given loadup.
Many gunwriters and tacti-cool mall-ninja wannabes have sneered at these assault rifles and the rounds they fire, but something of a fetish has sprung up around the 7.62x39. A number of gunwriters insist it’s “better” than the 30-30 - an assertion not supported by any quantifiable data. The round was at best an expedient cooked up in a hurry during the Great Patriotic War, when the Red Army had little time for refinements. The USSR itself superseded the cartridge in 1974, adopting the 5.45x39 in its place.
The worldwide popularity of the Kalashnikov and its original 7.62x39 cartridge may have more to do with the early eagerness of Soviet leaders to give them away to anyone willing to stand up and yell, “Death to America!”
And in the United States, their popularity may rest on the never-ending quest among American gun buyers, for the lowest price.
I am afraid I cannot give you an answer to your questions as I have not had occasion to need a rifle in France. I am basically an upland game bird and duck hunter although I have also hunted chevreuil (known as red deer or roebuck in Europe) a small deer about half the size of a whitetail. I’ve also hunted on occasion the sanglier...wild boar...which is the same as we find in Florida. A shotgun suffices for both.
Several years ago, the law was changed to requiring registration of pump guns. I never registered my Winchester Model 12 and the gendarmes knew I had it but never pressed me in the issue.
I have gone to a gun shop, selected a shotgun, paid for it and walked out the door. I presume things are still the same regarding shotgun purchases. I also have an A5 which I’ve had for years.
The largest thing you might hunt in France would be the Cerf....same animal as our Wapiti but a bit smaller. I’ll see what i can find our about arms used and requirements for hunting them.
I cannot answer your question about a concealed carry permit in France. I have one in Florida, but haven’t felt the need for one in France...before now. As I plan to return to France next summer, I’ll look into it and let you know.
The locked up gun laws in England are ridiculous. You must have a gun safe bolted to the floor and wall and inspectors must examine your premises to accept your installation before giving you a permit. In France, I’ve always kept my guns easily accessible to me. When I’m not in France, friends store my guns for me. I don’t have a gun safe.
France is mostly small villages and wide open countryside dotted with beautiful forests. The large cities are, as in the states, totally different. Most country people, as in the states, hunt in the fall and winter, benefit from the wild mushrooms and chestnuts and other fruits and nuts found in the forests.
Years ago, Bow hunting was illegal in France. Now it is quite legal and many practice it.
Will let you know what I find out.
Thank you for that interesting and detailed response. You just might become Free Republic’s resident French countryside expert.
I have no idea how many people own handguns in France. As I’ve clearly stated, on this and other threads, I hunt and shoot competition Trap, so have not been involved in the need for a handgun. I do know Frenchmen who own handguns....but am not familiar with the rules regarding same.
The article CREATES the WRONG IMPRESSION by flat out stating “France bans most guns,” “France outlaws most guns,” ...”Merah’s arsenal included an AK47, an Uzi, a Sten submachine gun, A SHOTGUN, and several pistols...ALL ILLEGAL (emphasis mine),”in a lawful country WITH FEW LEGAL GUNS,”.....
Many people, on this and other blogs, have the impression that France is gun-free. This is absolutely NOT the CASE. There are over thirty guns for every hundred people in France, which is a higher number than even our neighbor Canada and places the French in league with the highest number of guns of countries of the world of which the USA is number 1. France is listed as #5 to #11 depending on which report one uses. I would like to see ACCURATE reports which include types of guns, not just blanket statements which are far from the truth. England, for example is number 82 or lower in the same listings. Also in England, one cannot carry a pocket knife with a blade 3 inches long. In France almost all men carry a pocketknife with a blade three inches or longer.
My statement was factual. France does not ban guns. France bans certain types of guns or requires registration of certain other types .Not all guns need to be registered.
Shotguns are certainly NOT illegal!
If you insist that HANDGUN ownership is the only type of gun ownership that counts, you are in a whole different ballgame.
Thank you for that interesting and detailed response. You just might become Free Republic’s resident French countryside expert.
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LOL! I do love the outdoors, but forgot to mention the great fishing in France...particularly if you’re a fly-fisherman. Thousands of rivers, streams, and little creeks provide trout (the Fario, similar to our brownie), several other varieties, and crayfish as well. It’s a lot like America used to be.
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