Firearms in Western Europe (3 countries of observation)

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I have a team of mathematicians in Eastern Europe, so I travel there a lot. But I am just wrapping up a two week trip to Portugal, Spain and France. My wife likes the trains, so we took quite a few trips to smaller towns.

15 years ago, you mostly saw semi-automatic weapons in Germany. The bad spell in the 70s and 80s with domestic terrorism really punched up the police armaments there. But Spain and France were very different. Now you see the national police armed with military grade 5.56 and 7.62 select fire rifles. And they are everywhere. The French police especially seem to have lost all of their formerly casual attitude in public. These police are buff, alert, armed and look like they are ready.

I often wonder what it does to the public psyche to be surrounded by military firearms and not own any at home. In the South of France, firearms are quite common - most rural people still hunt there. But there are no handguns that I know of allowed in France owned by the general public. I believe that until a year ago, police left their firearms at work when they clocked off. (The shooting of police in their off hours has stopped that - they carry after work now.)

In the North of France, I know of no one who owns firearms at home, and I know a lot of French people (granted, mostly high-tech people). When I ask them how they feel about the heavily armed police, they shrug and say 'les temps ont changé' (the times have changed.) To the people here, the shootings by terrorists at night clubs and sports arena do not seem 'remote' - they are up close and personal. Everyone I know here has been only one person away from someone killed or injured in the few incidents that they have had. (I actually suspect they simply know someone who was close by and uninjured, but that has been stretched into 'injured'.)

In any event, the serious discrepancy in personal firearm ownership and heavily armed police seems to take a toll.

They say a psychologist looks at all the other people when a beautiful person walks into the room. I do that when the van doors open up and the police step out heavily armed. The public looks away. They do not (as I do) look to see the position of the fire selector or the wear marks on the magazines. They look away. They look down.

And to me, this is the unfortunate efficacy of 'terrorism' - the creation of fear out of nothing. Terrorism works. It causes societies to change in ways most people do not like. It increases distrust. No one can accuse a person of being 'racist' when an angry young man wearing North African garb is shouting Artabic in the streets.

The former drive for societal assimilation has broken down on both sides: the people in the banilieues no longer seem to want to develop a perfect French accent; the people in the central arrondissements no longer care if they do so.

France has always been a very class conscious place. Unless one graduated from one of the top 5 Universities, careers have serious limitations. Accents here count for a lot; perhaps more so than in England. But they did have a real sense of fraternité - French brotherhood. I am no expert, but I never hear 'fraternité' said here anymore. How was it formerly used? Often in the context where someone talked down about taxi drivers or service people. Someone else would pipe up with 'fraternité, fraternité, fraternité ...' as a comment back. That seems gone now. The 'otherhood' is present. The soft discomfort of terror is present. The heavily armed police are present. The gap between an unarmed public and armed police is growing.

When we arrived on Saturday, the demonstrators were throwing bottles and paving stones at the police here in Paris. This is also a bit new. I have seen Unions and protesters create mini barricades in Paris for decades - and with some exceptions, the police and the demonstrators got on well enough. The police believed it was very French to protest. The protesters believed it was very French to stop and have a coffee with the police. I saw this myself. I believe it is gone.
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Re: Firearms in Western Europe (3 countries of observation)

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Sad, Max. But when I was college student in Belgium in '76, even then the police were heavily armed. Patrolmen didn't carry rifles, but revolvers had been replaced with semi-auto handguns.
In a visit, in Bonn, to a German government office (I believe it was the Foreign Ministry), all the guards were armed with fully automatic weapons. If they were select fire, I wouldn't have been able to tell but they looked like "grease guns" and Uzzis, not M16s, machine pistols, not assault rifles.

Twice, when I walked across the Belgian / French border, I, a long-haired American 20 year-old, was searched, even tearing open packages of soap and camera film (the old 110).

The UK was worse. Even then, there were signs everywhere not to touch unattended packages but to contact police, as IRA bombings were common--Remember when the IRA were the principle terrorists, along with the Weather Underground, Baader-Meinhof, the Red Brigade, and Red Army Faction?
"Even if the bee could explain to the fly why pollen is better than shit, the fly could never understand."

Re: Firearms in Western Europe (3 countries of observation)

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Sounds like a great trip. Even though the state of emergency in France ended in December 2017, French police seem to be still on high alert. I saw an article that the government upgraded rifles , the UK did the same. Yes, the National Police can carry off duty now, spured by the murder of a high ranking Paris police officer and his girl friend in their apartment by a terrorist. The change was under Hollande strongly supported by the unions, we'll see if it's permanent. Assume that also includes Gendarmes, border and customs officers, the local police are different. Hollande did offer to arm local police with SIG Pro pistols which the national police carry.

The times are indeed different. Like most countries rural residents likely own more guns than urban ones, IIRC individuals can still own handguns if they belong to a shooting club and get sign offs by police. Gun shops still sell revolvers and pistols there last I looked. Since you conceal carry, any discussions in social settings about the US, guns and concealed carry in the US? Yes, the home of liberty, fraternity and equality is class conscious in a different way than the UK and yes they have the "ecoles" and the universities.

Yes, the French like many European countries (Italy, Spain...) were a disaster in assimilating refugees, benign neglect and all that has come home to roost. Along with the Schengen Area open borders in the EU where terrorists easily traveled from one country to another.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: Firearms in Western Europe (3 countries of observation)

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Interesting observations. My only experience with Europe was a month in Italy years ago. Not many guns on display there in the 90s, but our layover in the UK dropped my jaw with all the police toting submachine guns.

In California, all of the patrol cars have an AR in the mount these days (replacing the old shotguns). I don't ever see them leave the patrol cars, fortunately. Even the CHP motorcycles have ARs mounted now. Looks kind of funny.

Re: Firearms in Western Europe (3 countries of observation)

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(Excerpted from a previous post of mine from 2017, but still relevant)

I was in London on September 15, 2017. For the duration of my stay (another 2 days) I saw the entire city inundated with police and army dripping with rifles/SMGs/body armor. It was the worst police state I've seen since the days/weeks after 9/11 when I was in DC. The most hilarious part was when the BBC was intentionally calling out the fact that there were "armed" police officers now patrolling the city.

The British media/government resent the idea of any kind of armed populous, but it's fine for the Her Majesty's Army to literally be marching 2:2 in formation down the streets of Whitehall.
LGC Texas - Vice President

Re: Firearms in Western Europe (3 countries of observation)

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atxgunguy said:

The British media/government resent the idea of any kind of armed populous, but it's fine for the Her Majesty's Army to literally be marching 2:2 in formation down the streets of Whitehall.
Their thinking was part of a century long thought experiment. The Brits believed that if they disarmed society - even to the point of police not carrying firearms, then society would grow more peaceable. And for some sweet spot in the 1960s it kind of looked like it worked.

But the time came when criminals, organized and otherwise, started acquiring firearms. It is great to talk about border control - anyone can pilot a boat from France to England with guns in the hold. If the weather is good, you can do it in a small skiff.

So guns came into the Country - and gun crime grew. The police went from 1:100 being armed to the current 1:3 being armed. Standard PCs still carry only mace and a club (at least in most of England.)

As terrorism grows, the number of armed police is likely to grow to 100% in England.

The experiment failed.
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