France’s strict gun controls–including universal background checks, licensing requirements, and all-out bans on whole categories of guns–proved impotent as a 17-year-old suspect opened fired on a high school in Grasse.
The suspect is under arrest.
The Local reports that “the headteacher” at the Alexis de Tocqueville high school was targeted in the attack. The suspect was carrying “a revolver, a pistol, a hunting rifle and two grenades.” CNN’s French affiliate BFMTV reports the attack occurred at the around lunchtime. A French Interior Ministry spokesman indicated “eight people have been injured, including those with shock.”
Reports on the various firearms possessed during the attack remind the world that France’s gun laws–which are described as “restrictive” by the University of Sydney’s GunPolicy.org–proved powerless again to stop a determined attacker.
Consider this–A Review of French Gun Laws (2012) shows that “ownership of fully automatic firearms [is prohibited] for civilians” in France, yet fully automatic weapons were the very kind used in the Charlie Hebdo attack. And when it comes to semi-automatic firearms, those who wish to own them have to go through the very kind of expanded background checks that the Democrat Party and other gun control proponents would like to institute in the U.S.
Moreover, in France such checks entail acquiring and maintaining “an active shooting club [membership]” and going to the range “at least three times a year.” They also include “seeing a doctor every year,” who declares one “physically and mentally capable of owning a firearm,” and filling out various pieces of paperwork as well.
by Awr Hawkins
