This "compromise" agreement may indeed sound better than the all-out ban proposed by the European Commission... and yet, it's by no means acceptable.

In certain Member States (such as, to say, Italy), a non-restrictive implementation of such amendments to the European firearms directive in the national law would not change the current status (exception made for the ban on demilitarized firearms), but politicians can not be trusted, as they will try to slip in further restrictions. And this is true in almost all Member States.

In some eastern European Member States, the ban on demilitarized firearms will badly hurt sport shooters, as those former government arsenal firearms converted to semi-automatic are the only ones cheap enough to be affordable to all shooters. Demilitarized firearms are also popular in other Member States, and are generally distributed by small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) that are likely to go bankrupt.

Some Countries that do not have a continuous or non-continuous medical or psychologic check-up system for gun owners will have to implement it, at a great economic cost and imposing more bureaucratic burden to the governments, the public administrations, and the shooters.

Countries such as Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Poland already announced that they will simply not comply – and Finland and the Baltic States might as well follow suit. And Switzerland is willing to hold a referendum vote to leave the Schengen Area in order to remain free of all restrictions on law-abiding firearms and their owners.

And how could restrictions on magazines be managed at all?