Proposals included a controversial ban on civilian ownership of firearms that look like machine guns | Cagdas Erdogan/Getty Images Commission threatens to derail gun law deal Gun lobby accuses the Commission of being ‘totalitarian.’

A deal on new EU gun controls risks being shot down by the European Commission only hours after negotiators thought they had reached agreement.

In the aftermath of the Paris terror attacks in November 2015, the Commission proposed changes to the EU's Firearms Directive — in place since 1991 — including a controversial ban on civilian ownership of firearms that look like machine guns.

Earlier this year, MEPs and governments rejected the ban, saying that limiting the ownership of high-capacity magazines was a more effective way of preventing massacres.

In the early hours of Tuesday morning, a spokeswoman for the Slovak government, which holds the presidency of the Council of the EU, said "an agreement in principle" had been reached between the Council and the Parliament. "Both sides have made efforts to meet each other."

However, Julian King, the security commissioner, threatened to scupper the deal after negotiators rejected his attempts to reintroduce the proposal to ban "variants" of machine guns during the meeting, according to several sources who were present at the negotiation.

"Everyone made an exceptional effort, but not there yet," King said on Twitter at 2:30 a.m, which contradicted statements made by the Slovak presidency and MEPs saying agreement on the main issues had been reached.

"The Commission presented completely new proposals during the meeting, which is very unusual practice," said Dita Charanzová, a Czech Liberal MEP who was at the meeting. "I haven't experienced this before."

The Commission could either withdraw the proposal altogether, or demand that all 28 member countries back the rules, rather than a majority, as would have been the case. That would make a vote in favor of the measures difficult to secure.

"The single market was not built for the free circulation of Kalashnikovs," Margaritas Schinas, a spokesman for the Commission, told reporters Tuesday.

Many Baltic, Central and Eastern countries, including Slovakia, have resisted the introduction of tougher controls, arguing that the Commission has not provided any evidence that such weapons have been used in terrorist attacks. Countries such as France and Italy, however, have been pushing for even more far-reaching rules.

EU ambassadors will discuss the "deal" agreed by the Slovak presidency with MEPs Wednesday.

The measures triggered a firestorm of lobbying by the European gun lobby, spearheaded by the organization Firearms United, which argues that "draconian [gun] restrictions against everyone is an assumption that everyone is lawless, mentally unstable and willing to create a threat to others."

"While political correctness allows gun owners to be the only part of society that can legitimately be victimized by deliberate attacks, anti-gun political leaders live in their ivory towers surrounded by armed bodyguards and plot the disarmament of their citizens," the group's president, Tomasz Stępień, said at a hearing in the European Parliament last month.

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