With a press release launched yesterday, December 20th, the European Commission announced the conclusion of the trilogue concerning the amendment proposals to the European firearms directive – a dossier now infamously known, and aptly so, as the EU Gun Ban.

First introduced by the European Commission in November 2015, after the bloody terror attacks in Paris, the dossier originally included draconian restrictions aimed at law-abiding, legal gun owners, which included a full ban on high capacity fixed or detachable magazines for all firearms, a total ban on private ownership of modern hunting and sporting guns aesthetically and only partially technically patterned after modern military firearms, and many more.

To the Members of the European Parliament called to evaluate the dossier, however, said restrictions immediately appeared for what they were: excessive, unnecessary and unworkable. Over twelve months after the first introduction of the dossier, things have been worked out to reach what the European Commission today calls "a provisional political agreement".