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Firearms Report IV

Homicide and Suicide

This report is a study of the relationship between legal firearm ownership and crime. It has been reviewed by academics with expertise in this area, in reaction to the process by the European Commission to amend the EU Firearms Directive with much more restrictions on legal firearm ownership.

Between 2000 and 2012 almost 3 million people lost their lives by external causes in Europe (see chapter 2). Less than 2,4% were firearms-related suicides (see chapter 5). Less than 0,5% (12.076) were firearms-related homicides (see chapter 7). Both rates decreased by more than 30% in the last decade. There is no evidence of 1000 annual homicides committed with legally held firearms.

The action of the European Commission seems unreasonable, since

if there is no correlation between legal access to firearms and suicide rates, then there is no justification in quoting suicide rates in arguments for restricted access to firearms (see chapter 5.2.);

if state control is praised as solution, even when this has not had any impact during the last 800 years, as against social and culture change (see chapter 6.4, 6.5 and 7.2),

if firearms-related homicides rates are misused to justify access restrictions, since there is no correlation between legal firearm access and homicide rates (see chapter 7.1);

if the “Evaluation of the Firearms Directive” to promote the proposed changes, misuses individual “episodes” of crime or terrorism to generalise a mistrust of more than 16 million law-abiding citizens, especially when it is admitted therein that there are important gaps in the statistics (see chapter 8.1).

if EC DG Home presents incorrect data (see chapter 8.2);

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Firearms Report III

History of EC’s Action Plan on Firearms

There were rumors since the 20th of October, three weeks before the bloody attack in Paris, that the EC also wants to ban internet sales and semi-automatic rifles.

The gun rights advocates made inquiries in Brussels. Fabio Marini denied these rumors. “There were no plans for it, only for deactivated firearms”, he said. And then he presented the new proposal with drastic bans and drastic restrictions which are a threat to national and individual security.

This report will show you how a few people – we only know the actors Malmström and Marini, but there may be more – misuse democracy to implement their dream into law with lies, manipulation and ignorance.

These few people were never interested in reducing crime. They only want to drive their own political anti-gun agenda against law abiding gun owners ignoring all transparency and democratic means.

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Firearms Report II

Gun Ownership in Europe

In July 2015 Fabio Marini, Head of Firearms Task Force at DG HOME, European Commission presented the report ‘Firearms and Violent Deaths in Europe’ by Nils Duquet and Maarten Van Alstein, researchers at the Flemish Peace Institute. The first topic is the numbers of licit and illicit firearms in Europe.

Gary Mauser, Professor emeritus of the Simon Fraser University (CA) wrote: This report by the Flemish Peace Institute purports to be scientific, but it should be seen as nothing more than advocacy, because it violates the basic principles of scientific inquiry.

The team of Firearms United looked deeper into official data regarding gun ownership and the numbers of legal and illegal firearms in Europe and compared them with the report. We are in contact with Professor Mauser and will change our findings as soon as we receive better data.

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Firearms Report I

The European Gun Debate

The gun debate was once strictly a national debate in the USA. Since 1970 universities and NGOs in the USA have researched this topic.

European research started almost twenty years later, mostly by NGOs which work on international level like IANSA, Saferworld and Small Arms Survey.

Objective studies of European universities were rare, but they are on the rise. When the Pacific University published in July 2015 its essay Philosophy & Gun Control half of the authors lived in Europe and Canada. So they represent an important view on the gun debate for European society.

The gun debate is a moral debate paired with ignorance and partial knowledge as there are hardly facts and these are often never published. If you ask people, scientists and politicians – everybody has an opinion in the gun debate. These opinions are represented in the philosophical essays.

We show in this report how knowledge of facts change the attitude to guns.

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