They Are Coming for You - Act Now!

[wm]

The Euro bureaucrats, reacting to contemporary political events in their usual knee-jerking manner are determined to made reenactment and collection of certain categories of historic artifacts (almost) impossible.

Specifically:
- certain semi-automatic firearms [...] will not, under any circumstances, be allowed to be held by private persons, even if they have been permanently deactivated;
- [including] blank-firing weapons (e.g. alarm, signaling, life-saving weapons) [...] because of their potential to be transformed into firearms;
- Collectors, as defined by national law,are currently excluded from the scope of the Directive. The Commission is proposing today to change this, since collectors have been identified as a possible source of traffic of firearms. In the future, collectors will have the possibility to acquire firearms, but subject to the same authorisation/declaration requirements as private persons;
- Member States are obliged to introduce national procedures for the deactivation of firearms which render the weapons permanently inoperable, to be verified by a competent authority. Permanently deactivated arms are no longer considered arms and can be held by private persons and freely move within the internal market.

The ban will make private ownership of even deactivated guns a crime.
The new deactivation procedures will alter the look of a deactivated firearm so the deactivation can be easily spotted from a distance. In fact, it will destroy it, and its historic value.

A petition to stop this madness: Petitioning Council of the European Union, You cannot stop terrorism by restricting legal gun ownership.

[JTV]

A petition to stop this madness: Petitioning Council of the European Union, You cannot stop terrorism by restricting legal gun ownership.

Unfortunately the petition on that webpage is totally unofficial and EU-byrocrafts are likely to use it as toilet paper, once it gets delivered to them. :roll:

If you actually want to try making an impact, here is official EU Council feedback page for the particular piece of legislation:
https://ec.europa.eu/transparency/regdo ... anguage=en

Jarkko

[wm]

JTV, sorry but everything from the people is official, there is nothing "official" in that feedback page. It's a black hole without any feedback to the "petitioners". Everything written there most likely will end up in the hands of the same people who push the proposal.

People like those unelected bureaucrats and politicians can't be reasoned with. They are not out friends for the simple reason they are their own friends. They have invested their time and political capital in this proposal, it would be unreasonable for them to back down now.

But people like them respond well to fear. The fear of publicity or actions of other more powerful politicians. This is why the number of signatures (almost 200,000 today) and the Polish, Czech and Finnish politicians who have promised support already are so important.

[JTV]

JTV, sorry but everything from the people is official, there is nothing "official" in that feedback page. It's a black hole without any feedback to the "petitioners". Everything written there most likely will end up in the hands of the same people who push the proposal.

The main thing in between official website as unofficial petitions is, that in worst case scenario unofficial ones may have substatial part of the signitures signed by "Mickey Mouse". The thing is - for web petitions or feedback to have real credibility, one should be able to check the identity of person that signs and make sure that he or she cannot sign several times. Neither of these websites is 100% protected against such malpractice, but just looking the websites and their code a bit, it is quite obvious that the unofficial website has notably lower level of safeguards. I just hope people behind the unofficial website have will and resources to do at least some basic checks for the name list before they turn it in - and if needed, remove the questionable names.

Feel free to sign both if you want - the official one may make some impact or not, but I would not put too much trust on the unofficial one.

If you assume that the byrocrats have already decided what they will do no matter the public opinion, then neither website is going to make any impact, publicity or not. As far as politicians are concerned, I would be much happier if we would have larger EU-countries on our side in this - Polish, Czech. Finnish and Swedish votes are may not be enough.

Just that you really grasp how dire the situation actually is in here. We are not talking just about automatic weapons in collections or some deactivated weapons. Here in Finland, the matter is directly linked if we are able to maintain credible military capability. We have no professional army but armed forces based to universal concription of male population, we are military non-aligned (read - not in NATO) EU-country with longest land border with Russia in whole EU. Our wartime armed forces (of 230,000 soldiers) are based to trained reservits and this piece of EU legislation threatens to undermine the voluntary work for maintaining military skills of those reserves. Unlike in many other countries (due to historical reasons - mainly Civil Guard abolished in year 1944) our reservist organisations with their 79,000 members have no easy access to loan military weapons from Defence Forces for their volunteer training, hence both reservist organisations and their members are commonly using semi-automatic rifles and pistols closely resembling the military equipment acquired for their training purposes. Since these firearm do not belong to Finnish military, but to reservist organisations (registered associations) and their individual members, according this new piece of EU-legislation they would all be confiscated. Hence if this thing goes through, the smartest move that we might have to do as a country, is to resign from EU.

Jarkko

[wm]

The unofficial petition can be framed as an attractive news story for the media. They don't care about perfection anyway.
This legislation has been ready for many months, there were just waiting for the right moment. They understand its ramifications perfectly and don't care. This is why I said that asking nicely won't help.

And there is something deeply wrong when the only option is petitioning, like the serfs petitioning their landlord long time ago. It seems we haven't any self-evident, inalienable rights like the Americans have, maybe except the right to be informed about cookies. Everything can be modified/forbidden on the spur of the moment. Earlier such a stupidity didn't cross the border, was limited to the country of its origin. Today everybody is effected instantaneously.

[wm]

Open letter to gun rights supporters across Europe from Czech Republic

Dear colleagues,

Since I write to you from Czech Republic, allow me to introduce our country first. In our republic, ownership and carrying of firearms is truly right, guaranteed by law for any adult, legally competent and law-abiding person. Firearms license is shall-issue (anyone who fulfills requirements of the law has legal right to get it). Permit to own B - category firearm is shall-issue, as well as permit for concealed carry. We own handguns, we use them for sport shooting and carry them for personal protection. We own semiautomatic rifles of military patterns, we shoot them in various sport competitions, and we practice with them for the case that our beloved country would need its citizens to be prepared for its defense. Our hunting tradition reaches well over a millennium into our history, and our sport shooters rarely return from Olympic Games without any medals.

Our country is also 10th most safe country in the world (according to Global Peace Index), our violent crime is low (160/100 000) and our gun crime is negligible (5.8 / 100 000). Along with Switzerland, whose tradition of liberty, democracy and independence we hold in high regard, our republic stands as example that everything that is needed for a country to be armed, peaceful and free, is strong determination of its people to not let anyone to take these values away.

[...]

As far as we know, the Commission is determined to proceed with all of its plans at all costs, in shortest possible time. If we want to stop these plans, we need every voice. What you can do?

- Contact your Minister of Interior and Minister of Justice [...]
- Contact your Members of European Parliament [...]
- Join your national gun rights association. Remember that to support this important civil right, you don't have to actually be gun owner.
- Should the Directive proposal be passed anyway, be prepared to disobey it.

more here.

[Drew Maynard]

As above, please refrain from suggesting illegal actions