Geez, dissecting this article is like shooting fish in a barrel. The big mistake they are making is assuming that lack of gun violence is a result of a lack of available guns, and that an increase is related only to an increase in gun availability.

On paper, Western Europe seems like a gun control utopia. The laws governing firearms are tougher than those in the United States. Citizens are less likely to be armed. And the number of gun crimes is substantially lower.

Here is that main assumption. More guns=more crime. Less guns=less crime. The fact that this is obviously not working out right is what puzzles the writer. This assumption, along with blaming (for some reason) "American Wild-
West Culture" pervades the entire article.

...The problem stems partly from a booming underworld economy. Smugglers based in the war-torn Balkans pump an industrial-sized flow of illicit firearms into the European Union.



Once in the EU, moreover, the smugglers don't confront many obstacles. The relaxation of border enforcement that encourages travel and commerce has been a boon to criminals, whether they are smuggling goods or jumping back and forth across borders to commit crimes and escape police.



This is the new porous border situation, now that the Iron Curtain is down, and it is indeed an important factor. In this context, it may be almost the most important factor. Whether it's the guns coming in, or the people, would be an interesting study.

Then there is the human factor. As crime has dropped in the United States in recent years, it has worsened in much of Europe, despite generous welfare states designed to prevent U.S.-style inequality and social conflict. Nihilistic rage flares in classroom violence in Germany, car-arson rampages in France, brutal muggings in Britain.

All the traditional liberal bandaids, and they aren't working. Generous welfare states are supposed to solve all the problems. After all, isn't the only reason a criminal attacks someone is because he is poor and disenfranchised? There are no "bad boys."

Those incidents often involve alienated young people, ethnic minorities or immigrants, whom politicians and the public tend to blame for violence. But it's not always that simple. A gunman who stormed into a rural police station in the French region of Brittany two weeks ago and opened fire with an AK-47, killing a policeman, was a French-born, 48-year-old farmer enraged by a traffic altercation.

This is as close as the writer gets to touching on the immigration problem. Like a kid hitting a hot stove, he immediately backs off by providing an exception. It is important to note that many of the most terrible shooting sprees do, in fact, seem to be home-grown, but I would be interested in seeing statistics on how immigration has affected the general crime rate.

"There is a general climate of violence that has developed over the years and an American-style evolution of French society," warned Charles Pasqua, a former interior minister.



Judging from the tension in the low-income housing projects of the urban periphery, it's a good thing that gun laws are harsh. Youth gangs don't hesitate to attack police stations in Marseille and Paris. But they generally use rocks, Molotov cocktails or cars set ablaze and converted into rolling missiles, not firearms.



Well, I guess driving a burning car into a building is a big improvement over a gun. Does this statement seem a bit odd to anyone else?

The lack of guns helps explain Europe's remarkably low homicide statistics, experts say. While Los Angeles County recorded about 1,000 homicides in 2000, there was about the same number in all of France. Spain registered 1,200 homicides last year. London suffered only 148 shootings that resulted in death or grievous injury last year.

Again, the experts are dead wrong on cause and effect. In Switzerland everyone is armed, and the crime rate has been quite low. Subtract the gangbangers from the L.A. statistics and you get a completely different picture. The problem here isn't guns, it's a particular subculture in America.

Britain, of course, has some of the toughest firearm laws in the world. The Labor government outlawed handguns in 1997 in response to a rampage by a gunman who mowed down 16 schoolchildren, ages 5 and 6, and their teacher in the Scottish town of Dunblane...After the law passed, Britons surrendered about 160,000 handguns to police.



...Between April and November 2001, the number of homicides in London committed with a firearm rose almost 90% over the same period a year earlier. Armed street robberies rose 53%.



I clipped this paragraph a bit so that these sentences become more effective. Guns taken away, gun crimes increase. Naturally, this possible cause-and-effect is deliberately ignored.

Statistically, street crime falls where citizens are allowed to carry guns, and vice versa. The hump no one seems to be able to get over is that it ain't the number of guns, folks. Guns cause crime like flies cause garbage.

British police, once known as unarmed "bobbies" patrolling placid streets, have deployed armed response vehicles equipped to deal with gunmen. Gang and drug activity have propelled an influx of guns, particularly automatic weapons, from the United States, Eastern Europe and Asia, according to Scotland Yard.

Again, where are the gangs coming from? Local? Immigrant? I don't know the answer. It could be interesting.

More on the porous border:

French police say Eastern Europe is the source of arms flooding into France, where crime went up 8% overall in 2001. It's no longer uncommon for police to confront well-trained, paramilitary-style gangs of robbers wielding AK-47s, rocket-propelled grenades and other heavy weapons.



A smuggling trail known as "the Balkans route" has linked Eastern and Western Europe for years. In the former Yugoslav federation, as well as in Albania and Bulgaria, large numbers of military weapons found their way into the hands of the general population and gangs.

The situation was particularly severe in Albania. In 1997, the successor government to the former Communist regime fell after a corruption scandal. Angry citizens--as well as gangsters--looted the government's armories, making off with about a million military weapons: assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and antitank missiles. Some of those weapons no doubt moved to Western Europe, where Albanian gangsters are heavily involved in gunrunning.

Government authorities in the former Yugoslav states also are often involved in the smuggling. Guns move across Bulgaria and the former Yugoslav states and into Albania or Croatia and then are ferried across the Adriatic into Italy.

"The great number of war weapons that you see in our country is extremely dangerous," French President Jacques Chirac said this month. "What has to be attacked is the trafficking."

Like Germany and Britain, France has reacted to recent high-profile shootings by making restrictive laws even tougher, but it's not clear that those safeguards would have prevented the mass slaying last month of eight city council members in suburban Nanterre near Paris. Like the German student accused in Friday's massacre, the Nanterre shooter belonged to a target shooting club and obtained his gun legally, although he had a history of aggressive behavior and psychological troubles.



Again, it ain't just the guns, folks.

...Relatively few Italians own guns. The rules resemble those of Spain and other countries. Gun owners in Italy must be at least 18 years old, have a clean police record, undergo psychological and physical tests and have an official certificate proving that they are capable of handling firearms. A person may not own more than three guns, and gun licenses must be renewed every year.



Italian Defense Minister Antonio Martino suggested in a radio interview Monday that the country's gun laws should be loosened. Martino cited the U.S. Bill of Rights' 2nd Amendment, protecting the right of citizens to bear arms, as a model.

Critics said the minister's comments reflected a rising sense of insecurity as the population ages and the number of immigrants rises. Unlike in other European countries, fear in Italy has increased even as the number of violent crimes has gone down slightly.

Whether the restrictions can stop deranged gunmen, Europe's cultural resistance to guns is likely to endure.



The Italian Minister's response is interesting. I would like to see at least one European nation pass a widespread concealed weapons law, just to see what happens. And for the record, nothing on the face of the earth can stop deranged gunmen, except for rational gunmen.