29 March 2016 – We’re not quite out of the woods yet, but the latest official draft of the EU gun ban plan looks very promising, with many of the most restrictive and unnecessary proposals having been shelved or watered down.
The draft, by British MEP Vicky Ford, its rapporteur, can be read here: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-%2F%2FEP%2F%2FNONSGML+COMPARL+PE-578.822+01+DOC+PDF+V0%2F%2FEN
UK Shooting News’ author has only skim-read the document, but points that jump out are:
- Medical tests have been downgraded to a medical “check”, implying a UK-style review of your medical paperwork. This is a step on the right path but not a victory.
- Deactivation standards appear to have been kicked into the long grass again. Certain countries’ deactivation standards (almost certainly including the UK) may be grandfathered in, helping avoid the need to weld everything solid on the 8th April – but it seems that grandfathering will cease to apply if the gun is “placed on the market”.
- Private internet sales will not be banned, but must take place in circumstances where the seller can verify that the buyer has a licence or other authorisation to possess firearms. This means face-to-face transactions or collecting firearms from a dealer who will check your paperwork.
- Museums and collectors will no longer have to destroy their valuable collections of fully automatic firearms and that ban proposal has been dropped.
- Distributing 3D printer blueprints for firearms will become a criminal offence, under what appears to be a separate proposal referenced in these amendments.
- Sound moderators are explicitly excluded from licensing in the EU proposal. EU countries can still restrict them, as the UK does.
- The proposal to ban all semi-automatic firearms has been dropped, and instead will only apply to semi-auto firearms converted into full auto firearms.
“The Rapporteur understands that the Commission’s proposal to recategorise ‘semiautomatic firearms for civilian use that resemble weapons with automatic mechanisms’ into Category A would cause many practical problems in implementation and has been tried and rejected in certain Member States in the past,” said a short statement at the end of the latest amendments.
UK Shooting News 
this is interesting “Sound moderators are explicitly excluded from licensing” – does that mean that at some point we’ll be able to order as many as we like without pointless FAC variations etc? Somehow I doubt it given that firearms law is as I understand it largely devolved to the member nations. That said I do seem to recall the police over here were actually in favour of something like this – did I read it in the Law Commission review?
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this bit isn’t very good though – so much for 10 year tickets…….:
“the maximum duration of an authorisation shall not exceed five years, unless Member States have implemented a system of continuous monitoring referred to in the first subparagraph of Article”
that said – given that the UK is the CCTV capital of the world – you could argue we’re already continuously monitored……
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I’m just speed-reading it – I do of course mean excluded as far as the EU diktat is concerned! Places like the UK will still be able to gold-plate the decrees of our rulers.
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What I think nobody is pointed out yet is this neat little amendment which actually relaxes the law on category A firearms (from a UK perspective)
” “Certain persons have a legitimate interest in accessing firearms classified in category A, provided that exemptions are granted on a strictly limited basis. These could include, inter alia, armourers, proof houses, manufacturers, forensic scientists and, in certain cases, those involved in film production, as well as individuals needing firearms for self-defence purposes.”
First time self-defense is mentioned in the Directive to certain people being allowed to own class A guns for such a thing, so potential full auto firearms or shortened guns like SBRs I presume. Of course such a regulation will never be voted for in the UK in a million years. Also individuals if they can demonstrate a need and the fact that they are a collector, they will be allowed to possess category A firearms, this would be a slight relaxation in the Uk law since only bodies such as Small Arms Breech loading Association can possess such firearms, so it seems that private collectors and individuals will also be allowed to do so. Why do I have a feeling that Uk government is not going to allow a private individual to possess a full auto Thompson for example, it would be awesome though!”
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You are forgetting that the EU law is the minimum requirement and individual member states (UK) can and will have additional restrictions.
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What does the sentence about semi-autos actually mean though?? Does this mean that guns which were originally manufactured to be semi-auto, but have been somehow/somewhere been getting legally converted to full-auto will now be illegal?? (Where is this mythical place?)
Or are we back to the semi-autos which could be converted to full-auto would be illegal nonsense (as that applies to virtually any semi-auto gun invented)
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See latest post, rather than skim-reading the document I’ve delved into the detail: https://ukshootingnews.wordpress.com/2016/03/30/in-full-eu-rapporteur-formally-drops-semi-auto-gun-ban-plan/
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Do you know that civil rights do exist, and we can argue that fact… read the civil rights act 1964. Defence section..
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You are wrong.
Nothing (semi-auto gunban) has been dropped.
Read Amendment 19:
“The proposal to recategorise cat B.7 would cause many practical problems in implementation
and has been tried and rejected in certain Member States. The Rapporteur instead makes a
series of alternative proposals. Firearms converted to firing blanks should remain in their
original categories due to the particular risks associated with them. Automatic firearms
converted to semi-automatic (as well as, for the avoidance of any doubt, semi-automatic
firearms converted to automatic) should be in category A.”
The A6 category from EC proposal remained intact (they didnt remove it).
Page 18,
– A6 point still remains as “Automatic firearms which have been converted into semiautomatic firearms;”
– A7 has been changed to “Semi-automatic firearms which have been converted into automatic firearms;”
Which means whichever firearms that was (or is) any time in its life span a full auto firearm, will be prohibited and in category A.
http://ec.europa.eu/DocsRoom/documents/13965/attachments/1/translations/en/renditions/native
They did not delete B7 category (Amendment 77)
They added B8 and B9 – which to me looks like separating sport semi auto firearms from hunters semi auto (which were now in the same category) and further separating them on large and small caliber. I see it as a stepping stone for future bans, when banning a certain category (namely B8) will be much cleaner and easier.
So by the looks of it, whichever sport semi auto was originally a full auto, will BE BANNED.
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What’s the situation on this ? Would this affect .22 copy’s ?
Commission’s proposal to recategorise ‘semiautomatic firearms for civilian use that resemble weapons with automatic mechanisms’ into Category A
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