Top European Court Upholds EU’s Anti-Gun Regulations
The Czech Republic, backed by Poland and Hungary, had challenged EU’s 2017 gun regulations
The European Union’s highest court has upheld the gun control regulations placed by Brussels across the 28-member state bloc.
Tuesday’s ruling by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) was in response to a legal challenge filed by the Czech Republic against EU’s gun control directives.
In 2017, the EU passed a series of directives regulating the acquisition and possession of firearms. These restrictions imposed by the European Parliament and the European Council “do not breach legal principles,” the Luxembourg-based court ruled. The Czech Republic, supported by Poland and Hungary, had urged the court to annul the 2017 EU-wide regulations that sharply restrict private gun ownership.
The 2017 directives created a legal framework for regulating the ownership of firearms across Europe and allowed the EU member states “from adopting and applying stricter rules,” a European Council statement said. While counties like Germany have been following the EU’s lead and making it harder for citizens to acquire firearms, the Eastern European countries have come out against anti-gun regulations being imposed on them by unelected Eurocrats sitting in faraway Brussels.
German broadcaster Deutsche Welle reported the European court’s judgment:
The Court [ECJ] ruled that the measures taken by the European Parliament and the Council “in the contested directive do not entail breaches of the principles of conferral of powers, proportionality, legal certainty, protection of legitimate expectations or non-discrimination as alleged by the Czech Republic in support of its action.”
The EU measures against the use of semi-automatic rifles for private use are intended to curb gun violence and prevent terrorists from acquiring weapons on the black market.
Support for the new rules gained traction following several terror atrocities on European soil, including attacks in Paris, Nice and Brussels over the past several years.
The EU’s firearms policy reform toughens gun control across the bloc and makes it harder for EU citizens to obtain and possess certain weapons. It also created tougher rules for licensing and registration of guns.
“With a view to abolishing border controls within the Schengen area, the Firearms Directive established a harmonized minimum framework for the possession and acquisition of firearms and their transfer between Member States,” the ECJ said in a statement.
“To that end, that directive lays down provisions concerning the conditions subject to which various categories of firearms may be acquired and held, while laying down, on the basis of requirements of public safety, that the acquisition of certain types of firearm must be prohibited,” it added.
The opposition to the EU-sponsored gun regulations has come from nationalist and right-wing parties across Europe. The nationalist governments of Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic have led the legal battle against the EU’s anti-gun laws.
Italy’s Liga Party chief Minister Matteo Salvini, who pulled his party out of the governing coalition last September, passed regulations making it easier for homeowners to use firearms against intruders. He drew outrage from the media and left-wing politicians for saying: “Defense is always legitimate! From words to actions.”
Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party has also opposed these anti-gun laws, calling for loose restrictions on private gun ownership.
“Those owning legal weapons are law-abiding citizens. Crimes with lawfully-owned weapons simply don’t happen,” member of the AfD’s executive body Thomas Thumm said recently. “A serious intrusion is taking place on people’s rights under the cover of supposed domestic security.”
The EU gun directives come at a time when the migrant crime is surging at an all-time high. An imported knife-crime epidemic has hit major European cities like London and Paris. Instead of securing borders, clamping down on illegal immigration, and going after Islamic radicals, the European governments have decided to restrict their citizens’ ability to defend themselves.
U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly triggered outrage in the European political and media circles for criticizing anti-gun laws in Europe. Talking about the November 2015 Islamic terror attack in Paris, President Trump suggested last year that “it would have been a whole different story” if French citizens were armed.
“France is proud to be a country where acquiring and carrying firearms is strictly regulated,” French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said while blasting President Trump at that time. Jihadi terrorists carried out execution-style killings in Bataclan theater, murdering 90 people. The final death toll of the Islamic State-inspired Paris terror attack was 130.
Trump slams European gun regulations.
[Cover image via YouTube]
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Comments
Why is the left so scared for firearms?
They want serfs, not free citizens.
Yes. They are afraid of people with power. These laws do not control firearms. They control people.
https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/China-tech/Pay-with-your-face-100m-Chinese-switch-from-smartphones
Facial recognition technology used to be offered as a “convenience” for Chinese consumers. If you registered your face with a service called Allpay (any guesses as to if it’s actually a military/security enterprises that aren’t “yes” are wrong) you could simply use your face as a credit card so to speak.
Now it’s required of all smartphone users. Because it’s simply part of China’s all encompassing surveillance system.
https://theintercept.com/2019/07/11/china-surveillance-google-ibm-semptian/
“An American organization founded by tech giants Google and IBM is working with a company that is helping China’s authoritarian government conduct mass surveillance against its citizens, The Intercept can reveal.
The OpenPower Foundation — a nonprofit led by Google and IBM executives with the aim of trying to “drive innovation” — has set up a collaboration between IBM, Chinese company Semptian, and U.S. chip manufacturer Xilinx. Together, they have worked to advance a breed of microprocessors that enable computers to analyze vast amounts of data more efficiently.
… Semptian presents itself publicly as a “big data” analysis company that works with internet providers and educational institutes. However, a substantial portion of the Chinese firm’s business is in fact generated through a front company named iNext, which sells the internet surveillance and censorship tools to governments.
… Aegis can provide “a full view to the virtual world,” the company claims in the documents, allowing government spies to see “the connections of everyone,” including “location information for everyone in the country.”
The system can also “block certain information [on the] internet from being visited,” censoring content that the government does not want citizens to see, the documents show.
Aegis equipment has been placed within China’s phone and internet networks, enabling the country’s government to secretly collect people’s email records, phone calls, text messages, cellphone locations, and web browsing histories, according to two sources familiar with Semptian’s work…”
U.S. high tech companies will sell their souls to tyrannies like communist China, just as Lenin predicted.
China is pursuing this all-encompassing surveillance system, they know everything you do online, they know everything you do when you walk out your front door, they know who walks into your front door, they know everyplace you go, and they know everything you buy. This is to make sure nobody gets away with anything. Anything, that is, that challenges the Chinese communist party’s totalitarian rule.
The Hong Kong pro-democracy movement is a nightmare for Beijing. And they just had bows and arrows. Even worse for the Chicoms it’s spreading. First to Macau, now the southern province of Guangdong.
The Chicoms ultimate nightmare? That these people should have firearms.
Which Way, America?
(A) The way of the Founders/Framers
or
(B) The way of the EU/USSR/PRC/UN/Islam model
There’s no middle road.
Under (A), rights are pre-existing and inalienable, inherent in each person by simply existing. Government is organized, with the consent of the governed, and most importantly with defined limitations, solely to protect those rights.
Under (B), rights are “granted” by government which exists unto itself regardless of the consent of the governed, acting as the final arbiter. Here, what government “gives” can as easily be taken away. And with (B), there are no limiting principles placed on governmental power.
Well, which do we (or a voting majority) really, really want, (A) or (B)? There is no other choice.
Either you are a citizen to be respected or a subject to be ruled. The purpose of our Constitution is to limit the created government. And limitations is exactly what the left does NOT want.
“Let us face reality. The framers [of the Constitution] have simply been too shrewd for us. They have outwitted us. They designed separate institutions that cannot be unified [that’s the left’s scary goal] by mechanical linkages frail bridges (or) tinkering. If we are to turn the founders upside down we must directly confront the Constitutional structure they erected [*].”
— James MacGregor Burns (an old leftist professor at Williams College in lefty Massachusetts putting mush into the heads of students; 1918-2014)
*Using an Article V con-con is being pushed for that reason
This has always been my fear of an Article 5: Pack it, gut the Constitution, then vote-fraud the rest of the way.
Election system reform is the first requirement.
What an Article V Convention does still has to be ratified by three fourths of the States.
Only 10 of the first such proposals in the Bill of Rights got ratified.
The idea of of a runaway Convention is just fear mongering.
We are footing most of the bill to protect Europe while the new Europe forgets history. Citizens need to ignore these gun laws as if their freedom depends on it.
And, we need to stop footing that bill.
“Citizens need to ignore these gun laws as if their freedom depends on it.”
Because it does…
Change the name FROM European Court of Justice TO European Court of Fools.
Socialists everywhere are all about control. Control everything, all the time. An unarmed person is a subject, an armed person is a Citizen!
It’s much easier to control unarmed beggars than armed Citizens.
The 2017 directives created a legal framework for regulating the ownership of firearms across Europe and allowed the EU member states “from adopting and applying stricter rules,” a European Council statement said
This is hash.
The article states,
The directive sets out minimum rules and does not prevent member states from adopting and applying stricter rules.
Another reason for Britain to GET OUT!
Considering the UK has or is considering knife sales controls and restrictions, the EU should make them feel right at home.
Far too late for it to matter whether they Brexit or not. The continuing stalls & “negotiations” were designed with the purpose of further embedding any real change from being able to happen. They have whole generations now raised on the idea that they have no rights except what the government, be it a part of the EU or not, allows them to have. The UK government is not going to willingly give up that power now that they have it. No government in history ever has.
the Eastern European countries have come out against anti-gun regulations being imposed on them by unelected Eurocrats sitting in faraway Brussels.
Well, they chose to join The Empire, they have to abide the Imperial Decrees.
And now they see it’s not much different from the empire they just left.
So if the Czech Republic ignores the EU what happens? Do these rules apply to the internal governing of member states? If so, how are they enforced?
Ignoring EU directives come at a price. Poland faces sanctions for not aligning its judicial system to the EU framework. Eastern European countries (Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary) have been threatened with economic sanctions for ignoring EU directive on settling migrants.
Which only drives them further into the arms of their former masters, the Russians. Which have vowed never to fight a war on their own soil, again. Given their history, you can’t blame them.
The EU’s masters are feeling their grip on their pet project slipping, thanks to disastrous, unbridled immigration. The Kalergi Plan is hitting some serious speed-bumps in Eastern Europe, which is emboldening Western Europeans to make some themselves.
No matter what top-down directed chicanery takes place, no matter how much resistance to things like Brexit and Itexit, etc. the people in their respective nations will ultimately be forced to rise up in their own self-defense.
And that spells the end of the arrogant Eurocrats. The EU is a chicken without its head; just a matter of time before it stops moving.
And that spells the end of the arrogant Eurocrats.
Pfft. Even the French Revolution didn’t end the aristocracy there. It just brought in fresh blood.
Sadly two continent wide wars pretty well eliminated all those with the gumption to oppose government edicts. Most people of most European countries, particularly those who were not under the Soviet bootheel (e.g. where is the base of AfD? Saxony of the former DDR), are sheeple happy to do what their masters command.
Support for the new rules gained traction following several terror atrocities on European soil, including attacks in Paris, Nice and Brussels over the past several years.
And, just like the anti-gunners in the US, none of the new rules would have prevented any of the violence.
It WILL, however, manage to hammer one more rivet into the shackles around the ankles of their subjects.
the European governments have decided to restrict their citizens’ ability to defend themselves
You MUST look to the state as your savior. Otherwise, you might get strange ideas about freedom and such. And the coronet rests uneasy on the head of the baron whose serfs have an inkling they don’t need him.
Unfettered immigration from incompatible cultures is very useful to the European ruling class: It leads to conflict and violence, which in turn lead to Europeans desperate to be protected from immigrant thugs and terrorists, which leads to the ruling class promising to protect them if given ever more draconian power.
Of course, the ISIS thugs sheltering in Western European mosques have access to weapons that have been cached in those mosques, and are not likely to comply with the EU’s diktat. Criminals never do.
The old joke.
A man sees his friend looking down, searching for something, on the sidewalk. So he goes up to him and asks, “What are you looking for?”
The friend answers, “My car keys. I dropped them somehow.”
So the friend helps him look until it’s clear there are no car keys to be found. “Did you drop them here?”
“No, back in the alley over there.”
“Then why are you looking over here?” the friend asks.
“The light is better.”
You may ask why this old joke is relevant today. It’s because it’s how our laws work. It’s because the laws only apply to those likely to obey them. These authorities in Europe know full well that mosques throughout the region and their self-inflicted Muslim ghettos have stockpiled weapons that out do their own police and sometimes military forces.
So, they crack down on law-abiding, largely native borne gun owners because that is so much safer.
The light is better. It would be dangerous to go into the dark alley where the real danger lies.
I was riding in a rental car in the D.C. area with one of my coworkers when we defense contractors all, in town to conduct training on a new system, got pulled over for speeding. Understand though that while my smart@$$ friend was speeding, the locals were whizzing by us like we were standing still. The Maryland State Trooper comes up to the driver’s side window and sez, “Do you know why I pulled you over?”
My wiseacre friend says, “Because I was the easiest one to catch.”
This is the truth about our so-called leaders. They are cowards and fools when it comes to the real threat. So much easier to crack down on people who aren’t a danger to public safety.
Plus they might get called racist or other nasty names.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5G0ZgGT7Nh4
“What the London Bridge Terrorist Should Have Learned about Islam While in Prison (David Wood)”
We are on our own, people. Trump is the rare exception; he’s willing to be called bad names like “bigot” by the cowards who would get us all killed.
It was the second amendment that saved Europe when our Doughboys went over and changed the story.
This is the danger: You think you’re signing up to be in an economic group — but you’re really signing up to relinquish your rights and freedoms, and agree that bureaucrats in a foreign country, whom you’ve never elected, can make laws that supersede the laws in your country. In reality, you’ve become a part of the German bloc. It’s just another version of the Iron Curtain to enslave you, impoverish your nation, tear down its national borders, and extinguish your national sovereignty. Your REAL president is the unelected EU bureaucracy. And just like the Hotel California, the EU is “programmed to receive”; [as a member of the EU], “You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave.”
BREAKING NEWS :
DEMAND FOR NARWHAL TUSKS FAR EXCEEDS SUPPLY IN E U COUNTRIES !
“It is better to take refuge in the LORD than to trust in man.
It is better to take refuge in the LORD than to trust in
princes.”
– Psalm 118:1
Guns don’t free people, people free people. Votes are the only bullets that count. 800,000+ killed by firearms in the US Civil War, & the South stayed in the Union, ‘un-free’, but their votes still counted afterwards, & still do.
Ah, so the Socialist-Democrats were totally defeated by the ballots in 2016 and have completely accepted the results of that election until the first Tuesday in November, 2020. Oh! Wait!
The EU decided that the EU was in the right. Things are incredibly convenient for the totalitarians across the Atlantic.
The left/swamp/Islamic cabal has succeeded in seizing Europe. When will they start killing each other in a final battle for control?
See: Sweden
The Muslims in Sweden are often better armed than the Polis. Not completely uncommon for the Muslims to use hand grenades in their turf battles.
Imagine my shock and surprise.
“Let them defend with narwhal tusks!”
Rule of thumb: When your government tells you nobody needs guns, that’s when everyone needs to get guns.
Right, after 22 years of military severance I never thought of buy-in my own gun until a President said I didn’t need one.
“Top European Court Upholds EU’s Anti-Gun Regulations”
Or, in plain English, dictator decides dictator is always right.
More soldiers died of diseases than bullets in the Civil War.