Terror threat

In Europe, Terrorists Arm Themselves on the Black Market While Populists Champion Self-Defense Rights

Another inevitable result of restrictive laws is large-scale noncompliance. In 2003, the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey estimated that the roughly 80 million Germans owned 7.2 million legal guns and between 17 and 20 million illegal ones. Some of those illegal guns are long-held weapons that were never registered, but others are recently smuggled products. "Police in northern Europe tend to believe that illegal weapons are arriving largely from eastern and central Europe, especially the Czech Republic and the former Soviet Union," the Small Arms Survey adds.

Earlier this month, reporters for Britain's Sky News met with gun smugglers who displayed AK-47s and Steyr rifles for sale, and offered to provide explosives and rocket-propelled grenades. "The men claimed their weapons are smuggled from Ukraine into Romania before being shipped by another gang to western Europe and the middle east. But western Europe was the primary destination."