Illegal firearms in Europe: a collection

Stand-alone post for max visibility.

Rhetorical question: what happens when these gangs are reinforced with returning ISIS combat veterans?

Mean Streets: Denmark Cooks Up Ban to Prevent Takeover by Multiethnic Mobs

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Incessant wars raging between rival gangs in parts of the capital city of Copenhagen have become a problem of national importance. As the death toll rises in step with the number of shootouts, the national government is pledging decisive steps to crack down on gangland crime.
The multiethnic Nrrebro neighborhood ofCopenhagen has been a hotbed ofgangland crime forthe last six months, yielding a bloody harvest ofthree dead and 25 injured in42 shooting episodes, which can be attributed toa turf war betweenLoyal toFamilia (LTF) and Brothas, both including many non-Danes.
The snowballing law-breaking and persistent infighting making national headlines has spurred the Danish authorities intoaction. Copenhagen Police director Anne Tnnes has said that the situation is being taken seriously, stressing that the police measures were beginning toshow results.

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According toTnnes, over60 local gangsters were detained and 3,300 local residents were searched ina massive effort toconfiscate asmany firearms aspossible.

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(So much for the EU's so-called 'enlightened' restrictive firearms laws, wherein only the law-abiding are punished).

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LTF was previously described ashaving the most elaborate and consistent strategy ofall the Danish gangs. It was also considered tobe atthe root ofall gang conflicts inthe Nordic country bythe National Police Investigation Center, being involved inthree outof three gang conflicts. LTF is said tobe atwar withBrabrand Group, Black Army and Brothas, most ofwhich are dominated byimmigrants withnon-Western backgrounds.
"In recent years, it has primarily been aboutthese immigrant youths. These are young men, witha background inthe Middle East. Most are born and raised inDenmark, yet a great deal has yet togain Danish citizenship," University ofAalborg criminologist Kim Mller told Norwegian national broadcaster NRK.
LTF is fronted byShuaib Khan, the son oflocal politician Wallait Khan, currently a political maverick. By the age of30, Khan junior has amassed verdicts totaling 12 years ofprison time. Khan's release fromprison earlier this year was speculated tohave fueled the Danish turf wars.

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https://sputniknews.com/europe/20171...gangland-wars/

From January 2017 -
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SWEDISH police have demanded a crack down on illegal firearms trade as Malmo is being overrun by armed thugs amid the European Union's failure to halt weapons smuggling from Balkans.
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http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/...-weapons-trade

From October 2017
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At least four have been seriously injured after at least one gunman reportedly opened fire at a market in Trelleborg, Sweden, according to local authorities, who launched a “major police operation” in response to the incident.

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https://www.rt.com/news/406527-swede...oting-injured/

From January 2016-

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Social worker Alexandra Mezher, 22, was murdered in Mlndal on Monday
Gothenburg suburb last year took in more unaccompanied refugee children than anywhere else in the country 4,041 added to a population of 63,000
Received 22.6million to provide housing for unaccompanied minors the most state funding per capita than any town or city in Sweden
Crime figures reveal there were 222 criminal complaints linked to migrant centres between 20 October 2015 and 8 January this year
MailOnline went inside lawless town where eyes of Europe have been watching since the senseless stabbing
See more news on the migrant crisis at www.dailymail.co.uk/migrantcrisis

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From June 2016 -

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Kotors picture-perfect old town and its setting surrounded by rocky mountains dropping straight to a long bay have earned it first place in Lonely Planets Best in Travel cities list this year.
But the Adriatic idyll of shady limestone alleyways and imposing baroque churches has been spoiled by a spate of armed clashes between criminal gangs, which has led to the government sending in anti-terrorist police to quell the situation and put the city on lockdown.
Six incidents in three months have included gunfights and a murder, according to the reporting network Balkan Insight.

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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...t-Molndal.html

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The most recent incident was a gunfight on 3 June, reportedly between rival drug gangs operating in Kotor.

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https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...urist-paradise

Historical perspective on Marseille, which within recent memory seems to often be mentioned in the same breath as AK47s found at crime scenes.

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In Marseille's long history of organised crime, where murderous mobsters with names such as The Belgian and The Blond became folklore, it's perhaps not surprising that the underworld spawned its own spin-off clothing line.

But France's second city is now battling a new wave of murderous, organised crime gangs. The Mediterranean port city, designated European capital of culture for 2013, has for years worked to shed its gangland image as "Chicago of the south" and rebrand itself as a major city break destination.

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https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...arseille-crime

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France outlaws most gun ownership and it’s almost impossible to legally acquire a high-powered rifle such as an AK-47, so where did the weapons in the Nov. 13 terror attack—not to mention the bloody January assault by Islamic terrorists on the Paris office of Charlie Hebdo magazine and the 2012 shootings by a militant in Toulouse—come from?

The answer: Eastern Europe, most likely, where the trafficking of deadly small arms is big, shady business. And where local authorities find it difficult to intervene.

The French government and the European Union know they have a foreign gun problem. But as the chain of attacks illustrates, efforts to tamp down on the flow of weapons have, so far, failed to disarm terrorists.
French police reportedly seized more than 1,500 illegal weapons in 2009 and no fewer than 2,700 in 2010. The number of illegal guns in France has swollen by double-digit percentages annually for several years, Al Jazeera reported, citing figures from Paris-based National Observatory for Delinquency.

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https://www.thedailybeast.com/this-i...s-get-to-paris

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POLICE who brought down one of Scotland’s most ruthless crime gangs yesterday pledged to track down and seize their multi-million pound property empire.
Nine of the heavily-armed drugs gang were convicted last week after flooding Scotland with guns and cocaine.
After dismantling their operation, detectives are targeting their dirty fortunes, much of it ploughed into properties on the Costa del Sol and other European holiday resorts.
The gang raked in more than £2m a month by supplying guns and drugs to other organised crime groups.

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DCS McLean said the availability of firearms from Eastern Europe made it easier for the Scottish gang to get their hands on high-quality weapons including a Skorpion submachine gun – the weapon used in the Paris terror attacks in 2015.

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https://www.sundaypost.com/fp/weve-b...es-playground/


See also;

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Automatic rifles used in January’s Paris attacks that killed 17 have been traced to a shop in Slovakia that sells deactivated weapons as “movie props”, it was reported on Wednesday. The decommissioned weapons legally bought in Slovakia were reconverted to fire live ammunition – a process that gun experts say can take as little as “an hour” to complete – and used in the deadly attacks on a Kosher supermarket and the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, French police reportedly believe.

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The Slovakian police officers tracked the guns to a shop in the west of Slovakia, where records revealed they were sold legally, as “expand” (expansion) weapons. The sale of such arms is perfectly legal in Slovakia.
Expansion weapons are once live firearms that have been mechanically deactivated to fire blanks for use as props in movies, for historical re-enactments or private collections.
In Slovakia, such weapons – even the heaviest machine guns – can be sold to anyone over 18 who carries ID. It took five minutes for a Novy Cas reporter to purchase a neutralised VZ 58 the double-action, semi-automatic pistol Coulibaly shows off in a video which emerged after his death. After producing some ID, he walked away with the gun for just €250 (£183).

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...-Slovakia.html

Huh. There must be a hell of a markup going on here.

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The three men had, between them, amassed weapons worth up to €25,000 (£19,000) – including three Kalashnikovs, Soviet-made Tokarev pistols, a Skorpion submachine gun, and a rocket launcher.

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...r-weapons.html

This is a report on the case, with an obvious pointer to how the police found a "way in".
Link:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-42307952

Scotland does have an organized crime problem, but firearm use is low. It appears this gang needed the firepower to extend and protect their activity.

Why? The very short article starts with:

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Although crime has fallen in recent years, the number of grenade attacks in Sweden soared from eight in 2014 to 52 in 2016, according to the Swedish Police Authority.

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Link:http://www.theweek.co.uk/90114/swede...s-attacks-soar

Not that the Uk is immune from the use of grenades, notably the 2012 attacks by Dale Cregan, in Manchester, which ended with two women police officers being killed in an ambush.
Link to first article found:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukne...-arrested.html

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Sweden is among the world’s safest, richest and best-run countries enjoying steady growth and rising employment. But it has been experiencing an unprecedented surge of gang shootings, bombings and sexual assaults.

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In a country of 10m people, more than 320 shootings and dozens of bombings were reported in 2017, along with more than 110 murders and 7,226 rapes — a 10% increase on 2016. More than 36% of young Swedish women say they feel unsafe at night.
The authorities have admitted they are unable to investigate rape cases immediately because the resources are focused on gang crime. “We are forced to choose between two evils,” the police said.
The crime surge is mainly confined to so-called “areas of social exclusion”, a code for neighbourhoods such as Rosengard that are predominantly populated by immigrants. They are not classic ghettos — the infrastructure and services are better than in areas of central London — but these communities are plagued by high crime rates and unemployment.

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In Malmo, where a fifth of the 340,000 inhabitants are under 18, children as young as 14 roam the streets with Kalashnikov assault rifles and bulletproof vests. The average age of gang members is 22, the vast majority of them hailing from migrant families.

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Sweden has pursued a liberal immigration policy for more than a generation; its government speaks of being a “humanitarian superpower” for having taken in a large number of asylum seekers. After the migrant crisis of 2015, when more than 160,000 people sought asylum, the policy was abruptly changed. Yet there is little debate or reliable data about the integration of the 12% of the population that derive from non-western countries.
For a long time the Swedish establishment played down the decay of immigrant-dominated suburbs, but it can no longer ignore the explosion of violence.

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https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/t...eden-q83g055k9

A court result, Part 1 is Post No.6:

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The downfall of Scotland's most sophisticated crime gang was triggered by a surveillance operation on a Toyota Yaris.The nine men, who have been sentenced to a total of 87 years between them, went to remarkable lengths to conceal a terrifying arsenal of weapons, vast quantities of drugs and large amounts of dirty money.

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Link:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotlan...-west-42635866

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AT LEAST four Calais migrants are fighting for life after being shot when two rival groups clashed in a two-hour running battle after food was handed out at the French port last night, police said. Gunshots rang out as a group of Eritreans brawled with Afghans on the northern French coast.
Four people were critically injured in the shooting, including one who was blasted in the head, with another two also suffering bullet wounds.

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http://www.france24.com/en/20180201-...s-brawl-france

https://www.express.co.uk/news/world...l-Macron-brawl

Life imitates art

Well this EU-funded research tome may help, due to the size 484 pgs., I have not read it and have only skimmed the contents list.

The title says enough:

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Triggering Terror:Illicit Gun Markets and Firearms Acquisition of Terrorist Networks in Europe

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Link:http://www.flemishpeaceinstitute.eu/..._bw_lowres.pdf

The title implies a crossover with terrorims in Europe (which has its own thread) so this maybe double posted.

The countries covered are: Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, France, Italy, Holland. Romania, UK, North Africa and the Ukraine.

(Added 22nd April '18) A short article based on this report and another by Jason Burke. The 'another' report is:http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/about...-firearms.html

Link:https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...s-report-warns

As the Strasbourg killer illustrated Europe has a problem with antique firearms, his revolver was over a hundred years old.

Then I found via Twitter an EU-funded research project, Project Safte on Firearms and Terrorism in Europe. There is a free book, Triggering Terror: Illicit Gun Markets and Firearms Acquisition of Terrorist Networks in Europe, with individual chapters on several European nations.
Link:https://www.flemishpeaceinstitute.eu/safte/publications

In the French chapter on pgs 42-44 there is a Table 6 'Firearms seized in recent attacks inspired by radical Islamist'.
Link:https://www.flemishpeaceinstitute.eu...fte_france.pdfilogies