COMMENT
Watching your back… from all directions
Colin Greenwood warns that we need to keep an eye on the European Commission and what it’s up to if we want to keep our shooting business.
Cecilia Malmstrom has some worrying views on fi rearms and their uses.
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n the January issue of this magazine we reported on the attack on shooting being mounted in the guise of proposed restrictions on the
use of lead in ammunition. In the December issue of
our sister magazine, Gun Trade World, publisher Sean O’Driscoll reported on the reinvigoration of the UN Arms Trade Treaty in the wake of the election of President Obama. We drew attention to that
treaty and some of its eff ects just a year ago.
www.tandgmagazine.com
We noted that it was inevitable
from the terms of the treaty that legitimate civilian ownership of guns would be seriously aff ected, that the gun trade would be seriously penalised, that bureaucracy would increase, that legitimate travel with fi rearms would be inhibited, and on and on and on. T e treaty was set aside… but now it is back. But the European Commission
poses greater threats, some of which have been articulated by the ever-busy Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom from
Sweden, who is the home aff airs commissioner, the European Commission’s version of a home secretary. Last October, following her
asylum brief, Ms Malmstrom was in Greece visiting centres housing illegal immigrants (mostly young men) from Middle Eastern countries. According to her blog, the lady regrets that Greece grants asylum in only one per cent of the cases against an EU average of 25 per cent. Over the same period she was active in the problem of
human traffi cking and was later concerned about the eff ect on the tourism industry of problems with visas. In short, she deals with the sort of burdens that a home aff airs minister would face in any country.
Tough on guns In November 2012 the focus
turned to guns. In her blog, Ms Malmstrom said that, according to Europol estimates, there are about four million unregistered guns in the Balkans and the global underground weapon
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