BRUSSELS: Against the backdrop of deadly school shootings in Finland and Germany, European Union legislators Thursday overwhelmingly backed tough new gun control rules they said they hoped would prevent Europe from becoming a gun-friendly culture like the United States.
Under the new rules, hammered out in 18 months of negotiations between the European Parliament, national governments and gun advocates, individuals age 18 and over will be able to buy and own a firearm, provided they are not deemed a threat to public safety. Individuals under 18 will only be able to obtain a gun for hunting or target shooting under the supervision of a licensed adult.
To plug holes in the current system, in which the registration of guns is not consistent across the 27-member bloc, each member state will be obliged to set up a computerized database of firearms, including details about their model, caliber, serial number and the names and addresses of both the seller and the buyer. The data must be kept by authorities for at least 20 years.
European legislators of all political stripes said the new rules were essential to prevent Europe from embracing the gun culture of the United States, where the right to bear arms is written in the constitution.
"We in Europe have a different culture than in the United States and we do not consider the freedom to buys weapons a human right," said Gisela Kallenbach, a German member of the European Parliament from the Green group, who helped draft the proposed law. "All European cows are registered Europe-wide, so why not guns, if it can save lives? Civil liberties can be sacrificed if we can prevent people from being killed."
Alexander Alvaro, a legislator from the Parliament's Liberal group, which champions maximum civil liberties for individuals, said that the group drew the line at the right to bear arms. "Europe does not want to follow the route of the U.S., where it is too easy for guns to fall into the wrong hands," he said.
The parliamentary vote took place less than a month after an 18-year-old student went on a rampage in a school in southern Finland, killing eight people. In Finland, there are 1.6 million registered guns in a country with a population of 5.3 million people.
Germany has had five school shootings in the past seven years. German police recently claimed to have foiled a plot by some students to carry out a massacre at a school near Cologne. Germany raised the age for owning recreational firearms to 21 from 18 after a massacre in a school in Erfurt in 2002 in which a 19-year-old man killed 13 teachers, two former classmates and a policeman, before committing suicide.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/11/29/europe/29union.php
