Europeans Applying for Gun Permits in Record Numbers

Most of the gun news we hear about here focuses on events and trends in the United States. We learned, however, that the number of Belgians now applying for gun permits has “skyrocketed,” according to Breitbart.com.

The number of applications has risen 117 percent from 2010, when 608 permits were requested, to 1,318 in 2015. The province of Liege received 1,436 new applications in the last year. According to representatives from Liege’s Service of Arms, the state group that grants gun licenses, rising crime and terror attacks in Europe are the main reason that Belgians are arming themselves in record numbers.

On the morning of March 22, 2016, for instance, three coordinated suicide attacks occurred in Belgium. A terrorist in Belgium from Tunis drove a truck through a crowd in Nice, France, on Bastille Day in July 2016, killing 84 people. According to this news report, burglaries and home invasions are rising in Belgium, up to 180 a day in a country of less than 11.5 million people.

In Belgium, it is not easy for an average person to get a gun permit. The government must conduct a “morality investigation” into the applicant’s background, who must also pass a theoretical and practical test on gun usage. It is forbidden to leave the house with a firearm unless it is carried from the home to the shooting club in a locked case. The guns must legally be kept in a locked case while the person is at home, as well. The fact that the applicants are willing to undergo this scrutiny underscores their desire to protect them selves. Not that a gun will do much good if a truck is plowing through a crowd right at you, but the gun does offer a real sense of protection that is missing without it.

Interestingly, crime has remained stable despite the rise of gun ownership. (Remember this fact next time someone tries to argue with you that more guns = more crime!) “The problem is not people who have declared weapons and who are legally entitled to hold them. The real problem is the others” said Christophe Baes, the district commissioner of Walloon Brabant, where gun permit requests jumped 20 percent from 2015 to 2016.

Because of the strict laws against carrying your guns outside of the home, membership in shooting clubs has also risen. IF you are affiliated with a gun club, it is slightly less complicated to apply for a gun license. In Liège, 80 to 90 percent of the new gun permit requests are from people who want them for sports shooting.

The trend to apply for gun permits is also on the rise in France, where more terror attacks lately have scared the citizens. The article says shooting clubs in France have added 50,000 new members since 2011. In Cologne, Germany, groups of aggressive and drunk young men were reportedly sexually attacking women on the night of New Years 2016. One woman who spoke out about the attacks said she and some friends were surrounded by a group of 20 to 30 men who took everything they had in their pockets as well as groping them all over their body, trying to remove their clothes. Following these attacks, German authorities in Cologne said they received 304 applications within two weeks of these assaults being made public. In 2015, the city had only 408 total applications.