How Europe's Terrorists Get Their Weapons
Very interesting article in Time.
http://time.com/how-europes-terrorists-get-their-guns/
Here are a few excerpts, the full article is well worth the time to read.
"Lone wolf attacks, though terrifying in their randomness, usually result in comparatively few casualties. More worrying is the use of firearms in coordinated attacks involving multiple gunmen. The 2008 Mumbai attacks made it clear to terrorists around the world that guns could yield significant damage. That November, 10 Pakistani militants launched bombings and shootings on train stations, hotels, cinemas and a Jewish community center, killing 164 people. “Mumbai really kicked off this kind of crime,” says Paul James, former head of the U.K.’s National Ballistic Intelligence service who is now leading an E.U.-funded project to look at how weapons cross out of the Balkans into the rest of Europe.
The Paris attackers likely took their inspiration from Mumbai, both in terms of weapons and indiscriminate soft targets. As in Mumbai, the Paris attacks involved both explosives and firearms, but it was the guns that ultimately had the most devastating effects, especially at the Bataclan theater, where gunmen killed 90 people.
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For E.U. officials, the Paris and Copenhagen attacks this year have confirmed a suspicion that illegal weapons are flowing freely through Europe’s 26-country Schengen zone, which allows near frictionless travel across borders, and that European leaders are lagging behind in cracking down on the trade. “We have so many weapons in Paris,” Christophe Crépin, spokesman for France’s national police union, told TIME a few days after the Nov. 13 attacks. “There are links between organized crime and terrorists, and a route that goes from the Balkans.”
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But with failed states at the edge of Europe’s borders and stockpiles of guns floating around in unstable regions like Libya and Ukraine, the continent’s struggle is likely to be a long one.
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