According to an “empirical” estimate of the Ministry of the Interior, five to six million weapons, found or acquired by inheritance, are irregularly owned. The purpose of the operation is to avoid domestic accidents or that weapons fall into criminal networks.
mo12345lemonde with AFP
More than 300 sites open their doors, Friday, November 25, in metropolitan France and in the overseas, as part of a vast operation of “voluntary abandonment” and registration of unrecognized weapons, which Short until December 2.
According to an “empirical” estimate of the Ministry of the Interior, five to six million weapons, found or acquired by inheritance, are irregularly owned in France. For eight days, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., their owners can therefore go to police stations and gendarmeries to divest them or have them recorded in the weapons information system (SIA).
“Individuals who will perform one or the other during this, unprecedented, simple and free operation, will not incur any legal or administrative prosecution on the basis of transport or detention without authorization of weapons” , promises the ministry on its site .
The issues are multiple. It is as much a question of avoiding domestic accidents and neighborhood conflicts as to participate in the fight against intra -family violence. Each year 8,000 weapons are also stolen, and the purpose of the operation is also to prevent them from incorporating criminal networks.
For people with reduced mobility or residing in the Paris region, home collection is also possible in order to avoid travel with weapons in this densely populated area.
Abandonment is possible for all types of weapons (firearms, handguns, white weapons, small ammunition of a caliber less than 20 mm), but only firearms can be recorded. Beyond December 2, abandonment will remain possible, as was already the case before, but the absence of administrative or judicial proceedings for detention or illegal transport of weapons will no longer be guaranteed.
In France, five million individuals – mainly hunters, sports shooters, biathletes and some collectors – legally have firearms and two million weapons belong to dead people, according to the Ministry of the Interior . Municipal police are also authorized to hold a weapon. Also the 40,000 RATP, SNCF, security company agents, members of shooting clubs (around 70,000), to which are added professionals, such as the 2,500 gunsmiths in the country .