by Joseph P. Tartaro
Executive Editor

Gun control advocates in the US frequently point to European models to support their claims that restrictions on firearms acquisition and possession will reduce gun-related crime and mass murders. In support of their arguments, they bend the statistics they trot out to propagandize the public.

But in recent years, they have been downplaying their European models, because in contrast to the continuing decline in violent crimes in the US, crime has been rising rapidly in such paragons of gun control as Britain, France and Germany. Then they become strangely silent.

Gun Week has published several stories recently about the spiraling rate of violence in Great Britain, where legal handgun ownership has been outlawed, and most modern rifles and shotguns are also prohibited. But perhaps some may have missed more recent events that call attention to the failure of gun control in France and Germany.

United Press International recently reported that a man opened fire inside the city hall of the Paris suburb of Nanterre early on March 27, killing eight local lawmakers and wounding 19 others, eight seriously.

The man, identified as Richard Durn, 33, by several French media, acted calmly as he leveled two Glock semi-automatic pistols on lawmakers as they wrapped up a six-hour, late-night meeting around 1 a.m. Paris time, survivors said. Later reports by police said he also had a Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum revolver on his person at the time of the shootings.

Durn kept saying, “kill me, kill me,” a French radio station reported. Durn was tackled as he tried to reload his pistols, after one of the local lawmakers threw a chair at him. Durn was taken to local police headquarters for questioning.

“It was carnage,” one survivor told French radio. “Everyone was on the floor. It was a horror.”

The man’s motives were not immediately clear, but he did leave his mother a 13-page letter listing the failures in his life.

“It’s a terrible drama,” Jacqueline Fraysse, mayor of Nanterre, told local media. “These were young men and women, engaged, honest, who defended their ideas.”

France’s President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Lionel Jospin rushed to the crime scene to denounce the shooting. The reason the national politicians hurried to the scene and before TV cameras was because the rate of violent crime in France—with and without guns—has been rising so fast that it is a top issue in the current presidential election campaign in that nation. Chirac and Jospin are running against each other in the April-May elections.

In a later interview on Europe-1 radio, Jospin said Durn apparently attended local municipal council sessions regularly, and was recognized by several of those present. The man had apparently joked with some local lawmakers before opening fire, Jospin said.

It appeared Durn—who held a master’s degree in political science but was unemployed—had no specific political-issue motive, as he targeted both conservative and liberal politicians in the shootings. Some witnesses told the French radio station that Durn was a militant environmentalist. He volunteered at the local chapter of the Human Rights League and was a member of a recreational shooting club.

Euro Greenies Duck
However, officials in the Green Party moved quickly to distance themselves from Durn, whom some described as a long-time mental patient and “member of an ecology movement.” According to Associated Press (AP), Durn had been in and out of psychiatric care for over a decade. He lived with his mother, Stephanie, 68, who said her son “felt very alone.”

When Durn was linked to the environmental movement, Green Party official Christian Demercaster was quick to say that Durn was not a party member. But Demercaster had greeted Durn at the council meeting before the six-hour session began.

Rightist presidential candidate Alain Madelin was quoted calling the shooting an “American-style byproduct.”

Durn reportedly had no criminal record, and had a permit for his guns. He apparently shot them recreationally at a gun club, and had renewed his permit annually.

The story about this shooting took an even more bizarre turn when Durn killed himself the next day by jumping out a fifth-floor window at police headquarters. He didn’t just jump, according to AP; he struggled his way out the window.

Two officers tried to hold him by his legs, but the determination of the suspect, most of whose body was already hanging outside, made their attempt fruitless.

Now, in addition to politicians, the media and the public wondering how a man with a troubled mental health history was licensed to carry handguns under the country’s extremely strict laws, they are asking questions about how he was allowed to commit suicide while being actively questioned by police.

All of which further illustrates that one cannot ever be sure of anything when it comes to gun control or the guardians of public safety.

The March mass shooting in Nanterre is not the only such event to occur in Europe recently.

Almost six months earlier, a masked gunman killed four people in Tours, France. That shooting occurred in October 2001.

While European officials are quick to link mass shootings with a US influence, the Old World seems to have its own home-grown social problems, in spite of much vaunted gun control laws.

In February of this year, a man who had recently lost his job shot and killed two former bosses in Eching, Germany, then took a taxi to his old high school and killed the principal and himself as hundreds of students ran for cover, according to AP.

The man, never identified but believed to be 22 years old, wore army camouflage clothing and reportedly carried two pistols and two pipe bombs.

Police reported that the violence began about 8 a.m. when the man walked into a packaging company in Eching and shot his former boss, 38, and a foreman, 40. Both died at the scene.

The assailant then went 12 miles by cab to Freising, where he walked into the school and began shooting, before setting off a pipe bomb.

Witnesses said he asked for a former teacher, who was not at the school, then fatally shot the principal and wounded another teacher before killing himself.

None of the 400 students in the school was injured.

‘E.T.’s’ Guns Vanish
Yet, in spite of the absurdity of the anti-gun arguments, they continue to strive to be politically correct, no matter how senselessly.

The recent re-release of the Steven Spielberg blockbuster “E.T. The Extra Terrestrial” on its 20th anniversary is accompanied by a lot of media attention, new product tie-ins and enhancements to the original film to take advantage of newly developed computer special effects.

Among the changes, however, which include a re-shooting of the famous image of boy and alien biking across a full moon, are a couple of odd politically correct (PC) changes.

As the suburban children harboring E.T. prepare to go trick or treating on Halloween, the mother now tells one child he “looks like a hippie.” In the original film, she said he looked like a “terrorist.”

Most startling, however, is that the mysterious government agents chasing little Elliott and E.T. are now armed with frightening—flashlights. In the original film, the agents wielded shotguns as they pursued the boy and alien.