Police in EU confiscates firearms decomissioned in Slovakia

[Snejdarek]

Police forces around Europe are carrying out Europol's order to seize firearms that were decommissioned in Slovakia and carry out thorough inspections of individual firearms in order to find out whether they were decommissioned "for good" or in a way that provides easy possibility of conversion back to live ammunition.

The firearms are decommissioned in a way that they should be able to use only blank cartridges. While laws in the Czech Republic and most other EU states provide for decommissioning process that basically makes it impossible for the buyer to convert the gun back to live ammunition (mostly by use of newly manufactured parts intended only for the blanks), the Slovak rules are more permissive (allowing only minimum changes in actual real firearms).

Organized crime in Europe apparently took notice of the Slovak ways and started buying the "decommissioned" guns in Slovakia legally, then converting them illegally to live ammo. It seems that some of the firearms used in the Charlie Hebdo attack had exactly this origin. The Europol chief was quoted as saying that such guns were used in multiple terrorist attacks in 2014 and 2015 in Spain and France, without pointing to any particular ones.

Text (google translate), video in Czech, pictures.

It is not clear in which way the police track the guns to the owners, I suppose that they are using Slovak business records of the sellers for the purpose (i.e. when someone paid by card and not by cash).

It should be also noted that semi-auto "assault rifles" became essentially banned in Slovakia after the 2010 Bratislava shooting, which probably contributed to the fact that while in the Czech Republic the military spare parts surpluses are converted to semi-auto and sold to civilians, in Slovakia they are kept in full-auto and "converted" to blanks only.

 

[Carl N. Brown]

Interesting. In the US, a "dewat" (totally deactivated war trophy) is tax-exempt but must be be registered with ATF under the "once a machinegun, always a machinegun" rule. Did these "decommissioned" guns simply "go off the grid" completely in Slovakia?

 

[RetiredUSNChief]

Not that I like the laws they have for such, but it IS pretty stupid to essentially circumvent them. And it should come as no surprise that the various countries around Europe will take a very close look at any such weapons that people may have brought into their countries from Slovakia.

"Hey, look! We replaced the bolt in this gun with a dummy bolt that will only chamber and fire blanks!"

You STILL have to comply with the laws of your own country.

Dummies.

 

[Snejdarek]

Interesting. In the US, a "dewat" (totally deactivated war trophy) is tax-exempt but must be be registered with ATF under the "once a machinegun, always a machinegun" rule. Did these "decommissioned" guns simply "go off the grid" completely in Slovakia?

Yes, as far as I am aware they went completely off the grid.

In the Czech Republic you need to be 18 to buy one, no questions asked. But then again the Czech ones are supposedly next-to-impossible to convert to be functioning with live ammo again (even if you were successful they'd explode in your face after couple of live rounds, if not after the first one).

As regards the "once a machine gun, always machine gun", it seems that the Czech cops have the same opinion of the Slovak "insufficiently" decommissioned guns. They classify them as "Class A Firearm", which require may issue police permit, i.e. the same status as functioning full auto firearms. Of course there are no internal border controls in most of EU, so if someone just bought one in Slovakia, paid with cash and just brought it back home, my guess is they can't trace him.

 

[bannockburn]

Snejdarek

Does Europol have the authority to confiscate any or all of these guns, no matter the country of origin or where the transaction legally took place, if in their determination the guns could readily be made to work in full auto mode? Is there an equivalent within Europol or the E.U. to our BATFE here in the U.S.?

 

[RetiredUSNChief]

Here's their opening paragraph from their website:

"Europol is the European Union’s law enforcement agency whose main goal is to help achieve a safer Europe for the benefit of all EU citizens. We do this by assisting the European Union’s Member States in their fight against serious international crime and terrorism."

https://www.europol.europa.eu/content/page/about-us

Looks to me like they provide "assistance" in working with the police agencies of the various EU nations, who will go about interdictions according to their own jurisdictions.

 

[Snejdarek]

Snejdarek

Does Europol have the authority to confiscate any or all of these guns, no matter the country of origin or where the transaction legally took place, if in their determination the guns could readily be made to work in full auto mode? Is there an equivalent within Europol or the E.U. to our BATFE here in the U.S.?

bannockburn

as RetiredUSNChief pointed, out, it is an assistance force for the national police units. As Wikipedia sums it up:

The agency has no executive powers, and its officials are not entitled to conduct investigations in the member states or to arrest suspects. In providing support, Europol with its tools – information exchange, intelligence analysis, expertise and training – can contribute to the executive measures carried out by the relevant national authorities.

Currently, there is no EU body with a direct executive/investigation powers in the nation states. I believe that closest to direct powers is the European Commission in its power to investigate issues relating to competition law, but even then when they want to conduct, for example, dawn raid against the will of a company, they still need to rely on the local forces to show up and break the doors down in accordance with the requirements of the local due process.

There is a very long saga of proposed European Public Prosecutor office who would have a direct powers in the nation states as regards prosecution of crimes relating to the EU money. Even though it is clear that he would still rely on national police forces and would have to bring the cases in front of the national courts, such an extent of direct power of EU institutions is a concept that doesn't play well with any of the nation states.

This is also connected with the fact that EU as such does not and cannot raise any direct taxes, unlike the federal government of the US.

What was actually the pivotal moment in US when the federal government gained the power and started collecting taxes?

 

[bannockburn]

Snejdarek

The Federal government began collecting taxes as early as 1862, typically to retire the government's war debt. But it didn't come into it's own until 1913. In 1963 it was renamed the Internal Revenue Service. The BATFE became a separate government agency in 1972 having been under the auspices of the Treasury Department as part of enforcement in conjunction with the IRS.

 

[12 gauge loon]

most de-acts in the uk, come with a proof test certificate of compliance as de activated weapons, the two min ways now are a small crimp in the barrel to prevent its reuse and the actions are normally welded solid

many years ago it was just the pin and a tack weld and no certificate
we are not allowed to trade de-acts with out the certificates now

the whole euro boarder thing is a pain at times, Interpol is a toothless information gathering police force

as for de act weapons they are getting very strict on them now. instead people are gpoing back to ruusia, turkey ect to buy real ones instead

if you want to see frighting, goole "abandoned ammo dump in Belarus"

i was working near there once we used to just walk in, there was 5 guards and no fence.lol

we could have taken a live 105mm shell home as a souvenir

 

[4v50 Gary]

Don't like the notion of Europol.

 

[Snejdarek]

Don't like the notion of Europol.

Well, the organized crime isn't respecting the boundaries of national police forces in Europe, so it only makes sense to have a force that can coordinate their efforts.

As long as they have no power to directly intervene in any country, it's fine with me.