EU to tighten firearms rules amid terror attacks

BRUSSELS: The European Union said it reached agreement Tuesday on tightening rules on firearms amid a wave of terror attacks but fell short of demands to ban AK-47 semi-automatic rifles outright.

The EU’s 28 member states announced it had reached a political agreement with the European Parliament that will tighten laws in place since 1991. “This agreement provides for tighter controls which will help prevent the acquisition of firearms by terrorist and criminal organisations,” said Slovak Interior Minister Robert Kalinak, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency.

The directive includes measures to make it easier to trace firearms, including standardised marking of components and requiring prompt electronic registration of weapons sales, with information kept in national data files. It would also ensure that firearms converted to blank firing ones for use in theatres or television must be registered under the same category as the original weapons.

The European Council, which groups the EU member states, noted that the IS fighters who launched the Paris attacks in November last year had converted blank firing weapons back to the original lethal ones.

The directive, which still must be voted on by parliament, bans short semi-automatic firearms with loading devices over 20 rounds and long semiautomatic firearms with loading devices over 10 rounds.