9th June 2016 – The EU has now declared it wants to ban replica black powder firearms and impose more useless paperwork on lawful shooters.
American website Guns.com reports:
Among the changes would be to deactivate historical guns held in museums across Europe, ban the production of replica firearms to include reproductions of antique weapons, remove the entire class of Category D guns which includes most muzzleloaders, move single-shot long breechloaders with smoothbore barrels to a higher level of control, and other efforts.
FACE, the EU-wide lobbying group for the shooting sports, reacted with dismay, saying: “In its last bid to close the deal before the end of the semester and without the slightest consultation, the Dutch Presidency of the Council aimed at hunters by removing from the text of the Firearms Directive the exception for reproductions of antique weapons (single shot firearms loaded from the muzzle), which are used by hunters in some countries, target shooters, collectors, and for historical re-enactments.”
“The same restrictive approach is adopted against sport shooters,” continued FACE, “with new constraints on the size of the magazines and introducing obligatory membership of a shooting organisation and making it conditional to participation to sports competitions.”
UK Shooting News was also forwarded a press release from France’s William Tell Committee, which represents hunters and sports shooters over there. They said, via the magic of Google translation: “Who will have us believe that the removal of the Class D will enable a more effective fight against organized crime and terrorism? Criminals who use Kalashnikovs and arms dealers who provide the offenders could not care less of these new constraints exclusively hit honest citizens, legal owners of firearms who declare everything.”
They added: “The Dutch EU presidency wants to be saved in C all smooth-bore weapons at once, but the alarm pistols, replicas and deactivated firearms. This broadening of the declaration of weapons that do not meet any criteria of dangerousness is totally unacceptable and demonstrates the bureaucratic side and anti arms [sic] of such a decision.”
Ominously, the William Tell committee added: “The Committee is to challenge the national and European organizations so everyone alert: the interior ministers of each country are to meet June 10, 2016 to take a final position.”
It seems wise to write to your MEP and MP demanding action is taking to reject this change, though with the EU referendum paralysing Britain’s political system, it seems unlikely us Brits will be able to stop this insanity.
The Dutch lose control of the EU presidency at the end of this month. UK Shooting News’ author was unable to locate the original EU documents stating precisely what these changes are.
UK Shooting News 
What an unbelievable waste of time it is to further restrict such a class of firearm.
Though it is my understanding that in certain EU countries (I think France may be one) muzzle loaders don’t require any certificate to possess.
The way muzzle loaders are treated in the UK is about right – anything further than that is draconian and frankly ridiculous.
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Nick, you are dealing with EU Apparatchiks here. They know bog all about the realities of life, but possessing an unbounded self-belief that they are the arbiters of all that is good and that the rest of us cannot be trusted to do what they believe to be right. Roll on the 23rd.
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Aye v true – I dropped my postal votes off yesterday – was starting to feel like Out will win, but then the extension of the vote registration to tonight might well swing it back the other way……I think it likely that if it’s a close result on the 23rd (either way) we’ll see British Politics held up again with a long running court case over the blatant gerrymandering.
Fingers crossed it’s a mass turnout for the outers and any gerrymandering becomes a moot point!
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One thing i am very curious about..
Lets say the leave vote wins it…
The ridiculous proposed EU bans come in, before we officially left the EU (lets say it takes “x” months or “y” years to “detach” from the EU)…
What happens? Are we saddled with what would be stale EU law, despite then being an ex EU member state?
We could have a hell of a job repealing the nonsense EU imposed laws…
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I think this shows that the Dutch EU presidency for what it is. UTTERLY INSANE! Not even pro-gun control UK has at any point in the last 100 years even considered banning these types of firearms. Just shows they are going for broke. Also does anyone think Michael Yardley will finally see the error of his ways and support us against the coming EU gun ban since his beloved guns are facing the axe?
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Ridiculous!!!!!!!!!!!as for Mr Yardley well he’s no friend of shooting in my opinion.
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Hah these things certainly pass my criteria to be safe to own, take bloody ages to load and no guarantee they will even go off (in my experience), and if when they do you can’t see anything for the smoke! Definitely a very small threat to public safety.
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