A hidden time bomb? Policing illegal firearms in Europe

Abstract

The aim of this chapter is to discuss the security challenges associated with firearm possession (legal and illegal), weapon trafficking, and firearm misuse in Europe and then to explore how these challenges might be most effectively addressed. A concern also includes the trafficking of firearms for illegal purposes into the UK. To do this, two separate, but related, aspects of the issue will be considered. In the first place our question concerns the scale and nature of firearm ownership or possession across the range of European societies; the balance between legal and illegal (licensed or unlicensed) firearms comprising the various societies’ firearm inventories; the chief uses to which these firearms are put, and the risks and social harms to which these rates of possession routinely give rise, including background levels of homicide, suicide, and firearm-related violence. In the second place we will address a number of the more contingent, institutional features of firearm production, exchange, and distribution. This contains particular configurations of political, cultural, and geographic incidents and relationships including wars and patterns of conflict, especially crimogenic ‘gun cultures’ and structural (or institutional) features of gun control regimes, giving rise to large scale of organized criminal or terrorist opportunities.