The arsenal of weapons deployed by the eight attackers who terrorized Paris on Friday night underlined France’s gun control problems and raised the specter of further attacks.
The country has extremely strict weapons laws, but Europe’s open borders and growing trade in illegal weapons means assault rifles are relatively easy to come by on the black market.
They feature regularly in gang warfare and were used by both the Charlie Hebdo killers and an extremist who targeted a Jewish school and paratroopers in 2012 shootings around Toulouse in the south of the country.
The suicide vests are less easy for would-be attackers to source because an amateur would struggle to create one.
“Suicide vests require a munitions specialist. To make a reliable and effective explosive is not something anyone can do,” a former French intelligence officer told Agence France-Presse, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“A munitions specialist is someone who is used to handling explosives, who knows how to make them, to arrange them in a way that the belt or vest is not so unwieldy that the person can’t move,” he added.
“And it must also not blow up by accident,” he said.
However, the highly unstable explosive used — triacetone triperoxide (TATP) — suggests the devices worn on Friday were created in France and the bombmaker would probably have sat out the carnage so he could create more for future attacks, intelligence experts said.
“The explosive specialist is too precious. He never participates in attacks,” said Alain Chouet, a former director at Direction Generale de la Securite Exterieure (DGSE), France’s external intelligence agency. “So he’s around, somewhere.”
Even if French security forces can track down the expert behind the vests, they still have to grapple with the challenge of cutting off illegal gun supplies to potential attackers.
The country tightened weapon controls after the 1995 bombings of the Paris metro and Reseau Express Regional commuter trains and again in 2012 after Mohammed Merah went on a shooting spree around Toulouse, killing seven people including three students at a Jewish school.
Military-grade guns are banned in France and even people who want to own a handgun or hunting rifle have to go through strict checks on their background and mental health, but in recent years a black market has proliferated.
The number of illegal weapons has risen at a rapid rate — double-digit percentages — for several years, according to the National Observatory for Delinquency, a body created in 2003.
“In Marseille and the surrounding area almost all the score settling is carried out using weapons used in wars,” a police spokesman said after the Toulouse attacks, adding that Kalashnikovs were the weapon of choice: “If you don’t have a ‘Kalash’ you’re a bit of a loser.”
The eight attackers who terrorized Paris on Friday night and the Charlie Hebdo killers in January all gunned down their victims with similar rifles, probably smuggled from eastern Europe.
The arrest of a Montenegrin man in southern Germany earlier this month, who is now being held on suspicion of trying to supply Friday’s attackers, points to a possible Balkan origin for their weapons.
German officials found a pistol under the bonnet when they stopped his car near the Austrian border, prompting them to take apart the car, which had a Paris address in the GPS system.
In doing so, they uncovered a sophisticated smuggling operation, with automatic weapons, 200g of dynamite, hand grenades and ammunition concealed in the car’s bodywork, according to Bavarian public radio.
The west Balkans are still awash with guns left over from the wars of the 1990s. There are between 4 million and 6 million unregistered weapons in the area, according to a recent study by the Small Arms Survey.
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