It’s interesting how often, while researching one thing, you come across something that is of use or interest, but not directly about what you were looking up. Seeing Troy’s piece about the latest attempt to disarm people in Illinois, I thought I’d share this little nugget I came across researching the piece on pictures of Mohammed. It may be of use in debates with the anti-gun folk.
One of the twelve people murdered by Jihadis at the Charlie Hebdo offices in 2015 was man called Stéphane Charbonnier, known as Charb. He was cartoonist at the magazine. The magazine, and its staff, had received many threats, and there had been actual attacks against the magazine in the years prior to the massacre in 2015.
Charb was a sports shooter, comfortable with guns, and had been personally named in threats, even being put on Al-Qaeda’s “Most Wanted” list in 2013. So, Charb applied for a permit to carry a firearm for self-defence. The threats to his life were highly credible.
I’m sure it won’t shock you to learn that French gun law is pretty tight, not as tight as the UK, but still very restrictive. Nevertheless, a civilian can apply for a 1-year carry license, which allows them to carry a handgun and a maximum of 50 rounds if they are “exposed to exceptional risks to their life”.
The French authorities never even replied to his application.
Who knows, on the day it might have made a difference if he’d had a gun, or it might not. After all, Charlie Hebdo had police protection, two of the people killed were police. But maybe on the day the good guy with a gun could have been a French leftie cartoonist. We’ll never know, because Charb was never given the chance to defend himself and his colleagues.
I’ll leave you with what Charb said about the threats to his life.
“…I’d prefer to die on my feet than to live on my knees.”
