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Paris Shootings and Explosions Kill Over 100, Police Say

(www.nytimes.com)
623 points franzb | 3 comments | 14 Nov 15 00:25 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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jmspring ◴[14 Nov 15 00:45 UTC] No.10563642[source]▶
The repeated attacks, heavy immigration of refugees...I'm hoping for the best, but I feel like there is a powder keg here. Whether or not it is based in any fact, how this is handled and plays out is a serious concern.
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untog ◴[14 Nov 15 00:51 UTC] No.10563676[source]▶
What do people think the refugees were running away from? Exactly these people.
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Cthulhu_ ◴[14 Nov 15 00:58 UTC] No.10563711[source]▶
I think a major problem is that even they can't know who among them - in the big groups of refugees making the journey - is an isis member or supporter, and even if they're not, there's no telling who is going to radicalise in the future. The attacks earlier this year in paris weren't done by someone that came from that area, iirc.
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toyg ◴[14 Nov 15 01:03 UTC] No.10563747[source]▶
Refugees carry little more than their shirts in their travels. Those guns and grenades didn't come with refugees. End of story.
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philwelch ◴[14 Nov 15 01:11 UTC] No.10563791[source]▶
Guns and grenades are not that hard to get, even in Europe. The limiting factor is how many people are willing to lay siege to a concert hall and calmly execute a hundred people, and whether some of those people were let in under the guise of "refugees".
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toyg ◴[14 Nov 15 01:34 UTC] No.10563900[source]▶
> Guns and grenades are not that hard to get, even in Europe.

Not hard to get, but when you're talking about dozens of assault rifles, someone somewhere will know what is going where. If your intelligence people are worth their salt, of course.

> whether some of those people were let in under the guise of "refugees".

Yeah, because it's extremely effective to drop your people for months in a Turkish refugee camp, hoping that 1) they will survive in shocking conditions, 2) they will be processed and sent to France, or 3) they will jump on a dinghy and make it to the other side (when chances are that they will just sink), or 4) they will walk through half a dozen borders on high alert and across unsympathetic countries. Pure tactical genius.

More likely, these people had good passports and went through friendly airports smelling of roses. Once on-site, they were armed by existing networks that the French security apparatus still doesn't know how to infiltrate effectively. That's so much easier than leaving people to their own devices across two continents and hope they'll somehow manage to make it to la Gare du Nord at 10 o'clock on Friday morning.

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jacquesm ◴[14 Nov 15 01:39 UTC] No.10563927[source]▶
Since the end of the war in former Yugoslavia and the fall of the former USSR Europe is awash with arms of all shapes and sizes. Automatic weapons caches are uncovered with scary regularity and it is not hard to imagine at all that groups with sufficient money can gain access to assault weapons in relatively large numbers.
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1. ordinary ◴[14 Nov 15 09:09 UTC] No.10565043{3}[source]▶
I have never heard of this, which is scary in itself. Or maybe it isn't, I don't really know. Do you know of any further reading for me?
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2. ◴[14 Nov 15 10:52 UTC] No.10565248[source]▶
3. jacquesm ◴[14 Nov 15 11:37 UTC] No.10565336[source]▶
Sure, here are two links to start with:

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/europes-small-arms-plague/ (1998)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/getting-a-gun-le...

And many many others, unfortunately. It's a very nasty thing and it will take an extraordinary effort to put this genie back into the bottle.

Open borders has been a blessing in many ways but at the same time it has caused a whole bunch of un-intended side effects and this one and cross border heavy crime are two of the not so nice ones, to put it very mildly. We now have actual gangs with heavy arms in Amsterdam which was a fairly peaceful city not all that long ago.