Holders of automatic weapons transformed into semi-automatic weapons will have to “relinquish them or have them neutralized within a year”, according to a government decree published on Saturday.
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The decision concerns around 1,000 weapons held by individuals in France, according to the Interior Ministry requested by AFP. The acquisition or possession by individuals of transformed automatic weapons, considered as “war” weapons, will be prohibited from November 1, according to a government decree published on Saturday, October 30 in the Official Journal.
This measure was announced in July by the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, during a trip to Puy-de-Dôme in tribute to the three gendarmes killed by a heavily armed madman in Saint-Just, in December 2020.
The decree taken by Jean Castex concerns holders of automatic weapons transformed into semi-automatic weapons, that is to say firing only one ammunition at a time with automatic reloading. They must “relinquish them or have them neutralized within one year”, i.e. before November 1, 2022, underlines the text.
Owners of automatic weapons converted to manual repeating or single shot weapons will be able to keep them and continue to acquire the corresponding ammunition. However, these weapons, which go from category C to category A1, can no longer be acquired by individuals. “These are weapons for which the irreversibility of transformation cannot be guaranteed and which therefore present a very particular danger”, justifies the Ministry of the Interior.
In addition, the new weapons information system (AIS), deployed from February 8, 2022, will make it possible to “know at all times where a registered firearm is”, and achieve “automated and periodic checks on keepers”, recalls Beauvau.