Guns in France

A reader objected that guns are legal in France in reply to my comment that the French were disarmed.

My question to you, reader, is at what point do ‘reasonable restrictions’ become so restrictive as to be, in effect, a ban? How chilly must the chilling effect become before it is accurate to call it frozen?

In France, only licensed gun owners (for certain arms) may lawfully acquire, possess or transfer a firearm or ammunition. Cites: 110 137 138 131 132 136 139 140141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 94 95 75 151 129 133
Applicants for a gun owner’s licence in France are required to establish a genuine reason to possess a firearm, for example hunting, target shooting, personal protection, security. Cites: 152 153 154 155 156 94 157

Hover your cursor over the numbers to see the cite. This took me precisely one second of Internet research to find.

There was one security guard in the theater. He was unarmed.

From the fact that not one single victim of the shootings this week in Paris was armed, it takes no Olympic longjump of logic to conclude that these laws operated with precisely the predicted effect. No one in the victim crowd had a genuine reason to possess a firearm, hence no one had a license. Who had firearms, however?