How the hell did a mad man like stephen morton get 3 military grade weapons? He had a G3 Rifle, an AK 47 Kalashnikov and a SIG SAUER pistol. How did someone like him get 3 pieces of serious military kit? In England guns are hard to get hold of and assault rifles almost impossible. The price alone would be impossible for him.
shareFirstly G3, and select fire (cable of automatic fire) AK 47 are "battle rifles", not "assault rifles."
"Assault rifle" is just a version of a semi-auto magazine fed fire rifle legal in several European countries,(eg half of Scandinavia), Canada, New Zealand the US and other coutnries, that includes a few plastic features like an adjustable stock.
In the US the spree shootings are with firearms below military grade, and in Europe they are mainly military grade as there is a large black market in the tens of millions of military grade infantry weapons in Europe. EG In the recent Paris shootings they were full auto military grade. In the failed train attack the rifle was full auto military grade.
it is also not hard to kill a whole lot of people with weapons well below those classes. EG in cumbria UK the shooter used a 22 bolt action. When I was vacationing in Australia last year a woman killed eight children in a spree killing with a kitchen knife
As far as that sig sauer you see him with, the p226/8/9 series sig sauer is one a common enough police sidearm firearms in Europe.
Thanks for your reply. How would he get those weapons? They must be very expensive. An Ingram MAC 10 costs 3 grand.
shareRemember it is fiction. so it doesn't require a rational explanation.
But one way would be the fact that Europe has a large black market in actual military grade weapons since there are some very large inventories of infantry weapons in Europe since the cold war.
AK-47 and G3 are definitely "assault rifles" (and the character actually had FN FAL (L1A1), not G3).
An assault rifle is any automatic firearm that uses an "intermediate" cartridge i.e. one that is sized between the typical pistol/submachine gun cartridges (7,65x17mm, 9x19mm etc.) and traditional rifle cartridges (such as 7,92x57mm or British .303). The term itself stems from the production name of the first practical example of such weapon; Sturmgewehr 44 (literally "Assault rifle 44").
The term "battle rifle" is a later invention and mainly used by (American) gun collectors/enthusiasts. It commonly refers to "heavy" assault rifles using the 7,62x51mm NATO-standard cartridge, which is almost the size of full-sized rifle cartridges and is sometimes used as such. FN FAL and G3 are such weapons.
And I very much doubt that a slighty bonkers handyman living in the typical little village somewhere near the Midsomer county would easily gain access to the Balkans arms dealers selling the hardware from the Bosnian war era (i.e. those AKs and other stuff that is relatively common in Europe). Determined and well-funded Islamists living in France perhaps, but not him.
Surely he somehow bought them from the black market as legally owning even semi-automatic rifles or pistols in the UK is nearly impossible for a private person. But I can't really imagine how the character could have pulled that off.