I tend not to spend a lot of my time worrying about the politics of other countries. I don’t want them telling us how to do things and so generally, I don’t get into the minutia of what they do. At most, I espouse a belief in the natural rights of individuals and I think every nation should respect them.

I’m disappointed an awful lot.

One country I’ve never visited but desperately want to is Italy. It’s not just about the food, either. I actually study and teach Historical European Martial Arts, focusing on a system that originated in Italy. 

Yet I never imagined Italian gun shows were a thing. They are, apparently, as a piece at Firearms News notes.

It’s a long piece, but there were a few things that stuck out to me, other than the claim that the vast majority of Italians actually want their gun rights unhindered.

In particular, some things we’ve seen here in the US show up there as well. For example, they’ve had protests at gun shows, efforts to shut them down despite no evidence of them being connected to the illicit gun trade, and even banks cutting ties due to politics.

You should read the whole thing, but this part I found particularly interesting.

In Italy, the gun control advocacy movement is composed by a galaxy of small organizations with ties to the political left, trade unions, pacifist and environmentalist groups, and Catholic Church. And while most, if not all of them, do not openly state gun control as their main focus, often tending to identify themselves as “pacifists” at large, it is clear to anybody that lobbying for stricter gun laws is a pivotal point of their activities. As we wrote back in our article about gun laws in Italy, the number of citizens who believe that the country needs stricter gun control is by no means predominant, not even among leftist voters; indeed, in certain areas of central Italy where leftist parties are traditionally dominant, gun ownership is also widely spread, mostly for hunting or home defense. That is why gun control advocates in Italy work against gun shows by attacking from the sides. They will use their channels to depict gun shows as “unregulated supermarkets for guns,” despite the sale of firearms at shows being prohibited, and will paint them as “fairs of death” capitalizing on the anti-hunting sentiment of environmentalists and trying to persuade the public opinion that those trade shows are being used to market “weapons of war.”

Sound familiar?

The truth is that anti-gunners throughout the world are the same. They don’t care about truth. They care about preventing people from even knowing that they can own guns.

Italian gun shows prohibit gun sales on the premises, but you can place orders. It seems that many of the gun laws are based on the region you live in, much like how laws vary here from state to state. In none of them are they unregulated, though, and in none of them can you buy a gun at a gun show, walk out with it, and no one be the wiser.

Italian laws include a permit-to-purchase requirement and a background check. That includes at gun shows.

While we may not universally require permits to buy guns, background checks from gun dealers are the norm, and that’s who sells the overwhelming majority of guns at gun shows. The private party who sets up a table to sell some weapons from his personal collection isn’t nearly as common as some want you to believe.

It’s difficult to tell from here if the anti-gunners there are lying or just stupid. Then again, much like here, it doesn’t make a whole lot of difference.