The worrying “democratization of the assault rifle” in the cities of Marseille – archyde

A Kalashnikov with its magazines, a shotgun, a shotgun, two automatic pistols and their ammunition, two grenades and two bulletproof vests. This is the result of a seizure carried out in June in a city of 16^e arrondissement of Marseille by the judicial police. An almost banal arsenal today for a team of drug traffickers from Marseille, except that it was found in the Cité des Mûriers, in L’Estaque, in a small point of deal with modest profits – 1,000 euros per day – with regard to other districts freeing up tens of thousands of euros daily.

Proof, for the police, that the trivialization of firearms continues in the Marseille city and that the recomposition of the criminal landscape underway in the city for several months has led both sides, secondary actors included, to arm themselves to defend against competing appetites. The subject is not new. In November 2015, the Minister of the Interior, Bernard Cazeneuve, announced the establishment of a plan to combat arms trafficking after yet another shooting in Marseille.

According to figures obtained by The world, nearly 500 firearms are said to be seized each year in the Bouches-du-Rhône, half of which are so-called “long guns”, including Kalashnikov-type assault rifles. However, figures have remained stable in recent years, or even declining – in 2016, more than 600 weapons were seized in the department – but which do not necessarily reflect the reality of their circulation in neighborhoods undermined by drug trafficking.

Very few investigations are indeed carried out on the arms trade which land in the hands of the dealers. A strategic choice of investigation assumed with regard to the means available to the police and justice services. It is most often only incidentally, in the context of an investigation into a settling of scores or during police operations intended to dismantle a deal point, that the boxes or fallback apartments identified during the investigations lead to the discovery of weapons. If these seizures sometimes make it possible to identify DNA or to know, thanks to the ballistics files, if they have been used in the past, it is rare for acts to be carried out to identify its origin.

A protean market

All judicial and police sources interviewed by The world ensure that there is no massive supply chain for firearms to Marseille. They describe a protean market, operating on a just-in-time basis and on the basis of opportunity. In addition to the traditional networks of importation by land from the Balkans, the origins vary, from North Africa or from theft carried out in armories – as in Switzerland in 2020, where more than 280 weapons were stolen from several dealers, before d ‘land for some in the cities of Marseille. Other traffickers supply themselves online on the dark web by ordering parts to remilitarize weapons that had been deactivated. Most of the time, these weapons are quite old and acquired at low prices – between 3,000 and 5,000 euros for a Kalashnikov – compared to what the traffickers can earn. According to several sources, there are also rental systems.

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