Do We Feel Safe in France?
Very. And I'll tell you why . . .
It’s a dark time in the world. War is raging in the Middle East and in Ukraine, and 18 people were just killed in a mass shooting in Maine. Roberto and I have friends who were on their way to Paris last week and they contacted us to ask if we thought it was safe since Europe has been dealing with its own string of violence.
On October 18th a teacher was stabbed to death and two other staff members were injured in the northern city of Arras, France. It was a terrorist attack perpetrated by an extremist Muslim who had once attended the school.
The same day 15 French airports were evacuated and 130 flights canceled due to an online bomb threat (no bombs were found). A few days later a Tunisian man shot dead two Swedish citizens who were in Brussels for a soccer match. He was angry over the burning of the Quran in Sweden.
Due to these events and for fear of further repercussions from the violence in the Middle East, France has raised the terror alert to urgence attentat - the highest level - which means the government has deployed 7,000 sentinelles (guardians) into French cities. These sentinelles are heavily armed military personnel. Their name comes from Opération Sentinelle, the military name for the security operation which began in 2015 after the terror attacks at the Charlie Hebdo magazine offices.
Montpellier is the seventh biggest city in France and it doesn’t come close to having the tourist traffic of Paris or Nice, but the sentinelles have arrived on our streets. I passed some on Saturday in our busiest tourist area off the Place de la Comédie. Wearing camouflage and carrying assault rifles, they looked agitated and on high alert. I scurried home. That said, I feel safe overall here and am not nervous on any kind of regular basis.
The shooting that happened in Maine on Wednesday was the biggest mass shooting, so far, in America this year. There have been more than 560 mass shootings across the US in 2023 according to the Gun Violence Archive, with a total number of gun deaths of 35,606 - and it’s not even the end of the year.
France has had 8 mass shootings in 2023. It’s not the safest country in Europe; Italy, the Netherlands, and the Czech Republic have each only had 2 mass shootings (what a horrible sentence to write).
Unlike in the United States, in France there is no right to bear arms. Being in possession of a gun without the correct registration carries a maximum penalty of €75,000 and five years in prison. Most importantly, citizens cannot walk around with concealed weapons (In Texas, where we live in the US, it is legal for most people 21 or over to carry a handgun in a holster without a permit both openly and/or concealed.)Â
When Roberto and I go to the movies in France we don’t automatically check where the exits are. When in a big crowd we don’t feel the need to linger at the edges. Our friends don’t fret about sending their children to school.
I know I am preaching to the choir. According to all the polls, the majority of Americans would like to see a change in our gun policies, but it is amazing how after even a few weeks in another country, when I return to the US I can feel myself looking around and being alert in a way that is unsettling and totally fucked up. Human beings are very good at adapting, and unfortunately, we Americans have adapted all too well to a society where we expect guns and gun deaths to be an everyday part of our lives.
JusqĂ¹â€™a la prochain fois (until next time),
Roberto & Carolyn
We feel very safe in France and find our general in-a-crowd non-verbal interactions are less suspiciously oriented. They feel more confident and community-based. Even with my dreary lack of higher level French skills, eye contact at a jazz concert, a local fete or larger group event is rooted in mutual understanding and engagement, not worry about who is packing what.