Good evening, Today we passed 150.000 Signatures, and went straight to 164.000. We have been getting backup from several shooting organizations in the EU. Germany has been providing a strong supply of signatures. France is second, still increasing day by day while others like Poland are dropping off a bit. The other big countries have not yet delivered. I cannot emphasis enough, that this fight is not over yet. This draft is being prepared and will turn into a real proposal soon. The countries that have been doing the best in this petition seems to be those where people have been talking and convincing others the most. It really is not enough to sign, we need everybody to bring in more votes if we want a good result out of this. 164.000 out of 509 million EU citizens is not a big minority it is a VERY small minority. It is no more then 0.03 %. Please let that sink in. And consider this even among gun owners in the EU, it will still be less then 1 %. If you signed, you made a start, but do not consider that enough. Talk to people, hunters, clay shooters, non shooters, anybody who might have sympathy for the cause. Explain to them that in 20 years time we will have given away the Citizen's right to defend himself from crime, terrorism and oppression. And we will have done so because we: 'Did not think it affected me at the time' That being said, a lot of people are working very hard to put up a resistance against this new legislation. We hear good news from several countries in the North and East of the EU where MEP's have spoken out against it. Firearms United and the IPSC community are working feverishly with a lot of other organisations to form a front. But do not think for one minute that you can wait for them to fix it for you. Your signature is not enough, we need your voice to speak to people, to politicians and to the EU. This proposal would take away expensive property, reduce Citizen's security and cost a large number of people their job. Just a final thought. The smallest memberstate of all is Malta, yet has the best number of signatures per capita. If every other memberstate would perform like Malta, we would have had a million signatures by now. And it would still only represent 1/5th of a percent in the EU. Please reach out to people who can sign. We are still much devided. Good luck Stijn Vandamme The petition : http://change.org/p/council-of-the-european-union-eu-you-cannot-stop-terrorism-by-restricting-legal-gun-ownership The Facebook page for the petition: https://www.facebook.com/StopIP156110/ Background information about how the ban was developped: http://www.firearms-united.com/images/download/marini.pdf Feedback page for the proposal at the EU. https://ec.europa.eu/transparency/regdoc/?fuseaction=feedback&docId=3085376