Meanwhile in OGIVA* Paradise - Undisturbed Tourists edition

So in Portugal, where gun control is much tighter than here, how did this happen?

Five heavily-armed men, one wielding a machine gun, held up the Inatel Hotel in Albufeira during the early hours of Monday morning this week. On Monday afternoon a holidaymaker had a gun pointed at him by a man in a passing car, in broad daylight, on the city’s busy main street.

During the early hours of Monday morning (11 July), at around 4.30am, five men crept through a back window of the Inatel Hotel’s reception, startling and violently attacking the night receptionist.

All of the assailants were heavily armed, one with a G3-type machine gun, and had their faces masked.

After being beaten the receptionist was tied up as the gang attempted to make off with a safe thought to contain €100,000. They were stopped in their tracks by a security guard who confronted them. He was also set upon but managed to escape. The commotion cause by the confrontation deterred the robbers from completing the crime. Having been foiled, they fled the scene running through nearby scrubland. A people-carrier that police believe was meant to have been used in the robbery as a getaway car was dumped nearby.

At the time there were some 600 guests staying in the 212-room hotel, although none of them witnessed or, apparently, were even aware of the incident.

From the tone of the article, it seems to me that they are most concerned that they tourists didn’t get disturbed.

So how’s that gun control working for you?

*OGIVA is Observatório sobre Género e Violência Armada, a Portugese anti-violence group.

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