Paris Shop Owners Arm Themselves Ahead of Saturday Protests
Parisian merchants and residents are installing barriers and purchasing legal weapons to protect businesses before scheduled cost-of-living protests this Saturday.
Shop owners and residents in Paris are preparing for new demonstrations scheduled for Saturday following a wave of street violence last weekend. Previous protests against the high cost of living drew over 500,000 people and resulted in masked mobs looting and vandalizing thousands of shops across France.
In Paris, the Paris Police reported that 1,147 shops were vandalized and 558 were looted during the last round of unrest. In response, merchants are installing wooden barriers on windows and increasing purchases of legal weapons, including pepper spray and flash-balls. Yves Gollet, a local gun shop owner, reported a tenfold increase in sales as store owners arm themselves out of fear.
Reactions among residents remain divided. Some plan to leave the city entirely, while others believe the government will increase police deployments to prevent a repeat of the violence. Pierre-Manuel Faure, head of a residents and shop owners association in the Les Halles neighborhood, noted that government communication has not been reassuring to those apprehending the coming events.
