The Islamic terrorist who killed two Swedish people and wounded a third during a soccer match in Brussels on Oct. 16 was in possession of an AR-15. The attacker escaped the stadium, which had more than 35,000 fans in it at the time, sending Belgium into a high-security alert as police launched a manhunt. He was found at a cafe and police shot him to death when they tried to arrest him. The AR-15 was found near him in the cafe. How he obtained the semiautomatic rifle in Europe, where gun laws are much stricter than in the U.S., isn't clear. In American Gun: The True Story of the AR-15, authors McWhirter and Elinson focus mostly on the AR-15's history in the U.S. But the book does mention that the versions of the rifle have been used in combat across the world, and select-fire and semiautomatic versions of the gun have been used by terrorists, guerillas, and drug cartels from Northern Ireland to the Middle East to Latin America.
