Steven Mace
02-23-2002, 05:40 AM
Critics Open Fire on Planned Gun Law Changes
By Udo Ulfkotte
FRANKFURT. As Bavarian police tried to determine this week why 22-year-old Adam Labus shot three people to death before he committed suicide, German Interior Minister Otto Schily offered some reassuring words to citizens.
"We are already working to reform the gun laws," Mr. Schily said.
Over the last 20 years, such announcements have been made regularly. The government of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder decided to act last year, introducing a bill to tighten gun ownership regulations.
Since then, the legislation has come under fire from gun owners who maintain that the government is simply complicating gun ownership for law-abiding citizens and not for law-ignoring criminals. The bill, for instance, is unlikely to do anything to prevent the expansion of one already-growing sector of the firearms market -- illegal guns. Bavarian police estimate that up to 3 million unregistered weapons may be circulating in the southern German state.
They also said Mr. Labus was carrying two pistols that came from Yugoslavia when he killed two of his former supervisors and his former principal on Tuesday near Munich, although they were unsure whether the guns were illegal.
In 2000, guns were used to attack people and property 6,937 times across Germany, according to the Federal Office of Criminal Investigation.
Germany's gun lobby is trying to avert the planned changes by arguing that registered weapons are involved in only 0.04 percent of all German crime. This claim is backed up by the German Police Union, whose members' magazine states that "the private possession of firearms is not the problem at all as far as the police are concerned."
According to the Federal Office of Criminal Investigation's annual report on "Weapons and Explosives 2000," only 3.4 percent of all crimes involving firearms were committed with registered weapons, a figure that is below the 1999 rate of 4.2 percent.
In one-third of all the above cases, guns were used to shoot traffic signs, and, in an additional 23 percent of cases, the charge was for poaching. Most of the guns confiscated after a crime has been committed are gas pistols or blank-firing guns.
Werner Wittlich, a member of the German parliament for the Christian Democratic Union who in 1999 became "king" of the German Federation of Historical Marksmen's Fraternities, says he thinks the bill is doomed.
"I cannot imagine that our four million hunters and marksmen will simply swallow this piece of legislation without putting up a fight," Mr. Wittlich said. "That's why the government has good tactical reasons for putting it on ice until after the election."
Police crime statistics do not differentiate between legal -- i.e. registered and illegal firearms. Because weapons that need a license are registered by the individual states, but have never been counted in total, there is nobody who can reliably say how many firearms in Germany are legally registered on weapon possession cards.
Such cards do not permit a gun owner to carry a weapon on his or her person. This requires a gun license, and these are extremely difficult to obtain nowadays and subject to stringent requirements.
Somebody who has a weapon possession card may own a firearm (which has to be kept separately from the ammunition) and may transport it in a closed container to a shooting range that has been licensed by the police.
The police union puts the number of such weapon possession cards in Germany at around four million, and the number of weapons registered on them at 10 million. Most of these registered guns are sports rifles, small-caliber guns and air guns, which are hardly used for criminal purposes anyway.
But there are also said to be more than 20 million large-caliber firearms in Germany that have not been registered with any agency.
The government's efforts on the issue go back to the coalition agreement worked out by the Social Democratic Party and Alliance 90/The Greens in the autumn of 1998. In the agreement, the two parties pledged to amend Germany's gun laws, which they described as "unnecessarily complicated and full of loopholes." Their aim was to increase "transparency, comprehensibility and applicability."
Mr. Schily turned that pledge into a legislative reality last March. The aim, he said at the time, was to carry out "a long overdue modernization" of the law and pass a law designed to provide better protection for the general public.
The plan would ban members of violence-prone extremist organizations from owning guns. The ban also would apply to any person who had been sentenced to a prison term of at least one year or who had a history of violent behavior.
In addition, the plan would require anyone who wanted to carry tear-gas pistols and blank-firing guns in public to have a so-called "light gun license."
The police union has derided this aspect of the changes as a "joke." The idea is that although such weapons would still be freely available to people 18 and older, "light" license-holders would henceforth be bound either to carry their weapons or to keep them under lock and key. This means that someone wanting to rob a bank would still be able to purchase his weapon over the counter and it is unlikely that he would first apply for a "light" gun license, the union says.
Feb. 21, 2002
http://www.faz.com/IN/INtemplates/eFAZ/archive.asp?doc={5CC480E9-7A4E-4E6C-AC0E-2D38E17C9839}&width=800&height=572&agt=netscape&ver=4&svr=4.75
Steve Mace
By Udo Ulfkotte
FRANKFURT. As Bavarian police tried to determine this week why 22-year-old Adam Labus shot three people to death before he committed suicide, German Interior Minister Otto Schily offered some reassuring words to citizens.
"We are already working to reform the gun laws," Mr. Schily said.
Over the last 20 years, such announcements have been made regularly. The government of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder decided to act last year, introducing a bill to tighten gun ownership regulations.
Since then, the legislation has come under fire from gun owners who maintain that the government is simply complicating gun ownership for law-abiding citizens and not for law-ignoring criminals. The bill, for instance, is unlikely to do anything to prevent the expansion of one already-growing sector of the firearms market -- illegal guns. Bavarian police estimate that up to 3 million unregistered weapons may be circulating in the southern German state.
They also said Mr. Labus was carrying two pistols that came from Yugoslavia when he killed two of his former supervisors and his former principal on Tuesday near Munich, although they were unsure whether the guns were illegal.
In 2000, guns were used to attack people and property 6,937 times across Germany, according to the Federal Office of Criminal Investigation.
Germany's gun lobby is trying to avert the planned changes by arguing that registered weapons are involved in only 0.04 percent of all German crime. This claim is backed up by the German Police Union, whose members' magazine states that "the private possession of firearms is not the problem at all as far as the police are concerned."
According to the Federal Office of Criminal Investigation's annual report on "Weapons and Explosives 2000," only 3.4 percent of all crimes involving firearms were committed with registered weapons, a figure that is below the 1999 rate of 4.2 percent.
In one-third of all the above cases, guns were used to shoot traffic signs, and, in an additional 23 percent of cases, the charge was for poaching. Most of the guns confiscated after a crime has been committed are gas pistols or blank-firing guns.
Werner Wittlich, a member of the German parliament for the Christian Democratic Union who in 1999 became "king" of the German Federation of Historical Marksmen's Fraternities, says he thinks the bill is doomed.
"I cannot imagine that our four million hunters and marksmen will simply swallow this piece of legislation without putting up a fight," Mr. Wittlich said. "That's why the government has good tactical reasons for putting it on ice until after the election."
Police crime statistics do not differentiate between legal -- i.e. registered and illegal firearms. Because weapons that need a license are registered by the individual states, but have never been counted in total, there is nobody who can reliably say how many firearms in Germany are legally registered on weapon possession cards.
Such cards do not permit a gun owner to carry a weapon on his or her person. This requires a gun license, and these are extremely difficult to obtain nowadays and subject to stringent requirements.
Somebody who has a weapon possession card may own a firearm (which has to be kept separately from the ammunition) and may transport it in a closed container to a shooting range that has been licensed by the police.
The police union puts the number of such weapon possession cards in Germany at around four million, and the number of weapons registered on them at 10 million. Most of these registered guns are sports rifles, small-caliber guns and air guns, which are hardly used for criminal purposes anyway.
But there are also said to be more than 20 million large-caliber firearms in Germany that have not been registered with any agency.
The government's efforts on the issue go back to the coalition agreement worked out by the Social Democratic Party and Alliance 90/The Greens in the autumn of 1998. In the agreement, the two parties pledged to amend Germany's gun laws, which they described as "unnecessarily complicated and full of loopholes." Their aim was to increase "transparency, comprehensibility and applicability."
Mr. Schily turned that pledge into a legislative reality last March. The aim, he said at the time, was to carry out "a long overdue modernization" of the law and pass a law designed to provide better protection for the general public.
The plan would ban members of violence-prone extremist organizations from owning guns. The ban also would apply to any person who had been sentenced to a prison term of at least one year or who had a history of violent behavior.
In addition, the plan would require anyone who wanted to carry tear-gas pistols and blank-firing guns in public to have a so-called "light gun license."
The police union has derided this aspect of the changes as a "joke." The idea is that although such weapons would still be freely available to people 18 and older, "light" license-holders would henceforth be bound either to carry their weapons or to keep them under lock and key. This means that someone wanting to rob a bank would still be able to purchase his weapon over the counter and it is unlikely that he would first apply for a "light" gun license, the union says.
Feb. 21, 2002
http://www.faz.com/IN/INtemplates/eFAZ/archive.asp?doc={5CC480E9-7A4E-4E6C-AC0E-2D38E17C9839}&width=800&height=572&agt=netscape&ver=4&svr=4.75
Steve Mace