Germany plans even tighter gun control

Germany's gun ownership laws, already in the process of being tightened up after the discovery last year of a far-right plot to overthrow the government, could become even stricter following last week's fatal shooting at a Jehovah's Witness Kingdom Hall in the city of Hamburg, where a gunman killed six people.

Private ownership of fully automatic weapons is already forbidden, and legislation that was being drafted by Interior Minister Nancy Faeser would add semi-automatic long guns, AR-15 assault rifles, and replicas to the list. It is believed that around 225,000 AR-15s are in the country, with approximately 60 percent in private hands.

Following last week's shooting, believed to have been carried out by a former member of the religious group who left on bad terms, Faeser said the gun used would not have been covered under the draft law, and she now wanted it looked at again.

"The murder weapon used in Hamburg would also not fall under the ban on semi-automatic long guns," she said.

"In Hamburg, the perpetrator fired with a semi-automatic pistol that he legally owned as a marksman. We'll now examine whether such weapons should also be banned."

After the shooting, it emerged that the police had received a tip-off that the gunman, who killed himself in the aftermath of the attack, could be having psychological issues, but after a visit to his address, he was allowed to keep his weapons.

"This terrible act has shown that legal gun owners can use their guns to do bad things in this society," Green Party member of Parliament Marcel Emmerich told public broadcaster NDR Info. "Fewer guns in private hands ensure more public safety."

In December, Germany was rocked by the discovery of a suspected coup plot believed to have been organized by a movement known as the Reichsbuerger, or Citizens of the Reich, which does not recognize the legitimacy of the modern German state.

Police arrested 25 people and prosecutors said the group included members with weapons and knowledge of how to use them, and had attempted to recruit serving and former army members.

"These are not harmless crazy people but suspected terrorists who are now sitting in pre-trial detention," Faeser told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper at the time, adding "we need all authorities to exert maximum pressure" to remove their weapons, which led to the current draft legislation.

According to a May 2022 report by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, Germany has one of the lowest firearm homicide rates in Europe, at just 0.08 per 100,000 people, hence the Hamburg attack, and two other fatal shootings in recent years, having caused such public outrage.

In February 2020, a far-right extremist killed nine people in the city of Hanau, and in October 2019 two people were shot dead near a synagogue in the eastern city of Halle, after a gunman tried and failed to break into the building.