Germany to tighten gun laws after far-right rampage
GERMANY is to tighten its gun laws and increase the police presence on its streets in the wake of the shootings in which a far-right gunman killed nine people of migrant backgrounds.
Laws will be introduced to require regular psychological checks for anyone issued with a gun licence, Horst Seehofer, the German interior minister, said.
More police will be deployed to protect sensitive sites such as mosques, airports and train stations.
Angela Merkel’s government was urged to bring in tougher gun laws after it emerged that Tobias Rathjen, the Hanau gunman, had a firearms licence and legally owned several handguns, including the murder weapon.
Rathjen killed nine people in a series of shootings at shisha bars on Wednesday night before turning his gun on his 72-year-old mother and himself.
Authorities are facing questions over how he was able to obtain a gun licence after a manifesto and video he posted on his website made clear he was profoundly mentally disturbed. “If the investigations suggest we should have intervened earlier over his weapons licence, we have to change that,” Mr Seehofer told Bild newspaper. “We need a medical report or a medical certificate that everything is all right… Otherwise the licence must be withdrawn.”
The German Shooting Federation rejected calls for tougher gun laws yesterday, claiming that Germany already had “some of the strictest gun ownership rules in the world”.
But it appears Rathjen was able to exploit a weak link in Germany’s otherwise tough gun laws by applying for a licence as a member of a gun club.