Jg Stephan's Blog

The German government has probably very little confidence in its citizens. Now they want to forbid the soft air weapons. Correctly, the plastic toy weapons.
As legend has it, somebody could modify soft air's to very dangerous weapons and they can cause heavy injuries.
They looked very authentic and they could be used for armed robberies.

I live close to Hamburg and therefore i take this city as example.
There is each day shootings with violated persons.
In the last years few hand grenades exploded in the city.
The owner of a discotheque didn't want to pay protection money to criminals. On one Saturday evening, when the discotheque was very full, the criminals threw a hand grenade in and injured some guests heavily.
The assassins of the 9/11 had their headquarter in the city.

I believe it give larger safety problems than toy weapons...

I think Germany is proof that if you are a criminal and want to own a gun, handgrenade, or whatever, then you will own it. But if you are a law-abiding citizen, the government just took your right to protect yourself.

That is very heavy for me, because my English is too bad. The laws are very complicated and I describe them quite roughly.

If sports marksmen want to buy a weapon for themselves, they must be a member of the shooting organization at least half a year.
After an one-week training course and an existed examination the possession card can be requested.
Who doesn't take part in competitions and doesn't exercise regularly don't get any permission.

Weapons such as MG42, MP40, UZi and the like are forbidden, even if they aren't full automatic.
America has wonderful gun control policies opposite Germany, but there are still stricter countries.
Criminals come more easily to weapons like law abiding citizen.

When the Russians have left Germany at the beginning of the nineties, they sold very many of their weapons.
Many weapons also come from Yugoslavia and Kosovo after the war.
Even if the crimes are committed with illegal weapons, then report
the newspapers of the dangerous sports marksmen.

In Australia ALL types of guns are banned without a licence and many types of weapons (swords, etc) are also banned.

This happened after someone shot 30 people at Port Arthur though.

It's interesting - I support gun ownership in a responsible population - but it's so hard to judge 'responsible'.