After Munich shooting, would tighter German gun laws make a difference?
The German response to massacres on their soil in recent years has been to tighten gun control. But with some of the strictest gun laws in the world, where can Germany go next?
An 18-year-old obtained聽聽to use in a mass shooting in Munich on Friday that left nine people dead. Immediately, many wondered how the shooter, who had received psychiatric care and treatment for depression, was able to get access to the weapons.
On Sunday, German leaders began to call for even stricter gun control, as evidence emerged that the gunman, Ali David Sonboly,聽. But while politicians send up the call for stricter laws, some experts told 海角大神 that may not be the catch-all answer.
鈥淚 don鈥檛 think there鈥檚 any magic law that will solve this kind of problem 鈥� even in Germany,鈥� says James Jacobs, director of the Center for Research in Crime and Justice at New York University. 鈥淚t鈥檚 probably not possible to stop the black market. We haven鈥檛 stopped the black market in drugs. It鈥檚 unlikely that they could stop the black market in guns.鈥�
Officials suspect that Mr. Sonboly drew inspiration from previous mass shootings in Germany, since he visited the site of a 2009 shooting where . This shooting, along with a school massacre in Germany in 2002, provided the political impetus to push through stringent gun control measures. In contrast, efforts in the United States to introduce tighter gun control laws after a public shooting have often led to聽聽and calls to resist changing the law.
Germany is the only country in the world where anyone younger than 25 in order to apply for a gun license.聽Gun owners must prove expert knowledge in handling the weapon, usually gained through a months-long course, and all guns must be registered in an electronic database. With stricter gun laws, gun homicides in Germany dropped from 106 in 2002 to 57 in 2015, according to GunPolicy.org.
Germany鈥檚 two ruling parties, Chancellor Angela Merkel鈥檚 海角大神 Democrats and the Social Democrats, were quick to call for even tighter gun laws following Friday鈥檚 attack.
Sigmar Gabriel, the deputy chancellor, told the Funke Mediengruppe news group, 鈥淲e must continue to do all we can access to deadly weapons.鈥�
Dr. Jacobs says that even in England, which has the toughest gun laws in Europe, there is a significant amount of gun crime. "It鈥檚 very difficult to keep a person who is determined to obtain a firearm from obtaining one," he says.聽
"I think there will be some tinkering around the edges, but I don鈥檛 see that there will be or that there needs to be a major departure in gun regulation," says Kenneth Ledford, professor of German history and law at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. And Germany has a much greater gun presence than most Americans realize, he says.
German citizens legally own 5.4 million guns, making the country the fourth most-armed nation per capita.
"Germany has always had an armed police force, as opposed to England where there's a long tradition of an unarmed police officers. As far back as the 1980s, airports and public buildings are guarded by border police with machine guns," says Dr. Ledford.
The disparity between gun laws in different European countries is being called into focus, since guns can freely travel in the border-free Schengen Area. Though the serial number from the handgun used in Munich was wiped off, , The Telegraph reported, which was also believed to be the origin of the weapons used in last year's Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris.
