Britannia Radio

From Times Online

April 12, 2009

Germany struggles with gun ownership laws

Fran Yeoman

In a low-ceilinged room in west Berlin, a gunman steadies himself, aims and fires. The noise is startling even through sizeable ear protectors, but he doesn’t flinch before pulling the trigger again. Despite the Magnum revolver he looks like an off-duty lawyer, which he is, down to his shiny brown brogues.

Next to him, firing a similar weapon at the cardboard targets 25 metres away, is a ginger-bearded mechanic in a baseball cap. It is practice night at Kleinkaliberschützen Berlin (Small Calibre Shooting Club Berlin, or KKS), and an eclectic handful of men — the one woman present doesn’t appear to move out of the common room — have come to take part in one their country’s favourite pursuits. To British ears, guns plus Germany means wartime armies or dramatic shooting sprees, particularly in the wake of last month’s school massacre and this week’s bloody gun attack in a Bavarian courthouse. But guns are part of the national culture, and their appeal stems from the centuries-old hunting, sporting and back-to-nature traditions of German life rather than the more recent penchant for militarism.

There are more than 15,000 gun clubs in Germany with around 1.5 million members, not to mention the legions of hobby hunters. There are roughly 10 million legally-held guns and perhaps double that in unregistered weapons, making it the fourth-largest civilian firearm-holding nation in the world behind the US, India and China, according to the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey. Every summer Schuetzenfest, or shooting festivals, take place in towns and villages across the country and in some places are the centrepiece of the civic calendar. But guns are now, in the wake of recent events, under scrutiny.

The lawyer, who requested that only his first name Roman is used, gives a thumbs-down to indicate that he is not happy with his performance.

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Others have been similarly displeased about the backlash that gun clubs have faced since Tim Kretschmer, who learned to shoot with his father at such an institution, opened fire at his former school in Winnenden in March and claimed 16 lives including his own. An open letter from the victims’ parents helped reopen an emotional national debate about gun laws. After a registered gun club member killed his sister-in-law and himself during a row in a courthouse in Bavaria on Tuesday, the state premier offered his own pledge to re-examine the rules. A day later, another 59-year-old Bavarian man shot his ex-wife dead before turning the gun on himself.

Members of KKS do not think that the gun ownership laws, which they argue are very strict already, are to blame. Thomas, a ponytailed bank worker who started shooting with his policeman father at the age of eight, said: "You cannot stop this by forbidding legal weapons. It’s the same when young men die in cars at fast speeds. It’s not the car, it’s the person who can’t drive it."

Here they do everything by the book. Roman has his own air pistol, which he brought to the club in a padlocked case, but having joined in summer 2007 he has not yet fulfilled the stipulated 18 visits to the club that form one of several preconditions to buying his own Magnum, and so he must use one held at the clubhouse.

However, Wolfgang Nietsch, the club’s 74-year-old chairman, is sceptical that the rules are always adequately enforced by the state authorities.

"It is the law that you have to keep your guns in a locked cabinet but the police don’t have enough time or manpower to make sure," the retired pipe-layer and owner of 15 guns said. "One policeman said to me that they know 90 per cent of the cabinets are not adequate." Mr Nietsch has been attending gun clubs since 1968, when a damaged ear drum put an end to his competitive swimming. His daughter, now middle-aged, was a champion shooter as a teenager, and he is worried that not enough young people are taking up the hobby. The minimum age for membership of KKS is 12 — Mr Nietsch thinks that children should begin shooting even younger than that with the right supervision and training — but there are no juveniles among the club’s 80 members and relatively few young adults.

Roman, who at 36 is one of them, thinks that the more traditional aspects of some clubs are putting younger people off. "I like this club because you can concentrate on shooting," he said. "It is a sport. People train regularly and the club’s teams do well in competitions." The costumes, bands and marching associated with Schuetzenfest life "are not attractive to younger people," he said.

Nevertheless, gun clubs and shooting remain immensely popular. The Marksmen’s Association is the fourth biggest sporting organisation in Germany and, particularly in a general election year, few politicians are likely to risk alienating its members.

After a school shooting in Erfurt in 2002 left 17 dead, Germany tightened its laws and raised the minimum age for gun ownership to 21. In the wake of Winnenden, Angela Merkel called for a relatively modest change — spot checks to make sure weapons were being stored correctly — but a month later things have already gone quiet. Mr Nietsch has his own thought on what the reason for that is: "The law won’t change because 60 per cent of MPs are hunters." Thomas, the bank worker, seems confident that the gun club’s place in German life will long outlive the turbulent aftermath of the recent shootings. Such tragedies are "not good for the discussion," he said, "but the next issue will come along soon."