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German Interior Minister wants bigger crackdown on guns after Hamburg shooting

German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser – who is already working on a draft law to tighten German gun rules – wants to review her own proposal after Thursday’s shooting in Hamburg, to see if it should be made tougher.

Published: 11 March 2023 16:23 CET
Interior Minister Nancy Faeser speaks at an event in September 2022.
Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) has been the main Minister responsible for getting the draft citizenship law through federal Cabinet. After that though, it's up to the Bundestag, which could take several months to debate and amend her draft. Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Wolfgang Kumm

After a gunman killed six people at a Hamburg Jehovah’s Witness centre Thursday night, Faeser told public broadcaster ARD that a change to German gun laws are necessary, and the Ministry will review a draft law that it’s already working on that aims to crack down on gun ownership.

Faeser’s proposed law already envisions banning the private use of semi-automatic long guns, AR-15 assault rifles and their replicas. About 225,000 AR-15s are estimated to be in Germany, with about 60 percent in private hands. German law already bans the private ownership of fully automatic weapons.

Faeser’s current proposal meets with approval with about 57 percent of Germans, according to one recent poll.

READ ALSO: Hamburg reels after Jehovah’s Witness centre shooting

Faeser made the remarks after visiting the crime scene in Hamburg Friday, saying the Hamburg attack, along with previous deadly shootings in Hanau and Halle, underscored the need for gun reform. However, she also pointed out that the gun used in the Hamburg attack would not fall under the government’s current draft law – which is why she wants it re-examined.

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

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Member comments

  1. Semi-automatic simply means you don’t have to reload with every shot. Important for self-defense since you are not likely to get time to reload if you miss or if there is more than one intruder or attacker. Long guns or pistols, it’s all the same. The key is limiting the magazine size. No one needs more than 7 to 9 in a clip. You can ban high capacity magazines. Truth is, bad people will find a way to do bad things no matter how many laws you make.

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Germany arrests Syrian man accused of plotting to kill soldiers

German authorities said Friday they had arrested a 27-year-old Syrian man who allegedly planned an Islamist attack on army soldiers using two machetes in Bavaria.

Published: 13 September 2024 11:17 CEST
Germany arrests Syrian man accused of plotting to kill soldiers

The suspect, an “alleged follower of a radical Islamic ideology”, was arrested on Thursday on charges of planning “a serious act of violence endangering the state”.

The man had acquired two heavy knives “around 40 centimetres (more than one foot) in length” in recent days, prosecutors in Munich said.

He planned to “attack Bundeswehr soldiers” in the city of Hof in northern Bavaria during their lunch break, aiming “to kill as many of them as possible”, prosecutors said.

“The accused wanted to attract attention and create a feeling of insecurity among the population,” they said.

German security services have been on high alert over the threat of Islamist attacks, in particular since the Gaza war erupted on October 7th with the Hamas attacks on Israel.

Police shot dead a man in Munich this month after he opened fire on officers in what was being treated as a suspected “terrorist attack” on the Israeli consulate in Munich.

The shootout fell on the anniversary of the kidnap and killing of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games by Palestinian militants.

The 18-year-old suspect had previously been investigated by authorities in his home country Austria on suspicion of links to terrorism but the case had been dropped.

The incident capped a string of attacks in Germany, which have stirred a sense of insecurity in Germany and fed a bitter debate of immigration.

Three people were killed last month in a suspected Islamist stabbing at a festival in the western city of Solingen.

READ ALSO: ‘Ban asylum seekers’ – How Germany is reacting to Solingen attack

The suspect in the attack, which was claimed by the Islamic State group, was a Syrian man who had been slated for deportation from Germany.

A federal interior ministry spokesman said if an Islamist motive was confirmed in the latest foiled attack, it would be “further evidence of the high threat posed by Islamist terrorism in Germany, which was recently demonstrated by the serious crimes in Mannheim and the attack in Solingen, but also by acts that were fortunately prevented by the timely intervention of the security authorities”.

The Solingen stabbing followed a knife attack in the city of Mannheim in May, which left a policeman dead, and which had also been linked to Islamism by officials.

Germany has responded to the attacks by taking steps to tighten immigration controls and knife laws.

READ ALSO: Debt, migration and the far-right – the big challenges facing Germany this autumn

The government has announced new checks along all of its borders and promised to speed up deportations of migrants who have no right to stay in Germany.

The number of people considered Islamist extremists in Germany fell slightly from 27,480 in 2022 to 27,200 last year, according to a report from the federal domestic intelligence agency.

But Interior Minister Nancy Faeser warned in August that “the threat posed by Islamist terrorism remains high”.

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