Greetings, and welcome to the World Affairs Board!
The World Affairs Board is the premier forum for the discussion of the pressing geopolitical issues of our time. Topics include military and defense developments, international terrorism, insurgency & COIN doctrine, international security and policing, weapons proliferation, and military technological development.
Our membership includes many from military, defense, academic, and government backgrounds with expert knowledge on a wide range of topics. Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free so why not register a World Affairs Board account and join our community today?
The guy who sold the Munich attacker the pistol that he used was arrested in a sting operation together with an accomplice.
The connection was somewhat coincidental though: The operation targeted a weapons dealer who sold a bolt-action rifle and ammunition to a 17-year-old a few weeks ago*. Police used the identity of another guy to pretend to be a known customer and got a voluntary acknowledgement that he had sold the Munich attacker pistol and ammunition in two separate deals, the pistol in May this year and the ammo four days before the attack.
* police also found a pistol, three rifles, four revolvers, ammunition and ten pounds of explosives at the home of that 17yo kid when they raided it two weeks ago. The person whose identity was assumed by the police had traded a 7.65mm pistol plus ammunition for a 9mm ten weeks ago. The dealer was arrested with a submachine-gun, a pistol and ammunition (the stuff "bought" in the sting operation) and carrying a loaded pistol himself.
Bear as in carry in public? There's a marked difference legally between carry, shooting, transport and owning.
- Legally, anyone may carry on private property. Carry permits for public property are issued almost exclusively to employees of private security companies. State and Federal Police, customs and military are issued a carry permit with their respective IDs.
- Legally, anyone may shoot a firearm on ranges and similar sports or training facilities. Shooting permits outside such are issued only to hunters (which is a legally defined group with similar layout to game keepers in the UK).
- Legally, anyone with a need to own may be issued a permit to own and transport a firearm. A need to own is defined by one of two facts: shooting (hunting or sports) or collection.
- Sports shooting - semi-automatic - requires being a member of a sports shooting club, attending regular training (currently: once per month or 18 times in one year) and includes a "regular" need to own a maximum of three semiautomatic rifles and two sidearms. Procurement may occur after first having the planned buy entered on your registration.
- Sports shooting - single-fire - requires being a member of a sports shooting club and includes a "regular" need to own an unlimited number of single-shot rifles, shotguns and pistols, bolt-action and percussion firearms. Procurement may occur after first having the planned buy entered on your registration.
- Hunting requires a hunting permit and includes a "regular" need to own for an unlimited amount of longarms and two sidearms. Procurement may occur after first having the planned buy entered on your registration for sidearms; for longarms registration has to occur within two weeks of procurement.
- Collectors are restricted to a field of study (usual example: only longarms with a Browning action), usually the permit does not include also buying ammunition for the firearms. Registration has to occur within two weeks of procurement. Most "collectors" actually inherited their firearms.
Anyone convicted of a felony or to a sentence of at least one year (incl. probation) or improperly stores or uses their firearms loses their owning permit automatically; anyone convicted to at least a fine of 60 days for a premediated crime, for a crime in connection with firearms or explosives, for endangering the public (includes DUI) or a crime regarding hunting laws may regularly lose their permit.
This last paragraph has been changed a couple times over the years.
For the above regulation on sports shooting, it should be noted that sports shooting clubs are everywhere in Germany. The city I live in has somewhere around one per 1500 people, with the oldest of them founded two years before Christopher Columbus sailed to America.
The Local at -- Bavarian Police: Europe under Siege
It's been over a year since the European migrant crisis came to Austria. In the meantime, Austrians have felt a range of emotions from solidarity and sympathy to resentment and total rejection towards the people running from a war and poverty.
Regarding to the influx of refugees, Austria has been officially living in a state of emergency since August, 2016. There is no way to avoid troubles, in spite of police and authorities undertaking all those measures, however. Austrian women suffer from sexual abuses by the recent martyrs we sheltered driven by benevolence; many incidents have been suppressed, though. Only a few of them like such most blatant cases of mass complaints during Welser Volksfest come to light.
Günter Okon is a chief inspector for the Bavarian State Office of Criminal Investigation (Landeskriminalamt Bayern). Everyday he and his fellow officers confront the increasing wave of crime from refugees and illegal migrants, constantly coming to the Bavarian land.
Only current relevance I see is that there are conspiracy theories that link them to the - until sunday - only successful suicide bombing harming others in Germany (the Oktoberfest bombing in 1980).
Late correction on that btw: The last successful suicide bombing harming others in Germany was on Dec 25th 1996, when a woman with some mental problems triggered two Russian-built hand grenades strapped to her body in a church in Frankfurt. Killed herself, her two sisters and injured thirteen others. It's assumed she underestimated the blast and had originally only planned to kill herself that way.
(Small note for explanation: hand grenades are not uncommon in Germany, in particular back in the 90s the black market was flooded by ones being sold off by Soviet soldiers by the crate to make some money on the side before leaving Germany in '94. More recently Yugoslav models are more common.)
Comment