Gun Control: Pulling the Noose Tighter

Around the same time a 19-year-old student began a bloody rampage through his Erfurt school on Friday, Germany’s parliamentarians began debating a new bill that would tighten the country's already strict gun laws.

Within minutes, Robert Steinhaeuser killed 16 people – 14 of them teachers – before turning the gun on himself. Shortly thereafter, the German parliament passed the bill with a clear majority.

Now many are asking if the legislation, the first change to the country’s gun law after 20 years of debate, is tough enough.

The new law, which still must get approval from Germany’s federal states, requires licenses for gas pistols and blank-shooting pistols, which police say are used in about half of the robbery and hostage incidents they handle each year. The law also prohibits criminals who have served at least one year in jail from owning a gun.

In the trauma and second-guessing that has washed over the country since Friday’s massacre, high-ranking politicians announced over the weekend they want to make an already strict law even stricter.

Both Germany’s interior minister and opposition politicians want to review the access 18 to 21 year-olds have to guns and ammunition. The government’s junior coalition partner, the Green Party, has already called for a tightening of Friday’s law when it comes up for debate at the end of May in the Bundesrat, the legislative body representing Germany’s states on a federal level.

Green Parliamentary leader Fritz Kühn said on Monday his party wants to raise the age youths can apply for a gun license from 18 to 21.

Killer got his guns legally

The changes, if they pass muster with Germany's powerful gun lobby, might help. But there is still the question of how much tighter politicians can cinch the already meticulous and lengthy process required to get a gun.

Steinhaeuser (photo) knew the process all too well. He went through it himself.

The 19-year-old was an active member of two target shooting organizations in the region and therefore carried the 9mm pistol he used to kill his victims legally.

Target shooting is Germany’s fourth most popular sport, according to Germany’s sports authority. Police say around 650,000 people are members of sports' shooting clubs and are legally licensed to carry guns.

Members can begin shooting with air pistols as young as 10, according to the law passed Friday. At the age of 16, they can begin using .22 caliber handguns. Two years later, they can formerly apply for a gun license.

A laborious process

The process is laborious, Birger Tiemann, spokesman for the German Marksmanship Organization said in an interview with DW-WORLD. Under current law, applicants must prove over the course of six months (Friday's law raised that to one year) that they are serious about becoming target shooters, training regularly and studying up on gun safety and German gun law.

"During this time, the organization head is watching what sort of a guy I am, how I handle myself and whether I drink too much," Tiemann said.

After the year, the applicants have to take a test. Once they pass, it can take anywhere from seven months to one year for the license to work its way through Germany's Byzantine bureaucracy.

Hunters, weapons technicians and law enforcement professionals must undergo a simliar process, which helps explain why they make up a majority of the 2.3 million people with gun licenses in Germany.

The groups also make up a significant gun lobby, which has kept things the same for the last 20 years. Because of the relatively low level of gun violence in Germany, an vocal anti-gun lobby on the level of the United States is almost non-existent.

The Columbine effect on Germany's political scene?

It is, of course, too early to tell whether Erfurt will ring in the ears of lawmakers much as Columbine did. Following the shooting rampage at the Colorado high school in 1998, American legislators passed laws that cracked down on gun show dealers and manufacturers.

The shootings at Columbine and other American cities also sparked a host of lawsuits against manufacturers and saw the introduction of nationwide background checks for all potential gun purchasers.

The measures provided political ammunition for both Republicans and Democrats that made, and in some cases, broke political candidates.

Four days after the attack, it's still too early to tell whether Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder or his challenger, conservative Bavarian Premier Edmund Stoiber, will make gun control and safety an election year issue.

But one thing is already clear. In matters of gun control, the two candidates, unlike their counterparts in the United States, will have little room to work with.