General Attitudes To Guns and Efforts To Tighten The Law
The gun law in the Czech Republic is quite liberal. It is mostly caused by the fact that after the fall of communist regime people wanted to regain their rights to keep and bear arms and these needs resulted in passing quite a liberal legislation in 1996, which surpassed the previous restrictive communist enactment. The law became widely accepted and led to quite massive civilian arming. Especially many businessmen felt the actual need to obtain a firearm because the times shortly after the Velvet Revolution are known for the rise in organized crime often related to the economic transformation in the early 1990s.
Today fewer people feel the need to carry a firearm for protection. General attitude to gun ownership is that there is no point in banning guns because criminals will get guns no matter how tight the law is. Also the fact that Czech Republic has a strong tradition in firearms manufacturing and competition shooting contributes to generally moderate attitude to gun control.
A sharp increase in gun ownership took place in 2011 after a number of attacks of Romani perpetrators against victims from majority population, some of which were racially motivated. This arming was taking place especially in regions such as Šluknov Hook, where high crime rates are often attributed to people from Roma minority, and where majority population distrust police and authorities.
Efforts to tighten the law usually arise after deadly incidents like those described above. Obligatory psychological testing for gun owners is the most common subject of the discussion however has always been rejected. Gun advocates point out that it is not clear what the tests would be like and who would be responsible for the testing and its results. It is also pointed out that it is unlikely that any psychological testing would reveal a potentially dangerous individual because some famous killers in the past were members of the military or the law enforcement and passed very difficult psychological testing successfully.
The law was last tightened in 2008 introducing for example stricter sanctions for carrying gun while intoxicated. Proposals to introduce mandatory psychological testing were not passed. The efforts to tighten gun legislation are also unlikely to pass as about a fifth of members of the Czech Parliament are holders of firearm license; some of them are believed to carry firearms also within the parliament grounds (parliamentarians are not required to pass gun check on entry unlike other staff or visitors).
Read more about this topic: Gun Politics In The Czech Republic
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