New Gun Law Encounters Fire from Critics

The 19-year-old killer came wearing a black mask, and carrying a Glock 17 pistol and a Mossberg 590 pump-action shotgun. By the time he had finished his rampage at a high school in Erfurt last April, he had fired off 40 rounds of ammunition and killed 16 people -- 13 teachers, two students and one police officer. With police closing in, the expelled student then killed himself and ended one of Germany's worst crimes.

Once the shock created by the massacre by Robert Steinhäuser (photo) had worn off, German leaders moved to tighten the country's gun laws in June in an effort to prevent mass killings from occurring again. These changes took effect on Tuesday. German Interior Minister Otto Schily said they would provide "more legal protection, more controls and more supervision" of gun ownership in the country. But other officials are not so certain that the law will achieve Schily's goals.

The new law is designed to curb gun ownership of young people. It raises the minimum age for ownership of sporting guns from 18 to 21 and for hunting weapons from 16 to 18. Anyone younger than 25 must have a certificate of "mental capability to own weapons" unless he or she is a registered hunter or sports shooter.

Former minister raises questions

Christian Pfeiffer, a former justice minister in the German state of Lower Saxony, is one of the new law's skeptics.

"The gun law, I think, will not lead to a major reduction in gun crimes in Germany because someone who is determined to commit a crime will continue to pay €500 or more, sometimes less, in some dive for an illegal weapon and then will carry out his illegal business," Pfeiffer said.

Wolfgang Dicke, a specialist in weapons law with the German police union, also said he doubted the new law would be effective. "If you want to stop gun crime, then legal ownership of guns is not the issue," Dicke said. To back up his view, he said that in 1999 only 10 percent of the 1,000 guns seized by police were legally owned.

Despite the severity of the rampage in Erfurt, the number of gun crimes in Germany has fallen in recent years. In 2001, the number of cases in which a firearm was shot fell 21.9 percent from the previous year to a total of 5,416 incidents. The number of killings committed with firearms also fell 13.3 percent to 298.

Looking for ways to prevent crimes

Pfeiffer suggested that officials had to go beyond tougher laws if they wanted to stop crimes like the one which took place in Erfurt.

"The decisive factor -- which has not been addressed yet or addressed enough -- is: How do you stop people from conjuring up these evil crimes? How do you prevent a fascination with weapons, the creation of a macho culture linked to weapons? What has to be done in terms of the media, for instance?" he said.

The German government took one step in this direction on Tuesday, establishing a commission that will work to protect children and adolescents from violence in television and on the Internet. But Schily acknowledged that the government could only to do so much. "There never was such a thing as 100 percent security," he said.