The shooting at a school in Graz, Austria, rattled a European nation that isn’t nearly as restrictive as many of its neighbors. While it’s unlikely gun control would have changed much of anything, it’s also unsurprising that many of them want it just the same.
My hope, for the Austrians, was that good sense would prevail.
Unfortunately, it’s not looking super likely right now as the chancellor has vowed to tighten gun laws.
Austria will toughen its gun laws, its chancellor said Monday, after a 21-year-old former student killed nine students and a teacher at his school last week in what’s considered the Alpine country’s deadliest post-war attack.
The shooting had sparked a debate about Austria’s gun laws, which are among the more liberal in the European Union. The assailant in Graz used a shotgun and a pistol which he owned legally, police said shortly after the attack.
“Access to weapons must be regulated even more responsibly in Austria,” Christian Stocker said during a speech in Parliament in Vienna.
The new laws will include “stricter eligibility requirements for gun ownership and restrictions for certain risk groups,” the chancellor said, adding that data-sharing between the different authorities would be improved as well.
“In the future, wherever an individual risk situation is identified, consequences under firearms law must be drawn automatically,” Stocker said.
The chancellor said his Cabinet would pass the new measures later this week but didn’t give any further details.
However, on Saturday, Stocker told public broadcaster ORF that toughening the laws could include raising the minimum age for gun buyers.
Since the shooter was 21, I’m curious how far they’re going to raise the minimum age.
No matter how much you raise it, someone who has ill intentions is often more than willing to wait unless they can find some illicit means of getting a gun.
The issue in Austria is the same as it is here. It’s not the tools that are the problem, but the tool using them.
This twerp was the problem. He was a homicidal nutbar who decided to slaughter innocent kids. Despite claims that AR-15s are necessary to kill a bunch of people, this nutball killed nine innocent kids with a shotgun and a handgun. The shotgun wasn’t even semi-automatic. It was a double-barreled. The handgun was a Glock 19, a common self-defense handgun.
He. Was. The. Threat.
Not the guns.
Unfortunately, Europeans tend not to recognize the right to keep and bear arms at all. Austria was, historically, better than most on guns, but that is now likely to change. It shouldn’t, but it probably will, as fear overrides facts and common sense falls victim to hysteria.
And in the end, it won’t stop the next attack. It won’t stop the next monster from killing innocent people.
It’s the people.
It’s always been the people who were the problem.
It’s just that some people can’t seem to look at that and recognize that the answers aren’t simple. They’re not neat and tidy. It’ll take a lot of work, some experimentation, and a lot of time wandering in the woods looking for real, viable solutions.
They’d rather look like they’re Doing Something (TM) than, you know, actually do something.
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