VIENNA (AP) — 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.
In the school shooting Tuesday at the BORG Dreierschützengasse high school in Graz, nine students were killed — six girls and three boys aged between 14 and 17 — as well as a teacher. Another 11 people were wounded. The attacker killed himself in a bathroom of his former school.
Traditionally, many in Austria hold weapons, which they often use to go hunting in the Alpine country’s vast forests. In general, it’s more common to carry a weapon for that and less for self-defense.
According to the Small Arms Survey, Austria ranks 12th in the world when it comes to holding civilian firearms, with 30 firearms per 100 residents. That’s far less than in the U.S. which tops the ranking with 120 firearms per 100 residents, but more than Austria’s neighbor Germany, which ranked 23rd with 19 firearms per 100 residents.
In Austria, some weapons, such as rifles and shotguns that must be reloaded manually after each shot, can be purchased from the age of 18 without a permit. Gun dealers only need to check if there’s no weapons ban on the buyer, and the weapon is added to the central weapons register.
Other weapons, such as repeating shotguns or semi-automatic firearms, are more difficult to acquire. Buyers need a gun ownership card and a firearms pass.
Austria Press Agency has reported that the suspect had a gun ownership card, but this document merely entitles a holder to acquire and possess, but not to carry weapons such as the handgun. That weapon also would have required a firearm pass.
In his speech on Monday, the chancellor also announced that all schools in the country would get more long-term psychological support for students and that police would increase their presence in front of schools until the end of the school year this summer.
In addition, Stocker said, the government will create a compensation fund “that will make it possible to help the affected families quickly and unbureaucratically — for example with funeral costs, psychological care or other urgently needed support services.”
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Grieshaber reported from Berlin.
