I am German, and I have guns. Didn't bother double-checking, but this should be correct enough to give a reasonable impression.
The basic idea is that you prove your need for a gun to the government (either the local police or a separate office, which varies by location). The two main paths are hunting or sporting use; everything else is either occupation-related or not available to mere mortals.
Hunting requires you to do a relatively expensive (2000€) and not trivially easy hunting education that includes written and practical tests. With this, you can apply for a gun owner's permit. You can then buy a practically unlimited number of (non-semi-auto) long guns (rifles/shotguns) and a small number of semi-auto long guns or handguns. Large calibers and semi-autos are allowed, but semi-autos are not allowed in unlimited numbers.
For the sporting use path, you first have to be an active member of a registered shooting club for a full year, after which you can request some paperwork from them certifying your need for a gun and use that to apply for a gun owner's permit. Again, you can then buy semi-auto and large-caliber guns in limited numbers and as many single-shot guns as you want.
First contact with the bureaucracy is usually when you apply for the permit, which is both a type of ID and a list of your guns. They require you to be a resident in good standing and verify that with the police, the court system, and various government bodies. You also have to prove ownership of a certified gun safe (starts at 300€ for a handgun safe). Wait times for the permit vary locally and can go from two weeks to six months; the fee is <100€.
There are two types of permits you can apply for: yellow and green. Anything not semi-auto can go on yellow. These guns you can grab from a shop and take with you that day, but you need to register them with the government within two weeks. Semi-autos go on the green card, and here you first apply for permission to buy a certain type of gun (e.g., 9mm semi-auto pistol), wait anywhere from two weeks to six months, and then get a pre-entry on your permit. With this pre-entry, you can go to a shop and pick up a gun, then resubmit your permit to the government for finalizing the pre-entry. Again, this means a few weeks to months without your permit.
The main friction points with the bureaucracy are long wait times and legal uncertainty. Since you always have to submit your permit to the government for any purchase or sale, this leaves you with only a photocopy of the permit for a large part of the year. The legal situation on transporting your guns to the range without the permit is not very clear, but in practice, everybody does it.
Legal uncertainty is a general problem. The gun laws are federal, but execution is left to local administrators. Accordingly, a patchwork of local informal rules and federal court cases with unclear applicability exists. Since the default response to any problem is a confiscation of your guns until the court case is over, people are quite hesitant to fully use their as-written rights. This causes lots of fear, uncertainty and doubt with endless discussion about what you are allowed to do and what you technically legal thing you should avoid doing.
Both gun owners and the people at the local government office tend to be unhappy with the cumbersome processes for existing gun owners, but believe in the value of the initial filtering of who is allowed to get a permit in the first place.
General opinion in some mainstream parties is that private gun ownership ought to be banned. Some cities will shift admins to different departments to slow down the works. My city has exactly two people working on gun permits, so a plausibly deniable shift of human resources to a different department would drastically prolong wait times for the initial permit from the current 3-4 months.
It’s easy, slow and expensive but very managable if you aren‘t too shy to talk to other gun owners or simply call the local department. The localized way the laws get applied and the fact that nobody bothers to officially write any of that down makes double checking with somebody who did it recently basically mandatory unless you want to do multiple month long rounds of waiting.
I forgot to mention that any guns past the first couple require you to prove an ongoing need to keep them with regular check-ins in the first few years. Basically forced participation in competitions, which can be a hassle if you want lots of guns.
Also, the need for a gun is per discipline in the sport, so no two of the same type. Due to their variety of rulesets even a small weight difference or an extra inch of barrel can make the difference here. Thus, german gun owners plan over years how to best play around these rules.
Cheap guns are also rare, since nobody wants to cheap out after the long wait and paperwork. Common first guns are specialized .22s (like at the olympics, e.g. GSP500) or higher end 9mm pistols (custom CZs, KMR, Bul armory etc.)
More options
Context Copy link