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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2677 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 26, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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Any European(or Australian, or Asian, etc) gun owners here? What's your experience of dealing with regulatory authorities- is it hostility, or general bureaucratic culture, or what?

To be clear, I am not asking for non-gun owning Europeans to post a link to wikipedia and explain how their system is superior, which is usually what clogs up such threads. I can read the wikipedia article on gun politics in the EU.

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.

Thanks, this is almost exactly what I’m looking for. There’s no shortage of information on ‘how to get a gun in Germany’ freely available on the internet- the experience of actually doing it is less represented.

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.)

Sweden. Generally fairly relaxed. I got my hunting license in three days through a course and they guy who administered the test was the same guy who gave the course. He pretty much fed us the answers. I have sent in paperwork and gotten a yes on my 6 applications within a few weeks. The rules are wonky but following them strictly usually leads to consistent results. The main complaints are the nonsensical rules. But as long as I stick to them there are no problems.

What kind of guns are you allowed to buy? Just bolt-action hunting rifles or shotguns? Anything semi-auto?

Hey I went to a gun range yesterday and thought of you because they had full-auto stuff for rentals. I'll have to try it sometime and let you know how expensive it is.

For $10, they let me rent multiple pistols in the same caliber for an hour, though ammo was like $25 for 50 rounds. I rented a Ruger Security 9, a Sig P365 in .380, and a S&W Bodyguard 2.0. The P365 was the real winner, it shot just like a full size gun. Only issue I had was that the magazines were hard to load. The Ruger felt pretty cheap and I didn't like the sights. The Bodyguard was very tiny! However, similarly, the sights felt very bad, I couldn't hit very well with the shots I took. I like shooting .380, but from my experience yesterday, it appears I don't really have too much use for a pistol in that caliber since I can shoot 9mm just fine.

Hey, given how hard it'll be for me to visit the States, and how rare an occasion that would be, I'm willing to shell out for some... shells. While I'm happy to give handguns a try, do keep an eye open for anything intermediate caliber or larger! If I don't mag dump an AR-15 once, I don't think I've really lived. Thanks!

I ran a bachelor party for an old friend in Texas, and among the activities was a group machine gun rental. I got the whole party of five trigger time on a H&K MP-5k, a G3 rifle, and a MG-42 light machine gun for a couple hundred bucks. The MG-42 ended up malfunctioning, so they swapped us to a M240-B medium machine gun as well, which in my view was pure bonus. Pricing for an individual would have been around a hundred bucks if memory serves, and significantly less for only one gun. The range had a "full-auto Fridays" special where specific guns could be rented for even cheaper.

If you're ever in the states, ding me and let me know where. I'd be happy to take you to the range if you're in my area, and get you some experience with handgun, shotgun and rifle.

I'm saving this comment for later, you're not the first person to offer to take me out shooting in the US, but I remain just as grateful as ever. $100 is nothing in comparison to the cost of a proper US vacation, let alone what might be a once in lifetime rare experience. I've spent more on a night out with friends, and I didn't even get to shoot anyone.

Well, many ranges won't let you shoot rifle calibers indoors. But some do. Whatever city you visit, search the gun ranges nearby to see if they will let you do so or not. At the one I was at, you could shoot an SMG, and maybe even a full auto SMG, which is probably fun in its own way. Good luck.

Thanks! Would they make an exception for frangible ammo or is it a blanket ban? Not that I particularly mind going out to a more rural range, shooting hogs from a helicopter is something I'll absolutely sign up for if I end up in Texas.

Almost every range has A Policy on ammo, and enforcement varies. Generally steel case ammunition is on the no no list, tracers are flat banned and will get you banned from that range, and some ranges don't like FMJ.

often it's that they don't allow FMJ ammo in rifles, and that is usually because it's hard to distinguish standard FMJ from some of the more exotic rounds with greatly-increased penetration, like rounds with a steel core or bronze solids. stronger backstops are more expensive, and shooting through the backstop would generally be a very bad thing for everyone involved.

https://astrosweden.se/collections/produkter-vapen-vapentillbehor-vapen-nya-vapen-kulgevar-halvautomat

shotguns are pretty unregulated. Semiauto is no problem. Pistols are harder as they require being a member of a shooting club. I had to wait a year to take a 12 lesson course in air pistols to join. Then I had to take 12 classes in real pistols and achieve decent results in shooting to get my license. Several people failed the test because the shooting requirements were fairly strict. I have to redo the test every five years to keep them.

Could you expand on or give an example of one or two of the nonsensical rules? Japan also has a very intransigent bureaucracy regarding such things.

In general, in urban Russia it puts you on the list. Not in the sense of the FSB watching you, but local cops have a list of "people of interest" that they keep, with everyone else a statistic. People like ex-cons, dysfunctional families, known criminals with no case to pin on them, activists of both Karen and political kind, and gun owners. Every time there's something, you can expect them to pay you a visit to check your gun safe.

I assume ‘something’ means ‘any front page news story about your city/neighborhood/whatever’?

Do you know what those inspections are typically like? Is it a ‘ok, show me your safe, let me count the guns, I'm off for donuts’ or is it decidedly more unpleasant? Is a bribe normally involved?

Not just any front-page news story. Maybe someone's been shot at, or they got a new internal regulation, or some important person is planning to visit or pass through the area.

More of the former than the latter. "Show me your safe, let me count your guns, have they been fired recently, are you planning to take them out any time soon".

I can read the wikipedia article on gun politics in the EU.

I don't think you can because there is no such thing as "gun politics in the EU" (something people on The Motte very often fail to realize). There's gun politics in country X that happens to be in EU but those are all different between the countries.

But there is an article on ‘gun politics in…’ Germany, France, etc.

Broadly in the UK it’s ‘are you a citizen in good standing?’ plus ‘are you someone with a credible interest in the type of gun you are asking for’ + ‘how controlled is that type of gun’?

So farmers/aristocrats get shotguns to shot pheasant or foxes with no trouble as long as someone vouches for their mental health, but will be asked a lot of questions if they want an anti-material piercing rifle.

The right kind of sportsman can get a rifle.

My father knew somebody who got a concealed handgun, but he was a very rich financier with credible threat of being targeted, those were laxer times, and it came with strings attached.

None of my friends with guns encountered institutional hostility, annd in general you wouldn’t unless you were taking the piss. Guns aren’t really a culture war issue. Something like the Planning Authority is way more hostile

What are the laws on what constitutes a firearm? I've seen that some Scandinavian countries consider the barrel to be the primary serialized part, because it's pressure bearing and harder to manufacture than a receiver.

I know a lot about what goes on there. They tend to heavily regulate ownership but it nonetheless has a higher rate of ownership and is mostly used in recreational activities. It’s because (mostly prior to the migrant invasion), the ethnic homogeneity of Scandinavia has made it a high trust society.

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