David K., a 24-year-old student, opened fire this Thursday in the building of the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature of Charles University in the center of Prague, killing at least 14 people and wounding another 25. According to initial indications, he used the attack Police a gun that he had obtained legally. The Czech Republic is one of the European Union member states with the laxest gun control policies and has consistently opposed the introduction of stricter regulations in this area.
After ruling out the attack being linked to “international terrorism,” Czech authorities revealed that the attacker had “several” weapons that he had acquired legally. It was later confirmed that he owned eight registered weapons, two of them long. According to local media, David K. used an AR-10 assault rifle from the same family as the AR-15, which is often used in mass shootings in the United States, for the attack.
Prague Mayor Bohuslav Svoboda assured Czech public television that “the problem of the lone attacker” was also emerging there. “We always thought it was none of our business. Now it turns out that our world is changing too,” he lamented.
The shock caused by the incident reverberated throughout the Interior Ministry, where they “did not sleep” on Thursday night, the minister said in statements to the press. Beyond the impact, the attack has raised questions about Czech regulations. Interior Minister Vít Rakusan acknowledges that “it is a legitimate debate,” although he claims that compared to other laws, it is “in many ways stricter than those of other places in the world.”
However, the Interior Minister not only defended that no law “100% guarantees the prevention of attacks”, but also assured that Parliament is already in the final phase of a legislative process to make the current norm on arms control something more guaranteed. “It’s a sad paradox,” he said. As soon as the reform is approved, companies can report “suspicious purchases” of weapons or ammunition to the police. Security forces can also preemptively confiscate weapons. In addition, it is proposed to introduce electronic permits to replace current licenses.
The government currently sees no imminent risk of a further threat, but has tightened precautionary measures and increased police presence on streets where large numbers of people gather over the Christmas period until January 1.
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300,000 armed people
In the Czech Republic, a country with 10.5 million inhabitants, there are more than a million registered weapons in circulation, which, according to the police, are in the possession of about 300,000 people as of the end of 2022. The applicant must not have a criminal record and, in addition, must pass a psychotechnical test in addition to other mental aptitude tests. This latest requirement was introduced after the 2015 mass shooting in Uhersky Brod, a city in the east of the country, in which nine people died, including the attacker. There are also exams. One of them is written, the level of difficulty depends on the type of license you want to obtain, and the other is practical in nature to demonstrate good handling of the weapon, such as accuracy when shooting.
When the European Parliament and the EU Council agreed to tighten restrictions on access to semi-automatic weapons after the Paris attacks in 2015, the Czech Republic was among the most vocal opponents. Prague appealed to the EU Court of Justice in 2017, believing that the directive represented, in the words of then-Interior Minister Milan Chovanec, “a massive punishment for legal gun owners” and that it would have a “negative impact” on the country's security. The European judiciary rejected the appeal in 2018 on the grounds that the order did not constitute an interference with national powers.
Despite these struggles at the European level, since 2021 the Czech Republic has protected in its constitution “the right to defend one’s own life or that of another person with arms under the conditions established by law”. The regulation governing this right allows people over 18 years of age to obtain a license if the weapon is used to practice a sport or hunt. When a license for personal defense is granted, the minimum age is raised to 21 years.
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