Munich attack compels Germany to review gun laws

In the wake of the shooting attack in Munich on Friday, senior Germany politicians have called for stricter controls on the sale of guns.

“Everything possible should be done to limit access to deadly weapons”, Vice-Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel said.

Ali David Sonboly, 18, who shot dead nine people before killing himself, had a Glock pistol and more than 300 bullets.

Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere, who visited the scene of the shootings, said he planned to review gun laws.

Vigils are continuing in Munich to commemorate the victims, seven of whom were teenagers. Three were from Kosovo, three from Turkey, and one from Greece.

As a result of the attack at the city’s Olympia mall – the biggest shopping centre in the state of Bavaria – a further 27 people were injured, 10 of them critically.

The authorities are still investigating how Sonboly, a German-Iranian dual national, had gained access to a weapon despite signs of significant psychological problems.

“Germany has some of the strictest fire-arms controls in world”, the US Library of Congress reports.

Following school shootings in Erfurt in 2002 and in Winnendon in 2009, when 16 people were killed on both occasions, legislation was tightened.

Buyers younger than 25 must undergo a psychiatric evaluation before being able to acquire firearms.

Fully automatic weapons are banned outright, while semi-automatic firearms are banned for anything other than hunting or competitive shooting.

Despite the strict control, Germany has one of the world’s highest rates of gun ownership, coming fourth behind the US, Switzerland, and Finland in 2013.

Moreover, Bavaria’s state interior minister, Joachim Herrmann, called for allowing the use of the army in future emergencies, such as terrorist attacks.

“We are not living in the times of the Weimar Republic”, he told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper, referring to the period before Adolf Hitler took power in Germany. “We have an absolutely stable democracy.”

Police who searched Sonboly’s room not only found evidence that he had been obsessed with gun rampages, but noted that his attack occurred on the fifth anniversary of Anders Behring Breivik’s mass murder in Norway.

Sonboly had reportedly used Facebook to lure his victims to a McDonald’s fast food restaurant at the mall, where he was filmed by a witness opening fire on people trying to flee.