Europeans turn to weapons in growing numbers after attacks

ZURICH/BERLIN: Europeans in a number of countries are seeking to arm themselves with guns and self-defence devices in growing numbers following a series of attacks by militants and the mentally ill.

Some weapons sellers also link their increased business to the arrival of huge numbers of migrants in Europe, although a German police report stated that the vast majority do not commit crimes of any kind in the country.

The picture is patchy, with no up-to-date data available at a European level, leaving national and regional authorities to release statistics that are far from comprehensive and not always comparable.

Reasons also vary for civilians to own guns legally, including hunting and sport as well as self-protection.

Nevertheless, applications for gun permits are climbing in Switzerland, Austria and the Czech Republic.

Their larger neighbour Germany has not followed the trend in lethal firearms, but permits for carrying devices designed to scare off assailants, such as blank guns and those that fire pepper spray, have risen almost 50 percent.

Little research into the reasons for the recent apparent trend has yet been published, but the assumption is that attacks in the past year including in Paris, Brussels, Nice and Munich have stirred fear among some citizens.

"There’s no official explanation for the rise, but in general we see a connection to Europe’s terrorist attacks," said Hanspeter Kruesi, a police spokesman in the Swiss canton of St Gallen.

Kruesi advised against buying weapons, saying they did little to improve citizens’ security while presenting problems over safe storage and raising legal questions over their proper use in a conflict. "People could actually make themselves criminally liable," he said. After he spoke to Reuters, the canton was the scene of an attack aboard a train this month.

The suspect and a woman victim died later, although police said his motive was unclear.

One Swiss resident who has just bought his first ever weapons - a pistol and a pump-action shotgun - pinned his decision on a feeling of insecurity created by the attacks combined with criminality that he blamed on north Africans, as well as concern over recent break-ins in his neighbourhood.

"Buying weapons for self-defence won’t protect you from terrorist attacks," said the 55-year-old who lives in a town near the capital, Bern.

"Nevertheless these attacks are contributing to a subjective sense of threat, as is the rising pressure from migration and the high crime rate among migrants from the Maghreb," he said, requesting anonymity due to concerns about his safety.

Figures are hard to come by on whether the rate of crime, serious or petty, is higher among migrants than the general population in Europe.

The report from the BKA federal police in Germany - where more than a million people fleeing violence and poverty arrived last year - said migrants committed or tried to commit about 69,000 crimes in the first quarter of 2016. However, it did not say how this compared with the overall number of crimes.

Like Kruesi, authorities in Europe - where levels of gun ownership are comparatively low and controls are often tight - have avoided encouraging their citizens to buy weapons.

But Czech President Milos Zeman broke ranks after an 18-year-old with a history of mental illness killed nine people in Munich in July.