Besides the calculated nature of Ali David Sonboly’s Munich shooting spree — he’d been planning the murders for a year — nothing surprised Germans more than the fact that the teen managed to get his hands on a GLOCK 17 pistol. After all, as we’ve detailed in the past, Germany has some of the strictest gun control laws in Europe. It probably won’t surprise, well, anyone who’s paying attention that the murderous little bastard bought the pistol…wait for it…illegally.
The 18-year-old gunman suspected of killing nine people in a mass shooting in Munich on Friday spent more than a year planning the attack and was able to buy a handgun on the dark web, investigators have said.
Bavarian investigator Robert Heimberger said Ali Sonboly had visited the scene of a previous school shooting in the German town of Winneden and took photographs, adding further evidence to the claim by Munich’s police chief, Hubertus Andrae, that the teenager was “obsessed with shooting rampages”.
Heimberger also said the gunman likely purchased his illegal weapon online, through a website trafficking illegal weapons hosted on the dark web.
If you’re a German politician — or just about any pol with a few notable exceptions on this side of the Atlantic — the solution is simple: Deutschland needs more gun control laws.
German politicians urged tighter gun legislation Sunday following the shooting in Munich by a troubled teenager who police said was obsessed with violence and mass killings.
German gun laws are already some of the most restrictive in the world. The country also has one of the lowest rates of gun-related deaths despite having high levels of gun ownership, a scenario with added significance in light of the shooting spree in Munich.
German Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel told the Funke Mediengruppe newspaper chain that the country “must continue to do all we can to limit and strictly control access to deadly weapons” while Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper in a separate interview that “we have to evaluate very carefully if and where further legal changes are needed.”
Naturally. Statists gotta state and gun controllers gotta control.
As the McPaper noted above, though, that won’t be easy given the Fatherland’s already famously heavy regulations where firearms are concerned. Still, in the aftermath of atrocities like this, elected officials feel a moral imperative to…do something. And that something is always easily found along the tripartite path of least resistance, greatest expediency, and optimal headline-making potential.
In this case, what must be done is obvious: make acquiring illegal firearms (Sonboly’s GLOCK had its serial number filed off) and shooting people with them much more illegal-er than it already is.
Will whatever German politicians cook up prevent the next mass murder groupie or aspiring ISIS-wannabe martyr from killing a whole passel of innocent citizens? Of course not. All any new laws they enact will do is further ensure that law-abiding civilians are wholly unable to defend themselves when the inevitable happens. Just as Münchners were on Friday.
As Thomas Salbey, who had a view of the shooting from his apartment balcony, told the BBC, all he could do was throw a beer bottle at Sonboly as he watched him from his balcony.
I was so full of hate because I was so so powerless, I couldn’t do anything.
The audio at the link above of Mr. Salbey’s re-telling of what he saw stops there. But in the extended version that was broadcast by the BBC, his next sentence was, “I could have shot him from here, but with what?”
With what indeed. This is what happens to a disarmed populace. And if their betters in Berlin and Brussels have anything to say about it, that’s the way it’s going to stay.