Keeping the safety on
Today, there are about 320,000 gun-license holders with more than a million firearms registered in the Czech Republic – the highest number in decades and up from 800,000 firearms just ten years ago.
There aren’t any precise estimates about the number of illegal firearms – those sold on the black market, unlawfully imported from abroad, or simply old weapons that were never properly registered – in circulation today. Every year, however, Czech police register hundreds of criminal cases involving illegal weapons possession.
These are high numbers for a country of 10.7 million that regularly tops the rankings as one of the safest countries in Europe in terms of criminality and terrorist threat, but some experts point out the number of license holders is not increasing that fast, rather the number of weapons each of them owns now averages three.
Police have nevertheless reported a huge increase in people interested in taking shooting range exams. Meant to update and modernise Czechia’s gun laws, the recent reform stayed clear of restricting the rights of current holders, despite polls showing that 80 per cent of the population were in favour of tightening gun ownership rules in the aftermath of the 2023 mass shooting.
Lawmakers also made sure to avoid any hint of government overreach in a country where the right to bear arms in self-defence has been a constitutionally protected right enshrined in the Czech Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms since 2021. Driven by strong lobbying efforts, including from Czechia’s powerful gun manufacturers, the reform was adopted in reaction to a European Commission proposal to tighten gun ownership rules across the EU.
Vojacek explains that the Czech Republic has historically had a strong hunting lobby. “The core of the gun lobby consists of hunters, along with the traditionally strong lobby of handgun manufacturers,” he tells BIRN, which includes the likes of Colt CZ, STV Group or Ceska Zbrojovka.
He also points to the fact it was “practically impossible” to own a firearm under the Communist regime. In response, the anti-regulation governments that ruled the Czech Republic in the 1990s enacted gun laws that remain “very liberal by European standards”.
He further hypothesises about less visible trends brewing under the surface: “Czech society has become much coarser over the past decade or so, divisions have formed, and people are more aggressive… There is an unspoken sense of threat in the Czech Republic.”
For now, low violent crime statistics do not reflect this sense of dread. Yet, concurrent and self-reinforcing phenomena – from increased social polarisation to the rise of political extremism or the surge in youth violence recently flagged by Czech authorities – do not bode well for a society’s aim to feel comfortable, protected and at peace with itself.
