History of firearms restrictions in Germany 2.3 Firearms that do not require a license.1.1 Regulation after the 1919 Treaty of Versailles.1 History of firearms restrictions in Germany.

About 1.5 million sport shooters in several thousand Schützenvereinen own and use guns for sport, about 400,000 hunters have a licensed gun, about 300,000 collect guns and about 900,000 own an inherited gun. Germany's National Gun Registry, introduced at the end of 2012, counted 5.5 million firearms in use, which are legally owned by 1.4 million people in the country. The German Ministry of the Interior estimated in 2009 that the number of firearms in circulation, legally and illegally, could be up to 45 million. While gun ownership is widespread, and associations and ranges for shooting sports and the use of historical guns and weapons in festivals are not forbidden, the use of guns for private self-defence is restricted. Others argued that more control was needed. In a debate on gun control after a school shooting that killed 15, one weapons expert said that Germany's weapons laws were among the world's strictest, and yet still a shooting that killed 15 was able to happen.

This federal statute regulates the handling of firearms and ammunition as well as acquisition, storage, commerce and maintenance of firearms. In Germany, access to guns is controlled by the German Weapons Act ( German: Waffengesetz) which adheres to the European Firearms Directive, first enacted in 1972, and superseded by the law of 2003, in force as of 2016.

Weapons of the third era