Germany plans to toughen its gun laws after a suspected conspiracy by a far-right group to violently overthrow the government, the country’s interior minister said in an interview published on Sunday (11).
German police last week arrested 25 people suspected of involvement in the plot, many of them members of the far-right Reichsbuerger (Citizens of the Reich) movement, which denies the existence of the modern German state, according to prosecutors.
Prior to the arrests, authorities had already confiscated weapons from more than 1,000 members of the group, but at least another 500 are believed to have firearms licenses in a country where private possession of such devices is rare.
In an interview with the Bild am Sonntag newspaper, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser argued that “all authorities must exert maximum pressure” to remove the group’s weapons and said the government “will soon tighten the gun laws even further”.
Faeser added that the Reichsbuerger poses a growing threat to Germany as it expanded from 2,000 to 23,000 members last year.
“They are not harmless lunatics, but terror suspects who are now in pre-trial detention,” Faeser said.
Prosecutors said the suspects included individuals with weapons and knowledge of how to use them. They tried to recruit current and former Army members and store armaments.
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