Weapons Act
Waffengesetz (WaffG)

Weapons Act of 11 October 2002, last amended by Article 34 of the Act of 21 June 2005

The new Weapons Act came into force on 1 April 2003. This Act regulates the handling of weapons or ammunition, whilst taking into account the interests of public safety and order. The Federal Ministry of the Interior (Bundesministerium des Innern) is responsible for controlling the provisions of the Weapons Act; the Federal Länder are mainly responsible for its execution.

The key elements of the Act are:

1. Raising the age of consent for the acquisition and ownership of firearms. For sports rifles, the age is generally raised from 18 to 21. Exceptions are made for those firearms that are particularly authorised for Olympic disciplines. For hunters, the age of consent is raised from 16 to 18.

2. Medical-Psychological examination before the granting of weapons licences for the acquisition and ownership of firearms. Before acquisition of their first firearm that requires a licence, people under the age of 25 must present a report from a professional psychologist or doctor on their suitability of character for owning a weapon. This excludes hunters. A further exclusion is made for marksmen, who may already acquire sports rifles from the age of 18 (cf. No. 1).

3. Supervision in the shooting training of marksmen/women who are minors. For child and youth work, qualified shooting supervision must be provided for the age group of children between the ages of 12 and 14 (these may only shoot with compressed air or spring-activated weapons), as well as young persons between the ages of 14 and 16 if they are shooting with sharpshooter weapons.

4. Official approval of shooting sports regulations. In the interests of public safety, the newly introduced official approval of shooting sports regulations aims to ensure the monitoring of whether a discipline and its specific content and procedures, including the weapons required for this, constitute shooting sports. This thus ensures that there is a precisely regulated responsibility of shooting sports associations for their clubs.

5. Definition of sports shooting to distinguish sports shooting from fight shooting. This prevents skills being trained under the guise of sport that have nothing to do with shooting sports.

6. Banning of so-called pump guns. This ban concerns those pump guns that are considered to be classic “underworld” weapons. Such weapons are particularly dangerous due to the devastating effect that they have at close range. Only pump guns with standard shafts that are used by sports marksmen for shooting clay pigeons are generally exempt from this rule.

7. Notification duty for weapons dealers when handing over firearms. In addition to their duty to enter new owners in the weapons ownership file and their duty to keep a weapon book, weapons dealers are also obliged to notify the weapons authorities within two weeks of the acquisition.

8. Supervisory possibilities of the sports shooting associations for the sports shooting clubs that are their members. With regard to improved indirect state supervisory and intervention possibilities in the thousands of shooting sports clubs, the responsibility of the shooting sports associations for their clubs is precisely regulated (cf. also No. 4).

9. Minimum age for shooting by children. The minimum age is 12. In individual cases, an exception of the minimum age may be permitted for the sake of the promotion of competitive sport.

10. Establishment of a possibility to inform the weapons authorities from the Register of Conduct (Erziehungsregister). To check the personal suitability, information from the Register of Conduct (Erziehungsregister), which is part of the Federal Central Register (Bundeszentralregister), has been introduced. The use of these data aims to prevent people from using weapons who have demonstrated by their conduct and the assessment of a judge that they do not possess the degree of maturity required for handling weapons.