Austria Has Lots of Guns, Little Gun Violence, and New Questions
Some of the most popular chat threads on an online forum for weapons enthusiasts in Austria dissect the latest releases in firearms accessories, like silencers and targeting sights, or review the country's shooting ranges. On Tuesday afternoon, a relatively sleepy discussion on 'Gun law/reform attempts' stirred to life.
'A new era regarding gun ownership is beginning,' a user with the screen name AUG-Andy wrote in German on the site, 'Pulverdampf.' 'It's a no-brainer now, especially since the majority of the population is certainly behind it. The shooting happened at a bad time. Now all that helps is prayer.'
'The shooting' in question shocked Austria on Tuesday morning. A former student at a high school in Graz, Austria's second-largest city, opened fire with a handgun and a shotgun on campus. He killed or mortally wounded at least 10 people, the authorities said, before apparently killing himself in a school bathroom. It was Austria's deadliest school shooting in memory, and an unusual case of a mass-casualty attack on schoolchildren in Europe.
It was also a jolt to a country with a rare gun culture — in comparison with many of its western European neighbors, but also with the United States.
But that may not lead to the sort of sweeping changes to gun laws that many online commentators fear.
Austrians have the 12th-highest per-person gun ownership rate in the world, according to the Small Arms Survey, an independent research group based in Geneva. They also have relatively low rates of gun violence.
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