Civilian firearms ownership in the European Union

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Snejdarek

Snejdarek

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Civilian_firearms_ownership_in_the_EU.png
Civilian firearms ownership in the EU according to the 2017 Small Arms Survey.

Note that:
  • The number of registered firearms is more or less precise as all countries were bound by the EU to make electronic registries by the end of 2014.
  • Unregistered means mostly illegal, to lesser extent also historical firearms (definition varies, mostly pre-1890), by far inaccurate estimates:
  • "Quality" varies:
    • Cyprus would by typically single shot or double barrel shotguns, while Switzerland militia ex-army rifles.
    • CR would by typically concealed carry pistols while Germany repeating rifle or double barrel shotgun.
    • etc.
Note that most countries not only don't allow concealed carry, but also prohibit mere possession of firearm for purposes of self defense (including the Scandinavian countries which have otherwise high rates of ownership).
 

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Interesting numbers.

I am surprised at the low number of firearms (legal & illegal) in Poland. Given the countries history I figured the citizens would be better armed. (They may be since how do they estimate number of illegal guns?)

So many illegal guns in peace loving, neutral Switzerland!
 
BSA1 said:
So many illegal guns in peace loving, neutral Switzerland!
Click to expand...

Belgium, Switzerland and Austria had changes in law quite recently that required registering of firearms that previously didn't fall under that requirement. Many people refused to register due to principle, but most are probably unaware of it. Basically, their governments turned them into criminals.
 
Snejdarek said:
Belgium, Switzerland and Austria had changes in law quite recently that required registering of firearms that previously didn't fall under that requirement. Many people refused to register due to principle, but most are probably unaware of it. Basically, their governments turned them into criminals.
Click to expand...
How "convenient", for the government...
 
How useful is this chart in terms of policy? The only data that can be verified are the numbers of registered firearms. The rest is guesswork. The number of registered firearms is just the visible tip of the iceberg.

As you point out, the "quality" of the firearms in each category (registered and unregistered) is significant. In Greece, for example, the chart says that the numbers of registered and unregistered guns are roughly equal. Yet the registered guns are practically all hunting shotguns (with a tiny smattering of self-defense pistols), while the unregistered ones are automatics like AK-47 Kalashnikovs and leftover guns from WW2.
 
Also, the numbers for Scotland and Northern Ireland are missing.
Northern Ireland is a special country within the UK in terms of firearms, because it has the distinction of having self defence as a valid reason for owning a gun. You would have to have a very good reason and I'm not saying it would be easy to get but if I remember correctly the stats from a few years back said there were 60,000 gun owners in Northern Ireland and around 3,000 of those had guns listed for self defence.
 
Odd Job said:
Also, the numbers for Scotland and Northern Ireland are missing.
Click to expand...

As regards Scotland, I didn't want to waste time trying to figure out whether the number includes air guns which are also subject to registration there. Northern Ireland seems to be at about double per capita level compared to England and Wales, however due to their small population (1,8 mil Scotland x 59 mil England and Wales) the impact on overall UK per capita number is tiny.

AlexanderA said:
How useful is this chart in terms of policy?
Click to expand...

Not much really. But it gives you a basic orientation as regards prevalence of firearms ownership. A few more points regarding policy:

  • All of ex-communist countries had basically disarmed population up to 1990. Apart from Balcan countries (Croatia, Slovenia) that went through the civil war it thus makes sense that the numbers will be relatively lower compared to the "old EU".
  • Still even though on paper a German must get through many more hoops to get his hands on funs than a Pole, several generations with basically non-existent gun culture took its toll on countries like Poland.
  • It is quite interesting to see governments in high ownership rates countries moving aggressively towards restricting access to firearms
    • Norwegian government is/was trying to ban almost all semi-auto rifles - by change of law.
    • Swedish authorities tried to prevent even active sport shooters from buying semi-auto rifles - based on change in may issue policy rooted in the Eu Gun Ban directive.
    • Finnish authorities now seem to have stopped issuing permits for semi-auto rifles for hunting - based on change in may issue policy rooted in the Eu Gun Ban directive (Finnish law states that a firearm must be appropriate for the purpose, and now the authorities are coming to conclusion that semi-auto is too much for hunting).
    • Switzerland implemented the Eu Gun Ban, Swiss government was even supporting its adoption on EU level (they will have referendum on it in May).
AlexanderA said:
"quality" of the firearms in each category (registered and unregistered) is significant. In Greece, for example, the chart says that the numbers of registered and unregistered guns are roughly equal. Yet the registered guns are practically all hunting shotguns
Click to expand...

That will be the case in most of the countries. Double barrel shotguns and bolt-action or single shot rifles in most of them. Just a few outliers like the Czech Republic (mostly pistols, also high number of "modern sporting rifles") and militia countries like Finland and Switzerland (semi-auto rifles).
 
Numerically, that chart seems odd to me. From that chart, the Swiss have twice as many unregistered/illegal arms as legit ones. Now, rather a lot of arms in Switzerland are in the "free" (not needing a license) category--but the inference is that the Swiss are harboring a huge cache of illegal arms.

The balanced numbers of weapons in Greece matches anecdotal evidence, bbut the volume seems suspect (as in under reported heavily). Which is the problem with extrapolated data, you can model it, but the modeling results can be biased as a result.

Notably, Albania is not shown.

I would love for the numbers to be represented unweighted and also graph this way. Note the right hand side of the chart--where firearms are held legally in quantity, the number of illegal arms is low.

Whic hwould be an excellent "talking point" for US arms policy--that making arms illegal increases the number of illegal arms; that legal ownership far outweighs criminal/illegal ownership.
 
CapnMac said:
Notably, Albania is not shown.
Click to expand...
Albania is not part of the EU. (Neither are Norway, Switzerland, and Iceland, but they are in the Schengen area, which provides for the passport-free movement of people, and so the EU gun regulations would be relevant to them. That's why they are included on the chart.)

Actually, Albania is (or was) a big trouble spot regarding guns. The paranoid Enver Hoxha regime stocked every village with militia guns (such as AK-47's), fearing an invasion from its erstwhile Communist allies. (Hoxha broke with Tito, and then with the Soviets, leaving Red China as his only foreign sponsor.) When the regime fell, in 1990-91, these local armories were emptied of their contents, which were then channeled into the black market. Thousands upon thousands of these guns found their way across the porous borders into Greece, the former Yugoslavia, and even Italy. This is where the estimated number of 250,000 illegal Kalashnikovs in Greece came from.
 
CapnMac said:
Numerically, that chart seems odd to me. From that chart, the Swiss have twice as many unregistered/illegal arms as legit ones. Now, rather a lot of arms in Switzerland are in the "free" (not needing a license) category--but the inference is that the Swiss are harboring a huge cache of illegal arms.
Click to expand...

Swiss have to adhere to the same Firearms Directive as the rest of the EU countries. The Directive set deadline for compulsory registration of all Firearms by the end of 2014 (with exception of single shot smooth barrel long guns which fell into that category in September 2018). I don't know the particulars of current Swiss law in this regard, but given how eager Swiss government was to implement the 2017 EU Gun Ban I'd not expect any exceptions in the regard of registrations.

So, those are not illegal firearms in the sense they are understood in Greece (i.e. guns smuggled from ex-Yugoslavia and bought on the black market) but firearms that used to be legal and owners simply didn't register them, thus becoming illegal gun owners.

The same happened in late 2000s in Belgium and a few laters later in Austria. I've seen estimates according to which registration rate of firearms in Austria was only 20%.

Meanwhile the Czech Republic had mandatory registration of all firearms in 1998 when there were still not that many after the end of communism. Due to balanced legislation nobody is forced here to go to the black market - and low demand leads to low overall black market size. While number of legal firearms nearly doubled since 1998, the black market remained a niche (similar in Scandinavia).

Guns_in_czech_rep.png

Meanwhile in places like Germany and France with a lot of red tape and no chance in hell to own/carry firearm for self defense legally black market becomes the go to place also for otherwise law abiding citizens.

Anyway, to sum it up, Austria, Belgium and Switzerland are special apples due to recent legislatory changes. It's not that they have less law abidingcitizens, it is that government turned them into criminals.
 
That's a rather interesting chart, but without knowing the exact methodology used for acquiring the "unregistered firearms" data plus what kind of firearms fall in it, we can only speculate. In other words - it's an interesting topic to discuss with your friends at the local pub, but beyond that it's rather useless (No offense meant for Snejdarek).
 
Mizar said:
it's an interesting topic to discuss with your friends at the local pub, but beyond that it's rather useless
Click to expand...
  1. The graph shows two different metrics. The one in yellow is quite clear cut.
  2. I agree that the unregistered estimates are more of a wild guess than anything else. As regards methodology:
Snejdarek said:
In case of some countries it is surveys (self reporting) and in case of others it is expert estimates.

In the Czech Republic for example the number roughly correlates with the ratio of legal/illegal firearms found by firearm suicide victims.

Detailed explanation is here: http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/fileadmin/docs/T-Briefing-Papers/SAS-BP-Civilian-Firearms-Numbers.pdf
Click to expand...
 
I'm talking strictly about the "unregistered" variety - this is what bothers me. Putting the unregistered (whatever they meant by that) firearms with the illegal ones is just not serious... Is a muzzle loader a "firearm" by their definition for instance? If it is, then why is it in the same column as the illegal AK that someone else has? The other column is OK, albeit too broad to draw conclusions beyond: "See America, we have boomsticks too!".
 
Interesting that the Danes, who share a similar language and culture, have such a small legal gun ownership number compared to the rest of the Nordic countries.

Being occupied during WWII and having had a fairly large resistance movement back then, even though the Danes are very law abiding, I would have assumed a larger illegal weapons number, too.
 
Methodology is covered quite well in the PDF link provided. Just because you don't do data collection for a living, so don't get it, doesn't mean it's all BS. They take this seriously, we get better all the time at gathering info like this, and many estimates along these lines are proven out later on when solid data is available to be pretty on target.

The PDF details they took many sources. Surveys, extant expert analysis, extrapolations from limited sources such as police seizures, then discarded wild outliers and used math to find a best fit. There are commonly accepted ways, and the part where they took several pages to explain the issues and methods makes me trust the gray line well enough for a chart of that coarseness.
 
Note that there's no meaningful relationship between the number of guns in those countries and the amount of violence in them. Many of the scandinavian countries have high numbers of guns (for Europeans) and very low levels of violence, while several of the Baltic and eastern european states have many fewer guns and much, much higher rates of violence.

I mean, everybody here probably already knew that, but most people are surprised to learn this.
 
There is much, much more than guns involved - those Scandinavian countries have working governments and real, not only facade democracy like that found in the Balkans region for example... But this is something quite far from the original topic of the discussion.
 
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