The Austrian government plans to tighten national gun laws after recently experiencing its worst school shooting.
Chancellor Christian Stocker has said officials aim to set stricter eligibility rules for possession and purchase of arms after a 21-year-old Austrian man shot and killed ten people at his former high school in the city of Graz before killing himself.
The measures will look at elements such as age requirements, enhancing psychological expertise in schools, improving data exchange between authorities and tightening restrictions for individuals deemed to be a risk.
The Austrian Cabinet plans to agree to the measures this week.
Austrian police have described the shooter as an introvert and avid player of online shooting games who had largely withdrawn from the outside world before he planned the attack. A motive is yet to be established.
Under the current Austrian legislation, anyone without a criminal record who is over the age of 21 can buy handguns after undergoing an assessment and registering their weapon.
Austria is one of the European countries with the largest number of small arms in circulation per capita, and is famous for the Glock pistol, invented by Austrian engineer Gaston Glock.
This week has also seen the publishing of the UK Government response to the Animal Sentience Committee: report on the due regard to animal welfare – legislative compliance and enforcement.
While this response speaks to a broad range of issues related to animal welfare legislative compliance and enforcement (full response here), it includes a government commitment to ban the importation of hunting trophies.
This is despite the University of Oxford providing analysis last year that such a change has the potential to cause more harm than good.
One of the key findings by the researchers, led by the University’s Department of Biology and the Oxford Martin Programme on Wildlife Trade, was that “trophy hunting was found to provide, or have the potential to provide, significant environmental and social benefits. These included protecting wildlands from conversion to agriculture; providing resources to prevent poaching; income and employment for Indigenous peoples and local communities; provision of meat for local communities; and enhanced population
growth for threatened species. Importantly, these social benefits also extended to regions where opportunities for commercial tourism are limited.”
They also concluded that bans “failed to adequately consider the benefits of trophy hunting to local communities, particularly its role in supporting livelihoods”, and that such measures “may cause more harm than good to the species it was intended to protect”.
This policy paper is the UK government’s formal response to the Animal Sentience Committee’s report on the matter that was published in February this year.
The Animal Sentience Committee is established by the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022 to provide accountability to Parliament for the consideration of animal welfare in Ministerial decisions in the UK.
The Australian Labor Government made a similar commitment prior to the May election this year, to expand a ban on the importation of hunting trophies in Australia after lobbying from animal welfare activists.
The SSAA has contacted the former and current Minister in relation to this issue, with no response to date.