After the Sydney shooting, the Australian Prime Minister proposed tightening firearms regulations; earlier this year the Swedish government announced this. Jarosław Lewandowski from Strzał.pl said in an interview with PAP that instead, we need to increase control over people who own weapons and address the issue of illegal weapons.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has proposed tightening firearms laws following the shooting on Sydney's popular Bondi Beach. At least 15 people died there. The police confirmed that one of the attackers legally possessed six firearms.
“The government stands ready to take all necessary action. This includes the need to tighten firearms laws,” Albanese said. He also announced a review of weapons permits issued so far.
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This is not the first time that, after a high-profile incident involving the use of firearms, the authorities of a given country announced stricter regulations; in February this year this was announced by the Swedish government after the shooting at Oerebro school, which killed 11 people.
In the opinion of Jarosław Lewandowski, editor-in-chief of the monthly magazine and website Strzał.pl, The solution to the problem is not a general tightening of firearms regulations, but greater control of people who already own them. – There are mentally unstable people who, just as they should not drive motor vehicles, should not have access to weapons. The system of access to weapons should be designed in such a way as to prevent access to legal weapons to mentally ill people, minors, drug addicts or those who do not have legal capacity and are unable to be held accountable for their actions, he emphasized.
Appropriate preventive actions start at school?
Referring to tragic cases of school shootings, which resulted in stricter regulations, among others: in Australia or Great Britain in previous years, Lewandowski also assessed that schools do not provide adequate support to people affected by peer harassment and do not respond quickly enough to cases of bullying. – As a result, children are traumatized and sometimes, as was the case in Great Britain, they come into possession of weapons, e.g. belonging to their parents, and take revenge on their persecutors, he said.
In the European Union, the basis for firearms regulations is Directive (EU) 2021/555 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24 March 2021 on the control of the acquisition and possession of weapons (which replaced Council Directive 91/477/EEC of 18 June 1991). As Lewandowski recalled, the directive itself is primarily related to the Schengen area and also covers countries such as Switzerland and Norway. However, it does not apply in the same way in all EU countries.
– After the creation of the Schengen area, the regulations regarding weapons had to be changed to prevent a situation where someone, after freely crossing the border, finds himself with a legally purchased weapon in a country where it is considered illegal.. This was needed, for example, for sports competitions or hunting – explained Lewandowski.
He added that when creating the directive, the regulations of several different countries were combined – some from France, some from Germany – to find a common denominator and, if possible, reproduce the provisions in force at that time, slightly modifying them.
– Initially, this directive was written quite wisely – said Lewandowski. – It had three basic elements: one, that all weapons available on the civilian market were divided into four categories, marked with the letters A, B, C, D; the second one assigning minimum access rules for citizens to these categories (minimal because individual countries could tighten them in their own internal regulations) and the third one, the European Firearms Charter.
According to the list prepared by Euronews in 2025, the most dangerous European capital is currently Brussels – until mid-August this year. 57 shootings were recorded there. In Stockholm, according to the authorities' data cited by the portal, 55 shootings were recorded until August, in which 9 people died. The next most dangerous places are Marseille and Amsterdam.
– When it comes to Europe, we know that the most shootings are recorded mainly in Sweden and France, and their significant characteristic is that, as a rule, illegal weapons are used there, not legal ones obtained in accordance with applicable regulations. And illegal weapons are extremely easy to obtain in Europe, especially now that we have an open war in Ukraine. And a lot of such weapons penetrate into our country, Lewandowski noted. – This is an unsolved problem in the current regulations and it is worth considering.
When Poland joined the European Union in 2004, it was obliged to implement the 1991 directive. However, since 1999, the Weapons and Ammunition Act was already in force in the country. A firearms permit can be obtained when the applicant is an adult, does not pose a threat to himself, public order or public safety and presents a valid reason for possessing a firearm.
Granting of permits on a discretionary basis
In practice, as Lewandowski emphasizes, permits are granted largely on a discretionary basis, but the scale and scope of this discretion are variable – currently, some types of permits can be obtained more easily than a few years ago, but some are still almost impossible to issue. – At the end of 2024, we had a total of 367,000. private weapon permits held by citizens, according to data from the Police Headquarters, which translates into approximately 300,000 at most. gun owners – although we do not know the exact number – because in the Polish legal system one person can and often does have several permits issued for different purposes, Lewandowski emphasized.
In a country of 37 million inhabitants, this amounts to less than 0.01%. citizens. As Lewandowski added, in other EU countries these values are at least an order of magnitude higher, most often between 2%. and 3 percent, with exceptions such as Finland, which has approximately 10 percent. armed citizens.
– In Poland, we have never properly implemented the 1991 Council Directive for a very simple reason: Polish regulations were arranged according to a completely different logical concept. We would have to completely change the Polish law and write it from scratch. Instead, attempts were made to combine these two worlds, some pieces were taken from this directive and added to Polish regulations – explained Lewandowski. – This can be compared to the fact that the directive is a program broadcast on DAB, and Polish regulations are like an old Światowid tube receiver with antennas. And whether we paint it green or red, whether we add one more or less knob to it, it will still be an analog receiver and we will not be able to receive a digital program with it – he added.
One of the changes that was implemented in Poland after 2004, as in other European countries, was the introduction of the European Firearms Cardi.e. a personal document confirming the right to possess a firearm, issued by the competent authority of an EU Member State, enabling the legal possession and use of firearms in another EU Member State.
– The European Weapons Card is a universal document, a passport for moving with weapons within the Schengen area, secondary to the permit system in a given country. Every legal gun owner should receive such a document, and one of its important elements is the weapon category, Lewandowski said.
As he explained, there are four categories in the directive: a, b, c and d, and each of them has a specific level of permits resulting from EU regulations. He added that in response to this, Poland issued a regulation that was absurd in his opinion, according to which each weapon requiring a permit should be in one category: b.
– This is absurd, because it was written by someone who did not understand what these regulations were about at all. In the directive, these differences between categories result from technical conditions, objective characteristics of a given weapon, whether the weapon is long or short, single-shot or multi-shot, that type of thing. And the directive stated that the shorter the weapon and the faster it fires, the more difficult it is to obtain it; and if the weapon is slow-firing and long, so that it cannot be hidden under a coat, or you cannot enter a store with it, for example, then it is easier to get it – he explained.
Poland with the best restrictions on access to weapons
Moreover, Lewandowski added that since Poland joined the EU, the directive had been changed three times – in 2008, 2017 and 2021. Invariably, every weapon in Poland, regardless of its technical features, landed in category B.
– There are absurd situations, such as when our editorial colleagues wanted to go to a competition in Estonia, passing through Lithuania and Latvia on the way. They had all the necessary documents from Poland. But when crossing the border, it turned out that their sports and competition weapons were incorrectly entered – in category B, instead of, in accordance with the directive, in category C. And there is no way to correct it, because the category is incorrectly entered by Polish regulations – he said.
According to Lewandowski, due to this interpretation and implementation of the EU directive, no European country has such limited access to weapons as in Poland..
– Although it is not as restrictive as in Australia. “It's really hard for me to say what they can do now to further tighten firearms laws after the Sydney attack,” he added.
Agata Gutowska (PAP)
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