Stringent gun controls proved futile when at least ten people were killed and upwards of 30 others hurt in Prague during a mass shooting Thursday.
France 24 reported the shooting occurred in a school located in Jan Palach Square.
Prague is the capital city of the Czech Republic, a country with stringent gun controls and no guaranteed right to firearm possession.
Police take security measures as several people were killed and injured in a shooting incident near a university in Prague, Czech Republic on December 21, 2023. The incident took place at the Charles University Faculty of Arts in central Prague, according to the police. (Stringer/Anadolu via Getty Images)
The University of Sydney’s Gun Policy center lists the Czech Republic’s gun control as “restrictive,” noting that the only way to legal gun ownership in the country is via a gun license.
Acquiring such a license requires passing a mental, criminal, and psychological background check, proving good cause for owning a gun, and passing a gun safety test.
The gun license has to be renewed every ten years.
An infographic titled “Several killed, injured in Prague university shooting” created in Ankara, Turkiye on December 21, 2023. (Elmurod Usubaliev/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Ammunition is controlled as well. Gun license holders are only allowed to possess ammunition that matches the caliber of their licensed firearm(s).
All guns must be registered with the government in the Czech Republic and there are “written specifications for the lawful safe storage of private firearms and ammunition by licensed gun owners.”
In reporting the Prague mass shooting, the Washington Post claimed “Czech Republic has more permissive gun laws than most countries in Europe.”
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and a Turning Point USA Ambassador. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal in 2010, a speaker at the 2023 Western Conservative Summit, and he holds a Ph.D. in Military History, with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at
