(Deutsche Welle) Some 640,000 Germans now have an alarm gun license, some 30,000 more than at the end of last year, according to research by the Rheinische Post newspaper. The number has risen hugely since 2014, when some 260,000 people carried such a license.
The head of one of Germany’s two big police unions, the GdP, said new statistics exposed a “latent sense of insecurity” in the population.
“At least since the events at the Cologne cathedral square on New Year’s Eve in 2015 people apparently feel more and more unsafe,” GdP chairman Oliver Malchow said, referring to an incident when dozens of young men of North African origin harassed and pickpocketed people out celebrating. There was a spike in applications for the license in the wake of the incident.
