Firearm restrictions in Germany?

[akodo]

Anyone here able to tell me about how easy/hard it is to LEGALLY aquire firearms in Germany? Handguns vs rifle/shotgun? Age? Background checks? waiting i.e. 'cooling off' periods? Registration of said gun in some master database? Do you get to buy a gun as long as you are not crazy or ciminal, or do you have to cite a reason such as sports/target shooting? Trigger Lock requirements? Storage requirements? Magazine capacity limits?

Etc etc.

I am wanting this because I suspect German gun laws are more strict than ours. I hope to be able to say "Even with these strict laws, there are still school shootings. Gun Free Zone = Disarmed Victim Zome is the real problem"

p.s. If anyone counters with 'if even highly restricted access to firearms allows school shootings then for the good of us all we should go to a total ban' I will simply point out the Cologne Germany school massacre where a guy took a pump sprayer used for spraying lawn chemicals, filled it with fuel and attached an electronic igniter to the end, and had himself a flamethrower. He then killed a teacher and 8 students, and wounded 22 more with his flamethrower...and then stabbed one more teacher to death with a home-made spear.

Crazies will go on killing sprees with knives taped to broomsticks if that is all they have access to.

 

[jbkebert]

When I was stationed in Germany I had thoughts of purchasing a firearm. Went to the Rod and Gun club and asked for the rules. The guys there told me that the purchase of a gun in Germany was really not all that complex. I was then informed that getting the gun back into the US was the hard part. I dort of gave up after that. I found a couple gun shops in Wurtzburg but the prices were out of my league anyway. Perhaps when the DM was still the form of money maybe. The euro killed me with the fall of the value of the US dollar.