Prague, Sept 8 (CTK) – Czech police will be able to take weapons preventively away from suspicious holders and the rules of arms possession will be toughened under a bill the cabinet has prepared in reaction to recent cases of murders committed by persons with a mental disorder, Mlada fronta Dnes (MfD) writes Tuesday.
To seize a weapon, the police will not need a medical expert’s assessment, the daily writes.
At present, the police can seize a weapon only in misdemeanour proceedings or after a crime is committed.
According to the new bill, drafted by the Interior Ministry and to be discussed by the Government Legislative Council now, the validity of the arms possession licence halved to five years and doctors will be supposed to exchange information about arms holders and provide information to the police, MfD writes.
The bill reacts to the cases such as that in Uhersky Brod, south Moravia, where an elderly man killed eight people and then himself in February, or in Prague-Zabehlice, where a 43-year-old man shot his neighbour dead and then committed suicide in May.
Both killers possessed guns though they suffered from psychological problems. Their respective neighbours repeatedly complained about them, but all in vain, the paper writes.
The responsible ministers then promised a remedy in this respect.
Both the neighbours and doctors of the murderer from Prague-Zabehlice repeatedly warned that he was mentally unstable. As a result, the authorities were going to take his pistol away from him, but the procedure was excessively protracted. The man committed the murder on the very day the police were to seize his gun, MfD writes.
The new bill enables the police to apply the “presumption of guilt” principle. If people report a strange behaviour of an arms holder to the authorities, the police would take the weapon or ammunition away from them immediately as a preventive step, the Interior Ministry’s spokeswoman Petra Kucerova is quoted as saying.
Afterwards, the arms licence holder will have to undergo a medical checkup. If the doctors found out that the person does not suffer from any disease or disorder, the police would return the weapon to them. However, they would not do so if they found the person unfit to hold a weapon, the paper writes.
Lawyer Jan Cerny told MfD that it is necessary to see to that the police do not misuse the law, if it is passed by parliament and takes effect.
“It would be unfortunate to take a gun away from someone only because their neighbours complained that they pulled it out to show off and they are afraid of them,” Cerny said.
“Two criteria should be met. Either there should exist a serious suspicion that the person might commit a crime, or the person would have to dangerously threaten others, whose fear of them would be substantiated,” Cerny said.
The bill also reacts to the present insufficient exchange of information between various medical specialists. The goal is to consistently prevent potential perpetrators from gaining the arms possession licence.
Medical specialists will be bound to inform the arms holder’s general practitioner about changes in their health condition. Based on it, the GP will have to immediately issue a new medical report assessing the person’s fitness and send it to the police, who would seize the weapons in question, Kucerova told MfD.
The bill also tightens the rules of ammunition storage, including the quality of the buildings involved, in order to prevent uncontrolled series of ammunition explosions such as that in the ammunition dump in Vrbetice, south Moravia, last autumn, the daily writes.
