A little more detail into what this actually means would be great. The US doesn’t even have a second amendment, so it’s doubtful that a European nation would grant the same sort of allowances.
Since the 2015 terror attacks in France the EU has been going all out trying to ban private firearm ownership across the union. Czech laws regulating firearm ownership have been fairly permissive compared to other EU states; all gun owners must be licensed, but the license is shall-issue as long as you pass a test, and the new EU legislation would have forced us to change that.
Amending the Constitution (actually the Czech equivalent of the US Bill of Rights - Listina základních práv a svobod - which is part of the Constitution) to specifically note the right to defense with a weapon means the EU can go fuck itself, because while EU law falls under "international treaties" which supersede local law, the Constitution supersedes even that.
We had to somewhat change our gun laws last year due to EU mandate, but the update actually made some things easier; for example, silencers and laser sights were previously banned and the update allows them, and the EU also wanted to limit magazine capacity to 10 rounds, which kinda-sorta happened, except you can just get a shall-issue permit for standard capacity mags and it's literally just a piece of paper you pay IIRC ~4 EUR for and it's approved immediately, so it technically fulfills the EU's mandate while changing basically nothing in practice.
Of course, the battle isn't won yet. There's a push to ban lead for completely made-up "environmental protection" reasons (no, there really isn't a huge epidemic of lead poisoning like the EU and green NGOs say), and the newly passed amendment also includes a "as defined by law" clause, so in theory, if self-defense law changes in the future to say you have to give up and let yourself be killed if attacked, we're still screwed. It could have been worded a lot better, but it could also have been a lot worse.
A little more detail into what this actually means would be great. The US doesn’t even have a second amendment, so it’s doubtful that a European nation would grant the same sort of allowances.
Since the 2015 terror attacks in France the EU has been going all out trying to ban private firearm ownership across the union. Czech laws regulating firearm ownership have been fairly permissive compared to other EU states; all gun owners must be licensed, but the license is shall-issue as long as you pass a test, and the new EU legislation would have forced us to change that.
Amending the Constitution (actually the Czech equivalent of the US Bill of Rights - Listina základních práv a svobod - which is part of the Constitution) to specifically note the right to defense with a weapon means the EU can go fuck itself, because while EU law falls under "international treaties" which supersede local law, the Constitution supersedes even that.
We had to somewhat change our gun laws last year due to EU mandate, but the update actually made some things easier; for example, silencers and laser sights were previously banned and the update allows them, and the EU also wanted to limit magazine capacity to 10 rounds, which kinda-sorta happened, except you can just get a shall-issue permit for standard capacity mags and it's literally just a piece of paper you pay IIRC ~4 EUR for and it's approved immediately, so it technically fulfills the EU's mandate while changing basically nothing in practice.
Of course, the battle isn't won yet. There's a push to ban lead for completely made-up "environmental protection" reasons (no, there really isn't a huge epidemic of lead poisoning like the EU and green NGOs say), and the newly passed amendment also includes a "as defined by law" clause, so in theory, if self-defense law changes in the future to say you have to give up and let yourself be killed if attacked, we're still screwed. It could have been worded a lot better, but it could also have been a lot worse.
thanks for the explanation