The Federal Ministry of Economics ends its presence at the largest arms fair in the USA. According to research by the Tagesspiegel and the “ZDF Magazin Royale” the ministry led by the Greens refrains from participating in the “Shot Show” in Las Vegas next year. However, the step does not change the fact that European gun manufacturers – including German companies – benefit from widespread gun ownership in the USA.
More than 40,000 people die from guns in the United States each year. According to the research, European gun manufacturers play a more important role in gun violence in the United States than previously known. According to this, gunmen in gun attacks in the USA carried weapons from European companies in a third of the cases, and in school massacres even in 45 percent of the cases.
At the Las Vegas gun show the Ministry of Economic Affairs was still present this year. According to information from the ministry, the decision to take part in the “Shot Show” was made last January while the then Economics Minister Peter Altmaier (CDU) was still in office. According to the research, the Ministry indirectly supported the companies represented in the “German Pavilion” financially.
Associations are pushing for a class action right
Gun accessories were presented in the exhibition pavilion. In 2020, this included a magazine from which 60 shots can be fired for an assault rifle without reloading. A spokeswoman for the Ministry of Economic Affairs now said: “There will be no new federal trade fair stand.”
In order to minimize the damage that weapons from German manufacturers cause worldwide, civil society associations in Germany are pushing for a class action right, which they believe should be incorporated into the Arms Export Control Act. The traffic light coalition is currently working on a draft of the law.
According to the ideas of the traffic light partners – including the Greens – cooperation with NATO partners such as the USA should be simplified in the future when it comes to arms exports. “There is rightly no longer any funding – of any kind – from the Ministry of Economic Affairs for weapons fairs in the USA,” said the security policy spokeswoman for the Greens in the Bundestag, Sara Nanni, the Tagesspiegel. A class action right within the framework of the planned Arms Export Control Act, on the other hand, would “not be expedient in that case either, since the export of weapons to the USA is within the existing legal framework”. It is primarily up to the US government to “tighten gun control.”
According to the FDP armaments expert Hagen Reinhold, Germany’s share in projects of European armaments cooperation is already kept extremely low due to the comparatively strictest export regime. “With the right to take legal action as a group, the negotiating position in industrial cooperation projects would deteriorate even further and possibly result in the general exclusion of German companies,” says Reinhold. The coalition agreement does not provide for a further tightening of arms export regulations anyway, he said.
