The federal government will give up a booth at the “Shot Show” gun fair in Las Vegas. This was preceded by media reports about Berlin’s participation.
The Federal Ministry of Economics has apparently organized and partially financed a stand for German companies at the world’s largest firearms fair “Shot Show” in Las Vegas for decades. Not anymore. “There will be no new federal trade fair stand,” a ministry spokeswoman told the Berlin “Tagesspiegel”.
The federal government is said to have sponsored the participation fee
The ministry was reacting to joint research by the newspaper and the ZDF “Magazine Royale” in support of the federal government. German exhibitors have been helped since 1998 with their stands at the fair. There was only one exception in 2021.
The trade fair association of the German economy AUMA is said to have made the selection of the German companies. A service provider was hired on site and a participation fee had to be paid, according to the researchers. According to “Tagesspiegel” information, the final accounts were taken over by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Federal Office of Economics and Export Control (BAFA).
A third of all attacks with European weapons
The exhibitors are said to have only transferred a partial sum to the service provider, the ministry is quoted as saying “participation price”. According to the newspaper report, the federal authorities paid the rest
The research of the newspaper and the ZDF program deals primarily with the business of European arms manufacturers on the US market. One of the largest pistol producers in the United States is the Sig Sauer company, whose holding company is based in Emsdetten, Münster, and which, according to its own statements, donated half a million dollars to the US gun lobby association NSSF in 2020.
“The arms epidemic, as US President Joe Biden called it, is not a purely American problem as long as the profits from the arms business also end up in Germany and Austria,” said the newspaper’s US correspondent, Juliane Schäuble.
According to the research, shooters in gun attacks in the United States carried weapons from European companies in a third of the cases, and in school massacres even in 45 percent of the cases. The perpetrator at the Sandy Hook School in 2012 is said to have carried a Sig Sauer and a Glock – from a German and an Austrian producer.
