A new terrorist attack has shaken Germany and has rekindled a sensitive social debate about carrying weapons in Germany. “No one in Germany needs bladed weapons in public spaces,” German Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck assured on X on Sunday, August 25, calling for tougher laws on carrying bladed weapons in the country.
The plea comes after the deadly attack claimed by the Islamic State (IS) that occurred Friday evening in the city of Solingen. Considering that “Islamist terrorism” is “one of the greatest dangers to the security” of the country, he assured that “certain legal reinforcements are simply right and necessary: more zones prohibiting the carrying of weapons, stricter laws”.
The 26-year-old Syrian assailant, who has since surrendered and whose kinship with the Islamic State has been claimed, attacked several people with a knife on Friday evening during a community festival in this city in western Germany. Stabbed with the blade “at neck level” among thousands of spectators, two men aged 56 and 67, as well as a 56-year-old woman, were killed, and eight people injured, four of them seriously. According to a statement from the jihadist group transmitted via its propaganda organ Amaq, the assailant acted “to avenge the Muslims of Palestine and everywhere else”. On Saturday evening, German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser called on the country to “remain united” and denounced “those who want to sow hatred”.
Debate heats up as regional elections approach
But the subject of carrying a weapon was already a hot topic: on May 31, the death of a 29-year-old German police officer stabbed in the head by a radical Afghan Islamist had already put the spotlight on knife attacks. Olaf Scholz’s government quickly committed to restricting the carrying of knives in public spaces. A measure that has not materialized since. The political debate was therefore quick to resurface following this new tragedy, a week before key regional elections in the east of the country, where the far-right party AfD is well ahead of the governing parties in the polls.
The tightening of the rules proposed by Vice Chancellor Habeck was quickly criticized as too timid by Friedrich Merz, the leader of the CDU conservatives. “It is not the knives that are the problem, but the people who carry them,” he said, calling on the government to “no longer take in refugees” from “Syria and Afghanistan”. The AfD, for its part, blamed supposed shortcomings in the migration and security policy of the regions and the state. According to the Vice Chancellor, the attacker was not on the security services’ lists of Islamist extremists considered dangerous.
Ban blades longer than 6 cm and strengthen controls
“We must move forward on the ban on knives,” added Dirk Wiese, a member of the Social Democratic group (Olaf Scholz’s party) in the Bundestag, to the regional newspaper on Saturday. Rheinische Post. He proposes “more no-knife zones, an extension of bans on carrying knives for former offenders, a ban on trains and buses and swift convictions in the event of an offence”. Critics, such as the conservative Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Hermann, denounce a policy of “symbolic” hardening, pointing out that the attack on the Mannheim police officer was carried out with a weapon that was already banned.
In detail, the project supported by the Federal Minister of the Interior consists of reforming the law on weapons in order to ban blades longer than 6 centimetres. Currently, the text prohibits butterfly knives and fixed blades longer than 12 centimetres outside the home. At the same time, she has called, via the media, on municipalities to strengthen their local security with regard to the carrying of weapons, by setting up “no-carry zones”. The concept is already being applied in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, the region where the recent tragedy in Solingen took place.
Since 2021, several large cities in the state, such as Cologne and Düsseldorf, have banned the carrying of weapons such as knives, tear gas canisters or batons during weekends, the eve of holidays or during carnival. While this measure may seem light, it mainly serves to legally justify more police checks during these festive times, normally only possible to prevent imminent danger. An effective policy that requires more checks, “but there are not enough personnel”, recently lamented the head of the country’s main police union.