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Pistols and rifles: asylum seekers are armed

The police have to carry out checks in more and more weapon-free zones – but that doesn't bother many foreigners.(Bild: Krone KREATIV/Tobias Steinmaurer/APA/picturedesk.com, Eva Manhart/picturedesk.com)

Security alert over imported crime: pistols, rifles, brass knuckles, lethal weapons, or ammunition—more than 1,000 "foreign suspects" were reported in our country for possession of prohibited weapons in one year. Syrians are at the top of the list. The "Krone" newspaper has the explosive figures.

To be precise, this concerns Section 50 of the Criminal Code according to the Weapons Act. And we are not even talking about knives or machetes (keyword: gang wars). Rather, we are talking about prohibited firearms such as pistols, revolvers, shotguns, or shotguns. But illegal ammunition, brass knuckles, and blackjacks are also covered.

Three armed foreigners are caught every day
As a parliamentary FPÖ inquiry to the Ministry of the Interior has now revealed, crime statistics show that for every two Austrians, there is one so-called foreign suspect. According to the latest available figures from 2024, a total of 1,068 people without a red-white-red passport were reported in connection with illegal possession of weapons.

This means that three foreigners armed to the teeth are stopped every day. The number of unreported cases is, of course, much higher.

The police have to carry out checks in more and more weapon-free zones – but that doesn't bother many foreigners.(Bild: Krone KREATIV/Tobias Steinmaurer/APA/picturedesk.com, Eva Manhart/picturedesk.com)

Many asylum seekers, Syrians by far in first place
The national ranking comes as little surprise to many: Syrians are sadly at the top of the list, accounting for around 12 percent of the total. They are followed by Slovaks, Romanians, Turks, Serbs, our favorite German neighbors, and the Russian Federation (mostly Chechens). Afghans are also among the leaders.

This is imported crime in its purest form and an unacceptable security risk for our population. 

Christian Lausch

Bild: FPÖ

Another disturbing detail: 102 of the gun enthusiasts arrested by the police were asylum seekers. Christian Lausch, a member of the Austrian National Council for the Freedom Party, is therefore highly critical: "This is imported crime in its purest form and an unacceptable security risk for our population!"

The Freedom Party politician sees this as a total failure of the black-red-pink security policy. Incidentally, 380,000 owners of 1.5 million firearms are officially registered in Austria...