Author: Vojtěch Berger, HlidaciPes.org
The Czech-German and Czech-Austrian border regions have been popular destinations for foreign visitors for many years, attracted by the lenient conditions at local shooting ranges. In addition to ordinary shooting enthusiasts looking for an occasional adrenaline rush, Czech shooting ranges also attract German and Austrian extremists. There are many documented examples, as confirmed by the Czech counterintelligence service BIS. An amendment to the Weapons Act aims to change this from next year.
“There are several shooting ranges in use, located in the Czech-Austrian and German-Czech border areas. They have been in use for at least the last 15 years,” says Ladislav Šticha, spokesman for the Security Information Service, summarizing the extent of trips by the German and Austrian far right to shoot in Czechia.
Currently, German public television MDR mentions one such specific shooting range in connection with the case of a group of so-called „Saxon separatists“. Last November, German police arrested several of its members on suspicion of terrorism and preparing an armed coup based on the Nazi model, including ethnic cleansing. They were supposed to train shooting in Czechia too.
Western Bohemia as a German shooting range
MDR, referring to investigation files, specifically mentions the GoldieArms shooting range in the Czech city of Kynšperk nad Ohří. According to the television station, the name of the same shooting range also appeared some time ago in the trial of another German far-right group, Knockout 51. According to the authorities, in addition to practicing combat sports, its members were planning attacks against police officers, migrants, and members of the left-wing scene.
HlídacíPes.org contacted the owner of the shooting range, Marek Kroha, to ask whether any of the names of the detained members of the Saxon separatist group that had been reported in the media appeared in the shooting range’s records from previous years. These included Kurt Hättasch, a former councilor in the Saxon town of Grimma, and siblings Jörg and Jörn Schimanek.
According to the owner, the names are not in his records, but he admitted that he often has German clients at the shooting range, as well as people from the Netherlands who are interested in shooting. The reason for this is that the conditions for shooting are incomparably more lenient than in neighboring Germany, for example. And as already mentioned, right-wing extremists also take advantage of this.
“In the past, the BIS has also participated in active interventions against certain extremist groups carried out by the German side. For example, in September 2017, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), with the help of special units, searched the cars of members of the neo-Nazi group Combat 18 Deutschland, who were returning from Czechia. During the operation, a ‘small amount of ammunition’ was found, which the authorities confiscated from the extremists,” says Ladislav Šticha, spokesman for the counterintelligence service, citing one example.
“Thank God, no German nigger”
The investigation into this particular case later led German journalists to another Czech shooting range, also near Kynšperk nad Ohří. While filming with a hidden camera, they discovered, among other things, a helmet and cap with the SS symbol on display in a restaurant on the premises.
Another group of young men from Germany was waiting to shoot alongside the journalists. The young men wore T-shirts with the German Reich flag used by the far right as a symbol of resistance to democratic Germany. The video recording also features the voice of a Czech shooting range employee saying in German: “Thank God, no German niggers.”
This shooting range and its German clientele were also the subject of joint negotiations between the police and other security forces from the Czech Karlovy Vary border region and their colleagues from the nearest German federal states, Saxony, Bavaria, and Thuringia. This is evident from one of the interpellations in the Bavarian State Parliament in 2019.
During the filming, journalists also tried shooting various weapons and were surprised that they did not need a gun license, that no one asked them about their previous shooting experience, and that, in theory, they could take the ammunition with them.
However, references to German extremists at Czech shooting ranges go back even further. As early as 2012, police carried out a raid in Bavaria against the Jagdstaffel D.S.T. group. Its members traveled to shooting ranges in the Czech Republic, where they allegedly used human-shaped targets.
Mandatory registration
The conditions at Czech shooting ranges will change in the foreseeable future. In January next year, an amendment to the law on weapons and ammunition will come into force. This will also affect shooting ranges and could reduce their attractiveness to members and sympathizers of the extremist scene in neighboring countries.
“The Ministry of the Interior is aware of the fact that there are cases at domestic shooting ranges where foreigners who are, for example, persons monitored by German security authorities, also shoot with rented weapons,” says ministry spokesman Ondřej Krátoška.
The new firearms law will therefore require shooting range operators to register online in the Central Firearms Register every foreigner who does not reside in the Czech Republic and who does not provide proof of authorization for the cross-border transport of firearms or ammunition.
“Such a permit may be, for example, a European Firearms Pass issued by the foreigner’s home country, which in principle proves that the home country itself considers the person to be authorized to handle weapons. In other words, any foreigner who cannot prove that they are authorized to handle weapons in their home country will have to be registered by the shooting range operator in an online database administered by the police,” adds spokesperson Krátoška.
The new measure is not intended to directly prevent members of the foreign extremist scene from accessing shooting ranges, but to strengthen the supervision of their activities by security forces. Registration in the Central Weapons Register must be carried out without undue delay, in exceptional cases no later than two working days from the time the foreigner fired at the shooting range.
According to the Ministry of the Interior, the tightening of conditions for foreign visitors to Czech shooting ranges is also the result of long-term communication between domestic and German security authorities.
