Amid the continuing war in Ukraine, some politicians in Lithuania are calling for looser gun laws, arguing that more citizens should be able to participate in armed resistance. Others urge caution: wider accessibility of automatic firearms may lead to American-style mass shootings.
Two conservative MPs, Paulius Saudargas and National Security and Defence Committee chair Laurynas Kasčiūnas, have registered a bill to change the Law on Weapons and Ammunition Control. Under the proposal, everyone who has been conscripted and completed initial military training would be allowed to acquire and keep automatic firearms.
As Saudargas told LRT.lt, this would open the possibility to around 100,000 people, only 28,000 of whom are in the active reserve and are regularly called up for refresher training.
Under the current rules, only professional and volunteer soldiers and members of the Riflemen Union can have category A – automatic or semiautomatic – weapons. Data from October show that 79 individuals owned 122 category A weapons: 115 semi-automatic and seven automatic.
Boosting security
Saudargas insists that his proposal is aimed at boosting Lithuania’s security and expanding opportunities for civilian defence.
“Everyone must defend their country. It is everybody’s business, […] not just for the army, for professionals with service weapons somewhere on the front. The whole of society is joining the fight,” he told LRT.lt.
According to him, the bill is one step in a bigger process of increasing gun ownership in Lithuania. Previous amendments opened up automatic weapon ownership to professional and volunteer soldiers and riflemen. Expanding the potential base even further, he argues, would also encourage more weapon suppliers to enter the market.
“The process has started in theory, but in practice it is very slow. That is why we want to create more potential. [...] In this way, we want to encourage importers, arms dealers, to be able to offer a wider range of products to a potentially wider circle of buyers. Then, perhaps, prices would be more competitive,” he argued.
Potential dangers
However, the proposal has attracted some criticism. Opposition MP Saulius Skvernelis, leader of the Democratic Union “For Lithuania”, says more automatic weapons would lead to more threats to the public.
“We are talking about anyone who has ever served in the military [...]. I believe, we are rapidly walking towards the situation we see almost every day across the Atlantic [in the US] with liberal gun policies. Do we want to put automatic weapons in the hands of people we have many doubts about?” Skvernelis told the radio Žinių Radijas in early November.
He argued that boosting police and other services would be a more effective way to prepare for potential invasions. Meanwhile, “untrained people with automatic weapons can do more harm than good”.
Saudargas agrees that there are risks but insists that the proposed regulation includes enough safeguards.
“To get hold of a category A weapon, you’d need a special permit, you have to meet medical criteria, that goes without saying. It is up to the medics to judge if a person has an adequate understanding of the world to be granted a permit for such a weapon. Checks are to be repeated every five years, and if one does not pass the medical test, the permit is revoked. So gun control is strict,” he said.
Police see dangers
Wider access to automatic weapons also increases the chances that some of them may end up in the hands of criminals.
According to police spokesman Ramūnas Matonis, there are no data about what share of weapons used in crimes were legal or not.
However, the police do see a danger to public safety if significantly more people are allowed to keep automatic weapons.
“Because they can fire in bursts, the consequences of their illegal use would be much more severe than in the case of category B or C weapons. Younger people are not always aware of the limits of their responsibility and are more likely to be confronted with conflict situations, which would increase the risk that automatic weapons would be used beyond necessary defence,” according to Matonis.
Moreover, the current regulation puts age limits on ownership of powerful weapons.
“For example, semi-automatic category B pistols for self-defence can be purchased and owned from the age of 23. By contrast, the proposed bill would allow keeping category A automatic weapons […] from the age of 18. Thus, a person who has completed their military service at the age of 18 would be able to own a category A automatic weapon, but not a self-defence pistol until they are 23,” Matonis said.
The US or Switzerland
According to the Lithuanian Gun Owners Association, around 10,000 more firearms were purchased in the country since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in early 2022: mostly by hunters, shooting sports representatives, but also people concerned with self-defence.
Arūnas Marcinkevičius, the president of the association, says that it has been lobbying to expand the availability of category A weapons since 2017, but until the Ukraine war their proposals had been met with scepticism.
Marcinkevičius does not believe there is any danger to the public. Although opponents like to refer to the USA as a cautionary case, Marcinkevičius argues that Switzerland is a better example.
“Their weapon keeping conditions are very strict. They are kept in a safe and the safe is stamped with a special seal. Just breaking the seal is punishable.” he told LRT.lt. “It all comes down to how it is controlled.”
While he agrees that there would be risks, Marcinkevičius argues that medical checks in Lithuania are strict enough to minimise them.
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