Estonia aims to prohibit Russian citizens from owning guns

Estonia aims to prohibit citizens of Russia, living in Estonia, from owning guns. The government of the country can receive the draft law for consideration in a few weeks.

The Ministry of the Interior of Estonia is currently engaged in the legal preparation and analysis of the document.

“We are starting to write proposals. In the next couple of weeks, we intend to submit a draft law to the government,” the Minister of the Interior Lauri Läänemets said.

According to the bill, the confiscation of weapons would begin at the end of this year or early next year.

The process will last at least a year. The Department of Police and Border Protection will carry out this work.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs of the country hopes that the majority of gun owners will voluntarily surrender them to the police or sell them.

Lauri Läänemets predicts that the Estonian market may not be able to cope with a large number of offers for the sale of weapons, so they will be kept by the police, which means additional costs.

Answering a question about how many gun owners with Russian citizenship could pose a real threat to the country’s security, the Minister said that those people are known, but he would not name the exact number.

“There are not many of them, and we are dealing with them,” Lauri Läänemets said.

The ministry does not say anything about the cost of such an initiative for the Estonian budget. However, they clarify: now they are starting to work only with citizens of Russia, but in the future, only citizens of Estonia will probably have the right to bear arms in Estonia.

“We are reducing the number of persons who can have weapons in Estonia. The aim would be to make it a citizen to own a gun in Estonia,” Läänemets said.

In his opinion, the draft law on banning Russian citizens from having weapons will not cause disputes regarding its constitutionality.