 So dear Hans, I thank you very much for the invitation. Ladies and gentlemen, it's a big honor and pleasure to speak to you about one of my favorite subjects. I've always been interested in guns since the time of my childhood. And when I was a little boy, political correctness was not invented yet. And nobody knew what it meant to be woke. And therefore, we ruthlessly played cowboys and Indians racist game, of course. And we used toy guns, which were available at every toy store without any problems at the time. We were not accused of red-facing and we were not accused of cultural appropriation or the golden era. For those of you who have no idea what to do with the name of Samuel Colt. Samuel Colt was an ingenious inventor and businessman. Which constructed a repeating arm with a cylindrical magazine which gave you the possibility to shoot six times without reloading. This was at the time a big advantage. My speech will be structured like follows. I give a small brief overview over the history of the development of armament and technology. A few words about ballistics and calibers. About the legal situation on both sides of the Atlantic. The policy debate, the pros and cons of private gun ownership and finally the ethics of gun ownership. And my conclusions. From all the beginning on, by nature, humans are not very well equipped to survive in a hostile environment with big dangerous animals and predators. We are neither fast nor strong compared to other predators. We have no strong jaws and we have no paws with claws. So, hence, they had to beat something in order to survive. The first weapons humans produced were like this. It was clubs, it was aces, and it was spears. And the oldest finds of this kind of weapons date back to 400,000 years. They have a long history behind them. The next step was the idea to extend the range of action. Range extension. That meant the invention of bow and arrow, for instance. And, for instance, they date back to the late Paleolithic age, approximately 30,000 to 10,000 years before Christ. I have here two different samples. This is an English-long bow, which has been used by the British archers in the 100 years war with French. And another one is the equestrian arch of the Mongolians, which is quite short to give the human the possibility to use it from the horseback. Another possibility was the spear thrower. It's a quite tricky thing, if you have ever tried a thing like that. It extends the length of your arm. And this gives you the possibility to give more velocity to the spear. But in fact, it's not easy to get on target with that. So it's easier to have a good shot with a bow and arrow. Another possibility for range extension was the crossbow. The oldest find stayed back to 400 before Christ to the ancient Greece. This is not the ancient Greece one. This is a medieval crossbow. And the main advantage compared to bow and arrow is that you do not have to hold the full weight of the bow. And it gives you the possibility to get on target, like with a rifle. It's not necessary to be physically strong. If you have ever shot with bow and arrow, you know if it's a strong bow, which gives you the possibility to hunt with that. That means 30 to 40 kilograms you have to hold here. And that means you have to come to a shot within very, very few seconds. Otherwise, you couldn't hold it. This is the advantage of the crossbow. The disadvantage is that it takes relatively long time to reload. Whereas a good trained archer, I have shown you the picture of the arch used by the British archers in the 100 years war. They could fire up to 10 arrows per minute. And so if you have hundreds of these kind of archers and they do all the same, it's like light artillery. It's a terrible, terrible effect, especially on heavily equipped personnel. Very soon after the invention of black powder, which was at the beginning of the 14th century, the first firearms appeared. The first arms archibas, Hakenbüchse in German, looked very primitive. Very primitive. It's just an iron pipe with a bore on the lateral side of the ending of the bore of the pipe and the wooden shaft. And the function was like that. You had a hemp rope which had been ignited. And this glowing hemp rope was pressed into a pan with powder below the bore on the rear side when you press the trigger. And this caused a flame which went into the pipe where the load was ignited and the ball made out of stone or even from lead came out of the barrel. Different types of this kind of weapon were produced and they all together were not really reliable. You could not use it when it rained and not when the wind blew very heavily because it would have wiped away the powder on the powder pan. Next big step forward was the wheel lock musket. And the function of this wheel lock musket was like in a mechanical watch, you wind up a spring and you press a piece of pirate with this lever on the fluted wheel. And as soon as you pull the trigger, the wheel starts to rotate, producing a spark. And the spark ignites powder and the pan on the pin and the function is then like in the archibus. It was a quite complicated system. It was expensive to produce and was not easy to maintain in the battlefield. So therefore, people looked for a more easy to maintain system and came up with the stone lock weapons from the late century on was the successes of the wheel lock musket looks like this. You have a hammer in which you bring in a piece of flintstone. And as soon as you pull the trigger, it goes down, producing a spark and igniting the load which is inside the barrel. Next big step forward was the percussion weapon. The percussion weapon acute when a material was found that explodes when being hit. There were two different types, the bright mercury or potassium chlorate, which were given into a small cap like this. And these small caps were put on the piston you see here, on the piston. And when you pull the trigger, the hammer falls, igniting the mercury load, and then the charge inside the barrel goes up. The first reloading rifle was also a big step forward. All the others I showed you before had to be loaded from above from the front side of the muzzle which meant that the shooter has to stand upright, fill in the black powder, put in the ball, and compress the load. That meant that the shooter has to stand upright and gives a good target. In military confrontations, this is obviously a disadvantage. And this first reloading rifle, it was a Prussian one called Zündnadlgewehr, a ignition needle rifle patent has been given in 1840. This rifle played a decisive role in the German War of 1866. The Prussian troops were equipped with this rifle, whereas the enemy, the Austrians and the Saxonians had still a muzzle load system, the Lorenzgewehr, the Lorenz rifle. And the advantage of this rifle was they could fire four times faster than the Austrians. And the even bigger advantage was they had not to stand upright if they reloaded it. They could lay on the ground and gave much less target for the enemy. It was still using paper cartridges. This has to be noted, because the Sharps rifle from 1848 was the first to use full metal cartridges. The brass cartridge, including a cap, percussion cap, the load of black powder at the time, and the projectile, was a big step forward, but still a single loader you had to load after a single shot again. But using metal cartridges, the first repeating rifle with a bolt action system was the Mauser from 1888. This was, in so far, a big advantage as you had five shots in the magazine without reloading. So it gave more firepower than a single loading rifle. On the other side of the Atlantic in the States, they went another direction. They produced from 1862 on so-called lever action rifles, which meant you had a tubular magazine which is located below the barrel. It looks like a second barrel, but isn't one. And you had up to, depending on the length of the cartridge, up to 14 rounds within this magazine which gave a lot of firepower. Next step, the famous Winchester from 1873. Everyone who has ever seen a Western movie will be familiar with this kind of weapon. Every cowboy and every gunfighter has used this kind of weapon. Finally, they came up with the Winchester of 1895. President Theodore Roosevelt and his rough riders used this rifle in their different wars. And this had a magazine below the system and gave the possibility to shoot also projectiles with tips, so which is not possible if you use a tubular magazine. The first, repeating handguns. And now we come to Colt. Looked like this. This was the Colt from 1860. The Colt 1860 Army, it came just one year before the outbreak of the Civil War, was still a front-loading weapon where you had to fill in the powder in the front of the drum, put in the ball, and put the caps on the rear side. You had six shots. The big step forward was then the Colt Single Action Army, the world-famous Colt peacemaker from 1873, using full metal cartridges and was a reloader. You have a reloading item on the back of the drum and can load six rounds. And after that, you can easily remove the empty brush cases and replace it with new ones. This is just a look to contemporary revolvers. They looked like this. This is a Colt Model 36 chief special. And this is a, sorry, a Smith and Wesson. And this is a Colt Pyton. The history of semi-automatic pistols started with the ball cut from C93 and went forward with the Mauser C96. And the numbers stand for the patent. That means in 1893, the ball cut occurred. And in 1996, the Mauser, this Mauser pistol has been used by different officers around the armies in the world. Was available in different calibers, in a Mauser calibre and in 9 millimeter parabellum. Modern semi-automatic pistols looked like this. And this is the Glock 17, an Austrian invention. Has a plastic grip, is very, very light. And that means for people, for police officers, for instance, who have to carry the weapon all the day, it makes a difference if it weights 800 grams or it weights 1.5 kilograms. This is very light and has a big magazine capacity. Another modern weapon is the Six Sauer, a German Swiss cooperation P226, which has full metal frame. Just for the sake of completeness, because I want to concentrate on weapons used by civilians, is the Gettling gun of 1861. It came just at the day when the Civil War and the United States broke out. And this looks like a machine gun, but in fact is not one, because it has been manually operated. You see this crank, and this has to be turned. And then the function was that the rotating bundle of barrels fired up to 400 rounds per minute. The first really fully automatic gun was the Maxim from 1884, which gave the firepower of 600 rounds per minute. And there was this famous speech when this code and the British troops were the first and the only one to have it at that time. Whatever happens, we have got the Maxim gun, and they have not. And this was a really big advantage over less good equipped people. Just a few words about the energy. We have learned that the kinetic energy depends on the mass and on the velocity of the object. And if you take into consideration as the velocity goes in by square, it's the more important part than the mass. Also important is the compound shape and the material, which the bullet is made out of. But I don't want to go too deep in details. I give you just an overview of a few cartridges available. The 9 millimeter parabellum on the top of the list is the, I think, most widespread pistol caliber in the world. Has a muscle energy of approximately just below 500 joules. And the powerful 44 magnum. Everybody who has ever seen a film from Clint Eastwood where he played dirty harrier, Callahan, he used the powerful 44 magnum, the model 29 from Smith and Wesson with a 3-8 inch barrel. Really a mighty gun. It has roughly three times the muscle energy than the 9 millimeter parabellum. It's really, you can hunt a beer with this kind of weapon. The block below is some cartridge ammunitions. The 223 Remington is now the contemporary round for the NATO troops. It has a relatively high velocity, but due to the low weight of the bullet, it has relatively low muscle energy. So if you would use it for hunting, deer hunting, a deer up to, let's say, 15 or 20 kilograms would be the maximum. So it's not really, I do not know the English word for that, but it's not really good for a hunter to shoot with too low, too less, too weak ammunition. But in fact, the target is not to kill the enemy soldier, but to wound him because this binds other ones who have to take care of them. I'm relatively old. I've been trained with the cartridge below in military with the 308 Winchester, which has roughly doubled the impact. But the cartridge is much bigger and heavier, and the people using the smaller cartridge can carry more ammunition. On the basis, the 338 Lapua magnum is a cartridge which has been produced or is still produced for snipers. You can go up to more than 1,200 meters with a caliber like that if you are a good sniper. About the legal situation. It's a big difference between the states and Europe. The big difference is going back to the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which states, the right of the people to keep and be arms shall not be infringed, which means a lot. But because the weapon law is due to the single states, it's not the Union law, but due to single states, there are big differences in the different states in the USA. For instance, in Michigan or in New York State or in California, it's quite restrictive, whereas in other states, it's relatively liberal. In Europe, there is no such thing as a Second Amendment. In no one of the European countries, and hence altogether, the situation in Europe is more restrictive than in the gun-friendly states in the USA, like Texas or Missouri. Special situation in Germany and in Austria. In Austria, the first step to get what you can call a weapon law is a Kaiseliches-Waffenpatent, an emperor's weapon decree, which has been introduced in 1852. It, in fact, regulates as good as nothing. It forbids just to have a cannon as a private person. Otherwise, you could buy whatever you wanted. Interesting to say that the left forces in the 19th century, as long as they had no political power, they were absolutely in favor of relatively or absolutely liberal weapon regulations. For instance, Marx and Engels claimed the eminence of the proletariat with shotguns, rifles, cannons, and ammunition has to be enforced immediately. And when the Austrian social democrats gathered together to their founding convention in 1888 close to Vienna, they demanded the replacement of the standing army with general people's armament. So if you say this to a social democrat of today, he won't believe it because things have changed dramatically. So then, long time, that happened just nothing. No real restriction occurred, even after the First World War, until 1933, when Adolf Hitler came into power in Germany and he made the Reichsverordnung zum Schutz vom Volk und Staat, a decree for the protection of people and state. And this was the basis for disarming political opponents and, of course, of Jews. When Austria has been integrated in the German Reich in 1938, it was just a matter of few months that this national socialist law has been also integrated in the Ostmark in former Austria. After 45, this law has, with only few exceptions, taken over in the legal file of post-war Austria and kept its validity until 67. In 67, came up the gun law of 67, which had exactly this name. And this regulated different categories of weapons and declared who, under what conditions, can buy and own and bear what kind of arms. After that, a series of intensifications followed often event-related. There was a case of a series of bank robberies in Austria, all perpetrated with so-called pump-action shotgun. And the result was that the pump gun had been forbidden. So it's absolutely not logic, because you can still buy legally a half-automatic shotgun, but not a repeater. And the character of the gun laws in total has become everyday stricter. Today, you can say that almost all opponents of private gun ownership stand politically on the left side. The more the democratization goes ahead, the more the lives of the individuals are regulated by the collective. And this is especially true for the weapon provisions. The restrictive trend of gun laws follows the democracy script of permitting all spheres of life. Hans has written a lot of this trend, and this is still unbroken today. The modern welfare state has brought an end to the security of private property, which is more than obvious considering the gun law. There are different types of guns where you can get a special permit. But as soon as you die, you're higher, higher, erbe. Is that correct? High-risk cannot legally own this gun, so you have to destroy it, give it to the police. So that means, in fact, it's egentum of said. It's property as long as the state says, well, it's OK. Just a few examples of the main arguments of the anti-private armament activists. Weapons kill, no weapons, no violent crime. Restrictive gun laws produce security. Disarmed societies are more peaceful. Well, one cannot repeat often enough that not weapons, but people kill. You can lay down here a fully automatic gun, fully loaded, and leave it there for years, and nothing will happen. The weapon will not kill anybody. Violence is not the question of the availability of a special type of weapon, because you can, in fact, use nearly everything as a weapon, if you want to beat or kill somebody. But it's a question of the dominant culture. If this were true, that restrictive gun laws produce security, Switzerland would be a nightmare. Because as you know, Switzerland has a militia army, and a lot of militians have a fully automatic gun, including the cartridges at home. As far as I know, nothing happens with this kind of weapons. On the other hand, Haiti has a very restrictive gun law. You are not allowed to have anything, and Haiti is really not a safe heaven. So both of these arguments are wrong. And this armed society is a thing that does not exist. Because everybody who wants to get something will get something. We have a very strict drug law in Austria. Nevertheless, you will easily be able to find somebody who sells a joint to you or something else. Wine and criminals always get what they want. They use the dark net or go to the black market. And therefore, you just harm normal ordinary law abiding citizens. Next argument, only violent criminals need guns. Weapons in the households cause accidents. And when confronted with violence, don't fight back instead, call the police. Well, in liberal and pluralistic society, nobody but the individual himself has the right to decide what he needs. The collective cannot say what you need. Otherwise, there would also be no need for silk pajamas, lipsticks, or condominiums. It's true that a lot of accidents happen in households, but the share of gun accidents is under the perceptual limit. And if you really think that the police will help you in a situation of acute confrontation with violent crime, you will be lost, because there will be no police. The only one you can depend on is yourself. And a recently perpetrated massacre in an elementary school in the USA speaks plain words. Paradoxically, this caused another discussion about gun laws. But in fact, the police occurred at the site and did 45 minutes of just nothing and left the perpetrator alone. And he killed, as far as I remember, 14 to 16 children and some of the teachers. Legal private gun ownership is a valid indicator for the relations between government and citizenry. Nicolo Machiavelli, which was far from being a libertarian, wrote this, I will give you the quote, you will never find that the new prince has disarmed his subjects. In the contrary, when he found them unarmed, he's always armed them. By arming them, this weapon will become truly yours. Those who are suspect to you become true to you. And those already true to you will be strengthened. You transfer them from subject to pendants. It's very pragmatic. There is no more evident expression of distrust of a state and its officials against citizenry than to deny them the right to own and be arms. The British police officer, Colin Greenwood, he wrote the book, Polis Tactics in Armed Operation States, the following, which is close to that I already said. Gun laws, reliable scale for the assessment of the mental and moral health of the government, the administrators and the liberal potential of a society. It's always a sign of distrust of the officials to the citizenry when they deny you this right to be arms. Basically, there are two antagonistic points of view. Anti-gun activists want to prevent any harm caused by firearms. The gun rights advocates derive the demand to own firearms from the right to live and self-defense. Anti-gun activists are in favor of a total ban of private gun ownership and ignore the fact that the means of action are really irrelevant. In Austria, there exists a study that 80% of all bloody deeds are perpetrated with knives. Inconsequently, the anti-gun advocate do not raise the demand to ban knives, at least not so far. And the gun rights advocates consequently fight for a liberal gun law because they think that firearms are the most effective repellent to violent crime. There is a proverb dating back to ancient Rome. Ab usus non tolit usum, which means wrong use does not preclude proper use. And that means that misuse of arms must not be the basis for a prohibition of legitimate possession and use of firearms. Otherwise, the legislation would be de facto transferred in the hands of criminals or fools, and the legislation would degenerate to unscrupulous event legislation. A US study from 2019, which is very interesting, shows that violence and criminal misuse of firearms are correlated with factors like ethnicity. African-Americans are massively overrepresented in statistics of violent crimes, while people with Asian roots almost do not appear there. It's interesting to note that some always bring the argument of Japan, which has an extremely restrictive gun law, and also a very, very low rate of violent crime. And they claim that this low rate of violent crime depends on the restrictive gun law, which cannot be true because hundreds of thousands of people in the United States with Japanese roots have the possibility to purchase firearms and still don't use it for violent crime. Another factor is the education. The lesser, the more violent orientated. The social status, poverty, and unemployment increase the willingness to use violence. Therefore, the attempt to concentrate all prevention activities of violence to restrictive gun laws falls short in doing so. John Lott, I think you have invited him to here. Some years ago, unfortunately, I haven't met him. He wrote a very, very good book named More Guns, Less Crime, states the following. Restrictive gun laws are in favor of the perpetrator. Criminals don't seek shootouts, but defenceless victims. And the rates of violent crimes are higher in federal states with restrictive gun laws than in ones with liberal gun legislation, which in the first place sounds paradox. But in fact, as he stated, that the criminals don't seek a firefight with his victim, he prefers to go to places where he can be sure to have no armed resistance. So it comes to a crowding out of violent crimes. And gun-free zones are like magnets for mass murders. You have never heard of a mass shooting on a gun side where everybody is armed heavily. But you have heard a lot of massacres in elementary schools or on university campuses where nobody is allowed to be an arm. And David Koppel, a lawyer and gun expert, wrote a book, The Human Right of Self-Defence. He states, the right to self-defense is unsubstantial if one does not possess the adequate means for that. Without guns, the right to self-defense would be reduced to martial arts professionals like Jackie Chan or Bruce Lee. And this cannot be the intention of the legislator. From the right to protect his life, the right to own weapons suitable for this derives compellingly. And that means that no government has the right to prevent somebody from self-defense by prohibiting the right to possess the necessary means, namely guns. So I have to hurry up. Just a few words for the possibilities to protect your home. It's in a lot of countries, it's more difficult to get a handgun than a rifle. And therefore, I recommend here three types of rifles. The first one is a shotgun. In this case, it's a Russian one. So I made this fully before the bans on Russian products. You can also have other ones. It's a double-barreled gun. And the shotgun has the advantage that it has a lot of power on short distances and does not cause that much danger to people who are not involved in the thing. Another possibility with more firepower is a pump-action shotgun, which is forbidden in Austria, as I told you. And if you expect violent uprisings and, let's say, civil war-like situations, you have to have more firepower. And this is given to you by semi-automatic guns like the Ruger Minivirzen, or MINI-14, or any clone of the RER-15, which shoots the 2-3 Remington round. To come to my conclusion, from the beginning of civilization, people were either armed or at high risk, and nothing has changed so far. An armed society always is a polite society. Gun ownership is a hallmark of the free man. Slaves are unfree, were forbidden to own weapons with only few exceptions in history. The only one who can ensure one's own safety against violent attacks wherever from what side they ever may come is the individual himself. The most effective means of defense against such assault is a firearm. Therefore, arm yourself. I thank you very much for your attention. Thank you.