Two years after Czechia’s greatest shooting tragedy, how have gun laws changed?

Two years ago today, a gunman killed 14 people at Charles University's Faculty of Arts, the deadliest mass shooting in modern Czech history. Since then, one of Europe's most gun-friendly countries has undergone a radical transformation.

The shooter, a 24-year-old student, legally owned 14 firearms despite documented mental health issues. He purchased weapons and ammunition in the weeks before the attack, raising no red flags in the existing system.

The tragedy exposed gaps that the new laws specifically target: no real-time dealer reporting, no integration with healthcare records, and no mechanism for preventative seizure based on online behavior.

As the nation marks this somber anniversary, two questions loom: Has Czechia created a new model for gun regulation? And will the new government reverse it?

Czechia is one of the few EU nations with a constitutional right to bear arms for self-defense. While the constitutional right itself did not change after the 2023 shooting, the laws governing how it is exercised did.

In April 2024, Interior Minister Vít Rakušan fast-tracked an amendment that bypassed the standard two-year implementation period, allowing critical safety measures (suspicious transaction reporting, expanded police seizure powers, and digital monitoring) to take effect by early 2025.

"We are not choosing the path of banning weapons for those who are law-abiding. Instead, we are building a system of 'maximum prevention' where the state, the doctor, and the dealer are all digitally linked to identify a threat before the first shot is fired," Rakušan said.

The most recent and significant update to the Firearms Act, which came into full implementation this year, focuses on digital transparency and immediate intervention.

Under the newest mandates, gun dealers are now legally required to report “atypical” purchases, such as unusually large quantities of ammunition or erratic behavior, to a centralized police database in real-time.

In a major shift for 2025, the national firearms registry is now fully linked with the healthcare system. Doctors are automatically notified if a patient seeking mental health treatment holds a gun license and are legally compelled to report any diagnosis that could pose a safety risk.

The police now hold expanded powers of “preventative seizure.” If an individual makes credible threats online or shows signs of radicalization, authorities no longer need a court order to confiscate their arsenal temporarily.

The interval for mandatory medical check-ups for license holders has also been slashed in half, from every ten years to every five years.

The Czech political landscape shifted this autumn with Andrej Babiš’s ANO-led coalition, which includes the nationalist SPD and pro-motorist Motorists parties. Despite branding itself as a defender of national freedoms, the new government has taken a pragmatic approach to gun control.

The SPD has historically championed gun rights. Members like Radek Koten previously proposed stripping police of powers to seize weapons based on "suspicious" behavior, calling it a violation of presumed innocence. Yet since taking power, the coalition has shown little appetite for rolling back the 2025 safety measures.

But public support for mental health reporting mandates is strong, exceeding 80 percent approval in 2024 STEM polls. Rather than reversing restrictions, the government now emphasizes digital efficiency in implementing the weapons registry.

Czechia has one of the EU’s highest rates of civilian firearm ownership, with roughly 300,000 license holders and nearly 1 million registered weapons, according to the Interior Ministry.

For years, the country fought the European Union’s attempts to tighten gun control, even filing lawsuits against the EU Firearms Directive to protect its citizens’ right to self-defense.

Following the Charles University tragedy, it now has one of the EU’s most sophisticated firearms monitoring systems, preserving gun rights while surrounding them with unprecedented oversight.

While many neighboring EU countries, such as Germany and Austria, have moved toward near-total bans on certain semi-automatic weapons, Czechia hopes that transparency, a “digital fence,” rather than prohibition, is the key to preventing another Dec. 21.

As Interior Minister Rakušan noted when the laws were signed, the goal of these reforms is a society where the right to self-defense is never again used as a cover for a tragedy that a modern, digitized state should have seen coming.