Swiss authorities approve mass exemptions as tens of thousands buy rifles like Aarau attack weapon despite ban

Semi-automatic rifles with large magazines are officially banned in Switzerland. Yet cantons continue to approve exemptions in numbers that raise questions about how meaningful the ban is in practice.

The issue has gained new urgency after the Aarau rave shooting, in which the attacker used an AKS-74, a variant of the Russian Kalashnikov. He fired more than 40 rounds. The rifle had a folding shoulder stock and looked little different from weapons seen in the war in Ukraine. The attacker bought it legally in 2005, long before the law changed.

Authorities stressed after the shooting, which left one person dead and six injured, that buying such a weapon would now face much stricter conditions. But an investigation by Neue Zürcher Zeitung am Sonntag found that buyers can still obtain the rifles with a so-called exemption permit. The question, the report asks, is when an exception effectively becomes the rule.

The scale of the permits varies by canton. Thurgau police said they had approved 5,314 applications since the legal change seven years ago. Basel-Landschaft approved 1,865, while Geneva approved 1,265 exemptions for semi-automatic weapons with large magazines. A single permit can sometimes cover the purchase of several weapons.

Nearly 20,000 weapons were sold through Zurich dealers during the same period using exemption permits. That figure also includes other weapon types and permits issued by other cantons. Because Switzerland has no national firearms register, no one knows the exact number nationwide, but the investigation concluded that at least tens of thousands of banned weapons have been legally bought over the past seven years.