Dutch citizens who want to purchase a gun could soon be forced to declare details about their race, ethnicity, religion, and political preferences before doing so if a new bill becomes law, local media says.
The modification to the Weapons and Ammunition Act, which will be submitted to the House of Representatives in the Netherlands next month, would allow police to “process personal information including race or ethnicity, political beliefs, religious or other life-style convictions as well as health and criminal records,” the bill states.
It would require the information to be kept in a database for 30 years, according to De Volkskrant.
The newspaper reported that the change is thought to be necessary in order to implement a tightened European directive on the possession of weapons. The latter has its roots in the terrorist attacks in Europe - particularly those in Paris on November 13, 2015. It turned out that that firearms that had been registered as deactivated had been made available for use by terrorists.
Ministers who are behind the draft legislation say that risk factors for weapon possession are diverse, and that authorities need information “from different sources” to weigh up whether it is safe to allow someone to have a gun.
However, critics of the bill have voiced major objections, from Christian Democrats and Liberal Democrats politicians to the Dutch privacy watchdog Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens and gun owners lobby group KNSA.
“We should not be involved in discrimination and ethnic profiling,” MP Monica den Boer of the Democrats 66 party said.
Meanwhile, KSNA chief Sander Duisterhof said the legislation won't be effective because very few incidents actually involve legal weapons. “Politicians have dreamed up the idea that this new legislation will make terrorists nervous,” he told the paper.
Dutch police provide around 70,000 licenses per year for over 200,000 firearms, according to De Volkskrant.
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