“The state should take into account and know which of the citizens have weapons and their number”: Bohdan Drapyaty on the draft law on the declaration of firearms
In an interview with the national tele-marathon “United News”, Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine Bohdan Drapyaty spoke about the importance of adopting the draft law on improving the procedure for obtaining, declaring and handling firearms.
“This bill is aimed at solving two issues — the first is to ensure proper control of weapons that are not registered in our country as a result of a full-scale war, and the second component is to protect a citizen who has found a weapon and does not have the appropriate permission for it. This person must declare it, obtain documents for it and for the period of martial law and 90 days after completion — keep it in his possession for the purpose of reprisal.”
Bohdan Drapyaty noted that in case of the adoption of the document, citizens will have to contact the units of the National Police for the declaration of such weapons:
“You need to come to the appropriate unit of the National Police, bring weapons, and an employee of the authority will check it on the databases. This procedure will be convenient and free and in one day this weapon will be returned to the citizen for further storage.”
As noted by the Deputy Minister of the Interior, European colleagues predict that after the end of a full-scale war, our citizens will have about 3 million units of weapons.
“The state must take into account and know which of the citizens has weapons and their number. Currently, we have established criminal and administrative responsibility, in particular Article 263 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine states that the acquisition, storage, use of weapons without appropriate permission is punishable by the Criminal Code, sanctions provide for a restriction of liberty from 3 to 7 years. If the law is adopted, the citizen having an unregistered weapon, will declare it, receive the relevant document and thus he will be protected and will have legal grounds for owning this weapon,” Bohdan Drapyaty emphasized.
The Deputy Head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs noted that at the moment the greatest number of discussions in society arises precisely because of the issue of the use of short-barreled weapons:
“The position of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine is to give Ukrainian citizens the right to use and store short-barreled weapons, but without the right to carry concealed weapons. But we need to provide security infrastructure for this, in particular to develop shooting ranges where citizens can learn how to use weapons,” Bohdan Drapyaty said.
Department of Communications of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine
