The Police Headquarters has published data showing that a record number of weapon permits were issued to Poles in 2023. They were obtained by more than 40,000 people. A record was also set in terms of the number of possessed weapons.

The annual report on the number of people granted gun permits shows that 40,867 people received them last year. This is a record number, even compared to 2022, when, after the start of the full-scale war in Ukraine, Poles thronged the administrative post-trial departments of provincial commands, and the number of permits issued then was 37,402. In 2021, there were 19,939 permits, and in 2020 – 15,330.

There was a sharp increase in the number of permits for weapons for personal protection purposes. In 2023, 6,424 were issued, while the year before there were only 154. For collection purposes, 17,019 permits were issued in 2023, and for sporting purposes, 12,363. In 2022, it was respectively: 19 862 i 13 147 permits.

The increase in permits for personal protection and protection of persons and property can be attributed to the new regulations with the amendment of the Act from which the catalogue of uniformed persons for whom it is easier to obtain a weapon permit for personal protection has been explicitly defined. 

The list includes officers of the Police, the Internal Security Agency, the Intelligence Agency, the Military Counterintelligence Service, the Military Intelligence Service, the Central Anti-Corruption Bureau, the State Protection Service, the Border Guard, the Marshal Guard, the Customs-Sanitary Service, the Penitentiary Service, another state armed formation and professional soldiers of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Poland.

The number of weapons owned by Poles is also a record. In the year preceding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the number of registered weapons was 658,379. In 2023, it was already 843,755. This means that Poles have registered a total of more than 185,000 weapons for 2 years.

Arkadiusz Słomczyński