Act on weapons and ammunition of May 21, 1999
The Act on Weapons and Ammunition of May 21, 1999 is a key legal act regulating the rules of possession, registration, storage and use of weapons and ammunition in Poland. This document is fundamental for all entities allowed to possess weapons, including for security personnel who may be required to use firearms as part of their duties. The Act specifies in detail the categories of weapons, conditions for obtaining a weapons permit, administrative procedures, as well as the obligations and rights of gun owners.
Range and categories of weapons
The Act defines various categories of weapons, including short firearms, long firearms, melee weapons, and ammunition. It also specifies detailed criteria for specific types of permits, such as permits for weapons for hunting, sporting, collecting purposes, or for personal and property protection.
Conditions for obtaining a firearms permit
To obtain a firearms permit, the applicant must meet a number of requirements, including: Be 18 years of age for a firearms permit, and a qualified security employee must be 21 years of age for a firearms permit. No conviction for an intentional crime or fiscal offence, Possession of full legal capacity and no health contraindications, Completing a course on possessing a weapon or proving that you have the required knowledge and skills in another way, Proving the existence of a justified need to possess a weapon.
Procedures for passing the exam by security personnel
Security workers, like other applicants, they must pass a theoretical and practical exam before obtaining a firearms permit. This process is organized and supervised by the appropriate provincial police headquarters.
Theoretical exam - Tests knowledge of applicable legal provisions regarding the possession, use, storage and transport of weapons and ammunition.
It also checks knowledge of safety rules and first aid in the event of accidents involving the use of weapons.
Practical exam - Consists of a part testing the ability to safely handle a weapon, including loading and unloading it, as well as shooting at a target.
The practical exam takes place at the shooting range and is supervised by an examiner. Obligations and rights of gun owners Weapon owners are obliged to comply with the regulations regarding the storage of weapons and ammunition in a way that protects against access by unauthorized persons. They must also regularly renew their firearms permits and undergo police inspections to ensure compliance with the provisions of the Act.
Sanctions for violation of regulations
The Act provides for a number of sanctions for violating its provisions, including administrative penalties, fines and even imprisonment. These sanctions are intended to ensure a high level of public safety and the responsible use of weapons and ammunition. The Act on Weapons and Ammunition of May 21, 1999 is a comprehensive set of legal regulations aimed at ensuring public safety and order in the context of the possession and use of weapons. For security personnel who may be required to use firearms as part of their duties, knowing and complying with the provisions of this Act is absolutely fundamental. The process of obtaining a firearms permit, including passing theoretical and practical exams, is crucial for verifying their qualifications and skills in the safe use of weapons.
The Act regulates the rules of trade in weapons and ammunition in Poland. The Act specifies who may possess weapons and ammunition, what are the conditions for obtaining a permit, how to store pistols or rifles and ammunition, and what are the rules for their transport. The Act on Weapons and Ammunition provides for types of permits for weapons, a permit for monuments for collecting or souvenir purposes, a permit for shotguns for hunting purposes, a permit for a pistol for self-defense or a gun for professional purposes. To obtain a permit to possess a weapon, the following requirements must be met: you must be an adult and not deprived of public rights, you must not have been convicted of a crime or a fiscal offence, you must have appropriate skills and knowledge in the safe use of weapons, provide a place to safely store weapons. Illegal possession of a weapon is punishable by imprisonment for up to 5 years. Weapons and ammunition must be stored in a safe manner to prevent access to them by unauthorized persons. Weapons should be stored in an armored cabinet or safe that meets the requirements specified in the Act, ammunition should be stored separately from weapons. The transport of weapons and ammunition must be reported to the competent police authority. Possession of weapons by foreigners is allowed in Poland on the basis of a permit issued by the competent police authority. A foreigner who wants to obtain a firearms permit must meet the same conditions as a Polish citizen. The act also sets out the rules for the operation of shooting ranges. Shooting ranges are run by natural or legal persons who obtain permission from the competent police authority. A permit to operate a shooting range may be issued if the shooting range meets certain requirements. Pursuant to Art. 16 of the Act of May 21, 1999 on weapons and ammunition, in the scope of examination of a qualified security employee, examinations are carried out on knowledge of the provisions on the possession and use of weapons and skills in using weapons.
The exam is organized by the authorities responsible for issuing firearms permits.
The examination is conducted by a commission appointed by the body referred to in section 1, consisting of at least three members. Committee members are required to have personal authorization to conduct the examination.
The practical part of the exam is conducted with the participation of a member of the commission who is a licensed police shooting instructor or shooting training instructor. The exam consists of a theoretical and practical part.
The scope of the theoretical part of the exam includes checking the knowledge of the provisions of the Act of May 21, 1999 on weapons and ammunition and the provisions of the Penal Code regarding crimes related to weapons. Part of the theoretical examination is carried out in the form of a test. It consists of 20 questions, the results of which are entered on the examination card. To pass the theoretical part of the exam, you must answer all the questions; two mistakes are allowed. The practical part of the exam includes checking compliance with detailed safety rules at the shooting range. Ability to unfold and fold, loading and unloading weapons.
Dealing with a weapon that is defective to the extent that further shooting is impossible, determining the parts of the weapon and conducting a shooting test using a given type of weapon. The practical part of the exam is carried out at the shooting range, and the results are entered on the examination card. The committee may ask the examinee a question regarding the issues referred to in section 1. The practical part is considered passed when the examinee demonstrates knowledge of the issues referred to in section 1 and obtains the results from the shooting test prescribed for a given type of weapon. For handguns, distance on the shooting range: 15 m from the target, standing position, time: 5 minutes, 6 rounds of 9x19 ammunition. Obtaining 35 points results in the test being considered passed. If the candidate fails the theoretical part of the examination, he or she will not be allowed to take the practical part of the examination. The course of the test and its results are documented in the protocol, parts of which are exam cards from the theoretical and practical parts. Before the exam begins, the board informs the examinee about the possibility of submitting an application for a make-up exam. After completing the exam, the report is signed by the committee members and the examinee.
There are no publicly available statistics showing the pass rate in exams regarding knowledge of the regulations regarding the possession and use of weapons and the ability to use weapons. A certain picture is provided by the statistics on granting licenses for persons, property and personal protection workers, published on the Police website. Ethics - interest in the matters it concerns has accompanied people since the dawn of time. Just like our ancestors, we today are faced with the same questions: how to live, how to act towards others, how to fulfill ourselves so that our lives, activities and work can be said to be good and fair. In modern times, a certain trend in the division of labor can be observed. The emergence of new professions and types of employment resulted in the emergence of professional ethics that did not exist before.
Unfortunately, it can be observed that in this process the traditions of thought in classical ethics are ignored and a kind of confusion of concepts and erroneous reasoning occurs. At the end of the last century, certain political changes were initiated, which turned out to be fraught with consequences. In addition to the positive effects, we are also observing negative ones, including increasing threats to state security and the safety of citizens. There was a need to look for new legal solutions related to the issues of public security and citizen safety outside the institutional system. As a solution, a model of certain privatization of police tasks was adopted. It has, as it were, transferred some of its existing tasks to non-public entities to the private sector. These include obligations arising from ensuring security at state facilities: airports, military units, museums, etc. as well as public utilities, e.g. banks or shopping centers. A legal order has been established, which is guarded, on the one hand, by institutions established by the state: the police, courts, prosecutor's offices and many others, and, on the other hand, by private companies in the field of protection of persons and property, which have obtained an appropriate license issued by the Ministry of the Interior and Administration.
Such a system places these entities as an element of state security. Formations of this type, in terms of basic protection of citizens, state and private property, fulfill the same tasks as state uniformed formations and are equipped with similar instruments, ranging from physical force to firearms. There is a particular similarity in the police prevention department. Thus, since 1990 we have observed the emergence of a new profession security worker. To date, according to various estimates, over 200,000 people practice this profession. Despite the scope of responsibilities being similar to some extent, differences in the functioning of commercial and state formations should be noted. Both soldiers and officers of the army, police, Border Guard, etc., and security services are called to protect. State formations are based on an oath to serve the Homeland and uphold the constitution, which is a determinant of their actions. For companies in the security industry, the determinant is to achieve a financial goal by providing protection services for people and property.
At the formation level, we see a difference in the operational profile. However, these differences blur at the level of rank-and-file officers, their daily tasks and actions taken. When people who are injured or threatened with lawlessness call for help, they expect, above all, effective and professional intervention, which can be carried out by both security services and the police. Members of both formations are equally exposed to stress, loss of health and even life while on duty. Similarly, there are traps lurking for them in the form of corruption, the possibility of abusing power, and the use of force, which they can face thanks to an appropriate moral attitude. Practice shows the following phenomenon: private security is primarily required to be effective. From the state police to act in compliance with all principles, including ethical ones. In the profession of a security worker, it is desirable to have most of the features characteristic of professions of social trust, such as: rule of law, maintaining official and state secrets, mutual trust. Such features, combined with the ethical principles applied on a daily basis by security workers, will allow you to apply for the status of a profession of public trust.
It is natural that state services have their own ethos and professional ethics, so also security services, since they operate in a similar way, such ethics seems necessary. Legal acts, often inconsistent and even contradictory, leave a wide margin of ambiguity, and in an area as delicate as human rights and dignity, unethical and immoral behavior can cause great harm. These facts support the fact that to start ethical education among people professionally involved in commercial protection of people and property. The dissemination and observance of ethical principles compiled in terms of the functioning of security services will not only result in an increase in the quality of the services provided, but it will also significantly contribute to improving the safety of citizens and goods entrusted to protection. The correctness of the actions taken depends to a large extent on the moral attitude of security employees. The importance of these issues is noticed by the authors of publications by related formations, primarily the police, where these topics are reflected in the literature.
The reference to international legal acts on freedom and human rights is widely observed and is treated as the most important point of reference. Unfortunately, as I mentioned at the beginning, there is a mixture of concepts and a departure from the trend of classical ethics, especially until 1989, where the basis for such ethics was Marxist philosophy. After the political transformation, the professional ethics of the police were based on the philosophy of Immanuel Kant and Tadeusz Kotarbiński. There are also timid attempts to separate the ethics of uniformed formations from these assumptions, expressed in the position that ethics is able to justify ethical norms by referring to the assumptions of classical philosophy, and not only to the results of sociological research. This is how Mieczysław Gogacz defines professional ethics: "professional ethics considered as a fact is a set of human moral improvements needed to perform a given job. "The shaping of these improvements depends on the adopted concept of work (Mieczysław Gogacz points to three: Marxist, structuralist and Christian) and therefore professional ethics will change because it depends on these concepts. Mieczysław Gogacz postulates that among various ethics based on the above concepts, one should choose one so that "understood from the point of view of its concept, it appears as responsibility for the results of work undertaken in conditions of good preparation, i.e. having both moral and intellectual skills, and therefore in conditions of proportional human perfection. According to this concept, ethics is a theory of choosing actions that protect people.
The first and main principle of choice is wisdom. It encourages the will to choose actions that maintain the relationship of love, faith and hope. Protecting people means creating these relationships. The second principle of conduct is contemplation. Its task is to combine truth with good and provide information that relationships of love, faith and hope are established between people. The third principle of conduct is conscience. It encourages us to use both contemplation and wisdom. These three principles are the foundation of the ethics of protecting people. A security employee is not suspended in a vacuum when making decisions that affect his behavior. These decisions are significantly influenced by the ethical principles that shaped him. They are not rigid regulations or standards in the legal sense. They are moral guidelines that aim to best fulfill the obligations arising from being a public official, in this case a security employee. Here are some of the most important:
Principle of respect for human dignity, Principle of respect for human life and health, Principle of knowledge and respect for the law Principle of honesty, Principle of reliability and professionalism, Principle of loyalty In addition to the general principles and character traits resulting from them, it is worth mentioning in this chapter other personality and character traits, that are needed in professions related to property protection. These are the willingness to help all those in need, discretion, sacrifice and courage, Respect for national and cultural symbols, honesty and truthfulness, impartiality and objectivity, awareness of one's value. unclear, inconsistent law does not facilitate decision-making in conflict situations. Detailed instructions rigorously treat every departure from the principle of security of goods entrusted to protection, somehow failing to notice that when it is necessary to provide help to those in need, the value of human life or health must be treated as superior to them. You cannot remain sensitive to the harm of others without disregarding the ethical aspect of your actions. There have been examples in history of soldiers guards or officers blindly taught to obey orders and regulations. It is quite convenient to assume that in every situation you can find an existing regulation, the application of which will allow you to choose the most appropriate course of action.
The experience of recent years shows that replacing moral judgment with the letter of the law may even lead to criminal practices. Those in power have too often succumbed to the temptation to identify and, as a result, replace ethics with paragraphs. If statutory laws did not flow from natural law, they were inconsistent with the principles of morality. In such a situation, the lack of professional ethics guidelines results in a kind of reversal of the poles and the officer, instead of a subservient role towards society, plays the role of a supervisor of the restriction apparatus. This is a very dangerous situation, one of the direct causes of which is the lack of ethical rules of conduct, which have been replaced by legislation. It can be said with a high degree of probability that becoming aware of the existence of natural law and its superiority over the laws enacted by, for example, MO officers shooting at demonstrators would certainly make them think about the purposefulness of such shooting. At that time, there was a lack of knowledge about morality, ethics, obligations and responsibility for one's own actions. Such examples illustrate how important it is to base professional ethics on an appropriate basis of general ethics. Taking into account the nature of work in the security industry, its specificity and the relation of all tasks to people, it seems that the most appropriate attitude for the professional ethics of a security employee will be the ethics of protecting people, which guarantees that actions are directed towards the good of people.
