Good old Scandinavian tax rate , am I right ? But are there additional fees for owning the life insurance ? Like yearly admin fees ? <| sep |> Basically , your point of view is roughly If he attacks me with a gun , I ' ll defend myself with a gun while the European point of view tends to be If he doesn ' t have a gun , I don ' t need one . And , as others said In my more than 30 years in Germany I have never heard a gun shot except on a shooting range and I ' ve never heard about a shooting incident in an area of around 50 km around me and it would certainly take me a while to find a shooting incident within the next 100 km in the last 15 years . Another thing is We ' re not used to it . I ' ve heard that if in the US a shooting happens people demand for more liberal gun laws to protect themselves . In Germany people demand for even stricter gun laws to prevent people from getting their hand on a gun . I feel better this way as well and prefer the police and GSG 9 to be the only ones with guns . EDIT To give you an idea about to what extend Germans are afraid of guns According to english Wiki , the GSG 9 a counterterrorism , hostage rescue and special operations unit has reportedly carried out 1500 missions 1972 2003 , yet using their guns just 5 times most famously in Operation Fire Magic at the end of Lufthansa Flight 181 . It is known that any gun use of german police officers is investigated as if had been allowed or neccessary , so policemen using their gun needlessly would be quickly removed from service .