California

Wtf is a passive weapon?

Yeah it's weird.

Unter Schutzwaffen im technischen Sinne (§§ 17a Abs. 1, 27 Abs. 2 Nr. 1 Alt. 1 VersammlG) sind ausschließlich Gegenstände zu verstehen, die nach ihrer Zweckbestimmung, ihren Konstruktionsmerkmalen oder ihren besonderen Eigenschaften von vornherein dazu bestimmt sind, dem Schutz des Körpers zur Verteidigung gegen Angriffe bei kämpferischen Auseinandersetzungen zu dienen. Hierzu gehören vornehmlich Schutzschilde, Panzerungen sowie Schutzwaffen aus dem polizeilichen oder militärischen Bereich (Helme, Schutz- oder Gasmasken usw.) oder aus dem Bereich von Kampfsportarten.[4]

Translation by me:

Defensive arms in a technical sense are excusively objects that are by their purpose, construction or special properties specifically meant to protect the body from attacks in violent conflicts. This includes shields, armor, as well as defensive arms (talk about recursive definitions right) used by the police or the military (helmets, protective masks, gasmasks, etc.) or used in martial arts.

Recently a judge ruled that even a sheet of plastic tucked in front of your face to protect from pepper spray is a defensive arm. Officially the idea is, that the police should always be able to use the least amount of force to do their jobs. Using defensive arms forces them to use more force to do their job. Thus defensive arms cause more police violence, thus they are forbidden.

This logic obviously falls apart as soon as the police uses more force than they need to anyways, which they often do. But no one in politics will follow this logic because it would mean talking badly about the police which is currently very frowned upon in german politics. There was a huge dramatic outfalling because the leader of a youth organization of the green party wore an ACAB sweater in an instagram post. Leaders of the party called for her to resign and leave the party entirely.