When you look at the history of the 20th Century, Germany doesn’t come off looking too good. I mean, you’ve got two world wars and it was essentially a battleground in the Cold War.

But, that was then and this is now.

Germany has been reunited for a while now and they’re one of the driving forces in the European Union. Plus, they haven’t invaded Poland, so they’ve got that working for them.

They also have a history of pretty strict gun control laws. Now, it seems, they’re getting a whole lot stricter.

 Germany plans to tighten its gun laws in the wake of a suspected plot by a far-right group to violently overthrow the government and install a minor royal as national leader, its interior minister said in an interview published on Sunday.

German police last week arrested 25 people suspected of involvement in the plot, which has shocked many in one of Europe’s most stable democracies.

Prosecutors allege that many of the suspects were members of the “Reichsbuerger” (Citizens of the Reich) movement, which does not believe in the existence of the modern German state, according to prosecutors.

Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, in an interview with “Bild am Sonntag” newspaper, warned that the Reichsbuerger represented a rising threat to Germany given it had expanded by 2,000 to 23,000 people in the past year.

“These are not harmless crazy people but suspected terrorists who are now sitting in pre-trial detention,” Faeser was quoted as saying.

Prosecutors have said the suspects included individuals with weapons and knowledge of how to use them. They had attempted to recruit current and former army members and had stockpiled weapons.

Now, understand that I get the concern. A suspect coup is something no government is going to play around with.

Yet I can’t help but think just how many of these people were able to get guns in a nation that already made it difficult for private citizens to have firearms. I honestly don’t see what more Germany could actually do to prevent this.

Especially since this is a group not unlike our own sovereign citizen movement in that they don’t recognize the authority of the government. Reichsbuerger members don’t accept anything post World War II as valid, recognizing only the pre-1937 borders and believing the current government is basically a puppet regime of the Allies.

Now, with that in mind, I have to ask just why the government there thinks tougher gun control laws will somehow stop them from getting guns.

They already fail to recognize the government’s authority as legitimate. While officials claim some 500 or so Reichsbeurger members still have gun licenses, that’s no reason to assume that those members won’t somehow get guns in spite of these news laws.

If these guys were planning a coup, I get the government’s concern. However, if they were willing to kick off a coup, it just seems logical that laws weren’t exactly going to stop them from getting the guns they needed in order to facilitate that coup.