On a recent trip covering Czechia, Slovakia and Hungary, I took numerous photos of signage. In Prague, Czech Republic
 Sign at a private bank. I didn’t see any such signs at government offices. |
 Sign on an office building |
Prague also had sculptures like these, four huge pistols with animated triggers that occasionally made a thunder noise. With gun ownership legal, relatively free by European standards and common, firearms just aren’t that controversial. The two signs above were all I could find in a week, while I know of more postings in the relatively RKBA-friendly Nashville.
In Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, guns are available and carry is possible, though with more restrictions than in Czechia. The country separated from the Czech Republic in 1993 and went more socialist, with the predictable effect of the depressed economy and more restrictive laws as well.
In Budapest, Hungary…there were no signs like that. Their absence was explained once I visited what passed for a gun shop there. They had black powder revolvers, guns that shot rubber bullets and air guns. No modern cartridge guns at all! Ownership of modern guns is possible in theory but almost impossible in practice. So there’s no point in putting up “no guns” signs, as that condition is assumed to be the baseline. I saw plenty of FEG .380 and 9×19 pistols but they were all carried by police or by museum guards. Every museum seemed to have one “gun officer” with a chromed .380 in a generic nylon holster.
So the absence of “no gun” signs isn’t always a good thing. Sometimes it indicates an overall prohibition that makes detailed prohibitions unnecessary. On the other hand, such signs are an expression of prejudice little different from “no coloreds” signs of the old South Africa. Hopefully, we will eventually be able to see them only in history museums.
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No-gun signs don’t matter much to Czech gun owners, especially not on publicly accessible buildings 🙂
Is the Slovak bank prohibiting balloons, or ice cream cones?
My guess is that the sign content depended more on the available clip art than on the designer’s preference in pistol models. In real life, CZ75 variants were all over the place, carried by cops and meter maids.
It’s interesting that the guns, in both the sculpture and the office building sign, is the Italian Beretta 92 instead of the Czech CZ-75.
The only place in my state, which is a “shall-issue” state, that I see “No Guns” and “No Concealed Weapons” signs are at gun shows.
“On the other hand, such signs are an expression of prejudice little different from “no coloreds” signs of the old South Africa.”
What.
As you said, ” . . . the absence of “no gun” signs isn’t always a good thing. Sometimes it indicates an overall prohibition that makes detailed prohibitions unnecessary.”
You will not find a “No Guns” sign here in in California.