Federal Act
on Weapons, Weapon Accessories and Ammunition
(Weapons Act, WA)

¹ Weapons are defined as:

a.

devices that al­low pro­jectiles to be fired by means of a pro­pel­lant charge and that can be car­ried and op­er­ated by a single per­son, or ob­jects that can be con­ver­ted in­to such devices (fire­arms);

b.

devices that are in­ten­ded to per­man­ently en­danger a per­son’s health through the spray­ing or va­por­isa­tion of sub­stances;

c.

knives whose blade can be opened by means of an auto­mat­ic mech­an­ism that re­quires the use of one hand only, but­ter­fly knives, throw­ing knives, and dag­gers with a sym­met­ric­al blade;

d.

devices that are in­ten­ded to in­jure a per­son, in par­tic­u­lar knuckle­dust­ers,simple or spring bat­ons, throw­ing stars and sling­shots;

e.

elec­tric­al shock devices that can im­pair a per­son’s power of res­ist­ance or per­man­ently dam­age a per­son’s health;

f.

com­pressed air and CO₂ weapons that de­vel­op a muzzle en­ergy of at least 7.5 joules or that can be mis­taken for real fire­arms due to their ap­pear­ance;

g.

im­it­a­tion, blank cart­ridge and air­soft weapons that can be mis­taken for real fire­arms due to their ap­pear­ance.

² Weapon ac­cessor­ies are defined as:

a.

si­len­cers and their spe­cially de­signed com­pon­ents;

b.

laser and night vis­ion devices, and their spe­cially de­signed com­pon­ents;

c.

gren­ade launch­ers that are de­signed as an ad­di­tion­al device for a fire­arm.

^2bis High ca­pa­city load­ing devices are load­ing devices for semi-auto­mat­ic centre­fire weapons that have a ca­pa­city of:

a.

more than 20 rounds in the case of hand­guns;

b.

more than 10 rounds in the case of small fire­arms.⁸

^2ter A Schen­gen state is a state bound by any of the Schen­gen As­so­ci­ation Agree­ments. The Schen­gen As­so­ci­ation Agree­ments are lis­ted in the An­nex.⁹

³ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil de­cides which ob­jects are es­sen­tial or spe­cially de­signed com­pon­ents of weapons and weapon ac­cessor­ies, and are there­fore reg­u­lated by this Act.

⁴ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil defines which com­pressed air, CO₂, im­it­a­tion, blank cart­ridge and air­soft weapons, knives, dag­gers, elec­tric­al shock devices, devices in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 1 let­ter b, and sling­shots are con­sidered to be weapons.

⁵ Am­muni­tion is defined as fir­ing ma­ter­i­al con­tain­ing a pro­pel­lant charge whose en­ergy is trans­mit­ted onto a pro­jectile by ig­ni­tion in a fire­arm.

⁶ Dan­ger­ous ob­jects are defined as ob­jects such as tools, house­hold ap­pli­ances and sports equip­ment that can be used to in­jure a per­son. Pen­knives, such as the Swiss Army pock­et knife and sim­il­ar products, are not con­sidered to be dan­ger­ous ob­jects.