I never heard of that. If he did indeed try, the sentencing is quite light.
"Rearming" a 70yo tank is fundamentally a historical restoration project and the kind of people who do it are no hazard to public health. The law was not written for these kinds of people. It was written for people who are actually up to no good. It's pretty clear from patterns of behavior who is arming tanks to have a cool historically accurate tank and who is doing that sort of thing as a means to a more nefarious end.
Defending this sentence is only a hair away from defending insane drug sentencing "because the law is the law". The law is dumb and if this were the US I'd say the judge has poor judgement for not using his discretion to hand down a practically nonexistent sentence. I don't know to what extent German judges can influence sentencing.
Rearming a 70yo tank greatly increases the likelihood for neighborhood disputes to become, um, "explosive".
Well they do, you know, keep weapons of war in their homes.
Unless they have 24/7 armed guards and their home is defensible from armed invasion that alone is a pretty sizable risk to public health.
Then of course there is the added factor of what sort of person thinks this is a good idea. If someone is going to have an armed tank, it would be preferable if they also didn't have questionable judgment.
If you want to be obtuse you should argue the "tanks in the service of foreign warlords seeking to overthrow their local governments are privately owned" angle.
> The law was not written for these kinds of people. It was written for people who are actually up to no good.
What "good" purpose does arming a tank have then? Authorities don't like to wait and find out, and that's not unreasonable in any way.