Armed Robberies Targeting Hobby Hunters in Calabria

Along the provincial road 52 between Rosarno, Laureana di Borrello and Bagnara Calabra, scenes are currently unfolding that are more reminiscent of an armed conflict than an Italian provincial morning.

On multiple occasions, groups of hobby hunters have been stopped by masked men, threatened at gunpoint, and robbed of their hunting rifles, ammunition, mobile phones and valuables. Some were physically injured in the process.

This series of robberies has prompted six major Italian hunting associations to act, addressing a joint letter to the Interior Ministry as well as to the Prefect and Chief of Police of Reggio Calabria. They speak of “repeated armed attacks on hunters” on their way to hunting grounds between Bagnara Calabra and Rosarno, decry stolen weapons, personal belongings and physical assaults, and report that some members have given up hunting altogether out of fear. The associations are demanding “reassurances” so that hobby hunters can regain confidence in the pursuit of their activity.

The underlying message: hunters as threatened victims, the state called upon to “normalize” the conditions for recreational hunting once again.

The “Rifle Gang” and a longstanding problem in the Piana di Gioia Tauro

Independent research into regional media shows that the recent robberies are not an isolated phenomenon, but fit into a longer history of violence in the Piana di Gioia Tauro area. Local media are now speaking of a “banda dei fucili” — a rifle gang that specifically targets hobby hunters. Repeated accounts describe how an armed commando stops vehicles on open roads and disarms the occupants.

An online magazine explicitly places one of these robberies on the road near Laureana di Borrello in the context of the 'Ndrangheta. The region is shaped by historical Mafia feuds that claimed numerous lives as far back as the 1980s and 1990s. The theft of hunting rifles there is interpreted as “a signal of subterranean warfare” — a demonstration of power by criminal groups for whom weapons are cheap and readily available resources.

Whether the current robberies are in fact directly linked to specific feuds is for investigators to determine. What is beyond dispute, however, is this: in an area where organised crime has traditionally exerted strong influence, dozens of privately held rifles are in circulation, whose owners regularly drive armed through poorly monitored rural areas. It is precisely this reality that makes hobby hunters ideal targets — and their weapons coveted spoils.

When checks against robbery and hunting offences converge

Noteworthy is how the security authorities have now begun to link the two problems themselves. In Santo Stefano in Aspromonte, the Carabinieri recently carried out a targeted operation against poaching — explicitly “within the framework of measures against poaching and the robbery of weapons to the detriment of hunters.” Officers discovered a man in a forested area sitting on a stool with a rifle, beside him an electromagnetic lure call for thrushes — a prohibited device. The weapon, the lure device and an illegally shot bird were confiscated, and the man was reported for poaching.

The message is clear: the same structures, the same remote areas, the same category of weapons. On the one hand, hobby hunters are being robbed; on the other, hobby hunters themselves are violating hunting and wildlife protection law. Authorities are responding with stepped-up checks because they understand both phenomena as part of a rural security problem.

What does not feature in the communications of hunting associations is that the very scenario of violence is only made possible in the first place by the presence of a large number of armed recreational users in the countryside, who drive their firearms around in their cars and thereby become an easily targeted “rolling weapons depot.”

Legal weapons as a source of supply for the illegal market

The theft of hunting rifles is not merely an individual tragedy, but also a structural problem. The EU and its member states have been warning for years about the risk of legal firearms slipping onto the black market. A recent document from the Italian Senate on European firearms policy explicitly cites the goal of reducing the “risk of firearms transferring from the legal market to the illegal one” and of improving traceability.

At the same time, however, the same framework provides for simplified import and export procedures specifically for hobby hunters, for example when travelling with the “European Firearms Pass.” Policy thus makes legal ownership and transport of hunting weapons easier on the one hand, while on the other hand attempting to curb the flow of these weapons into criminal circuits.

The recent attacks in Calabria illustrate this contradiction in particularly stark terms: the perpetrators need not raid a secret weapons cache. It is enough to block the road along which armed hobby hunters drive up on weekends.

Recreational hunting as an underestimated security risk

While hunting associations emphasise the threatened safety of hobby hunters, other victims of hunting remain invisible. According to data from the Associazione Vittime della Caccia (AVC), analysed by the animal protection organisation OIPA, the 2023/24 season in Italy saw 68 human casualties from hunting accidents — 12 fatalities and 56 injured. Of these, 28 were non-hunters, including several children who were “simply in the wrong place at the wrong time,” for instance while walking in the woods.

Particularly striking: the region of Calabria ranks near the top in regional comparisons of casualty figures. According to the AVC data cited by OIPA, Tuscany recorded 10 cases, followed by Calabria with 6, and regions such as Veneto and Campania with 4 cases each.

In other words: precisely where hunting associations are now loudly demanding greater protection for armed hobby hunters, recreational hunting itself is among the significant safety risks to the general public. Millions of wild animals are killed or injured every year, but dozens of people also die or suffer serious injuries from hunting weapons.

Against this backdrop, the demand to make hunting “safe again” appears remarkably one-sided. Safe for whom? For those who roam the countryside with rifles for recreational purposes — or for all those who live, work, hike, pick mushrooms, or simply take walks near their homes, unarmed?

A blind spot in the associations’ narrative

The joint statement by the hunting associations speaks at length about fear and uncertainty among hobby hunters and about the need to restore their confidence in the practice of hunting. Not a single word is devoted to the people who are injured or killed by hunting weapons every year, despite not hunting themselves. Not a single word about the immense suffering of wild animals.

Instead, the tenor is: more police presence is needed so that hunting can continue as a leisure activity, undisturbed. The violence of organised crime is rightly condemned, while the structural violence of recreational hunting towards animals and the endangerment of the public remain entirely absent from the discussion.

Added to this is the fact that a segment of the hunting community itself is unwilling to abide by the already weak regulations. The case from Santo Stefano in Aspromonte is no “minor offence”. Poaching using prohibited luring calls, the illegal killing of protected species, inadequate control over ammunition and firearms — all of this further increases the risks for both animals and people.

Those who, in this complex situation, demand exclusively greater security for weapon owners make their priorities unmistakably clear.

What would a consistent response look like?

No one disputes that armed robberies targeting hobby hunters are criminal and traumatising acts that must be prosecuted. The decisive question, however, is how society responds to this development.

A purely regulatory response that calls only for more police so that private individuals can continue to drive into the countryside with lethal weapons for leisure fails to address the deeper cause: the normalisation of firearms in everyday civilian life.

Consistent measures would look quite different:

• a drastic reduction in permitted hunting seasons and methods
• significantly stricter limits on and controls over private weapon stocks
• not simplified European cross-border travel for hunting weapons, but the opposite
• systematic statistical recording of all hunting accidents and their victims
• Shift of state resources away from supporting hobby hunting toward biodiversity and protected area programs

As long as hobby hunting is sold as a harmless “hobby in the countryside,” it remains invisible that it is an important pillar of a gun culture that is now being exploited by organized crime itself.

The raids in Calabria are therefore not only a security problem for hobby hunters. They are a warning sign for a society that tolerates weapon ownership for recreational purposes and then acts surprised when these weapons end up in the hands of those who operate violence as a business model.

SIGN THE PETITION: Click here