Legal issue: the constitutionality of rules enabling to subject citizens to criminal liability for the sale of antique (vintage)  cold arms.

Ratio decidendi: at the start the Court decided that the rules of the Federal law “On Arms”, albeit unmentioned in the judicial decisions in the applicant’s case, were applied by courts implicitly and therefore may still be considered by the Constitutional Court. As for the  substance of the petition, the Court found in the current legal regulation an inconsistence which makes the owners of such arms to choose between general rules of different nature, some of which do not take into account the possible danger of such arm to life and health of citizens, whereas others disregard its cultural and historical value. As a result, the owners are deprived of the opportunity to take the right decision which of  those rules, poorly coordinated and contradictory but having equal legal force, should guide their behaviour in case of sale of such arms. This does not allow owners to understand the unlawfulness of their behaviour and to foresee its legal consequences, including the risk of criminal liability. Accordingly, the Court found the contested provision of the Criminal Code to be unconstitutional and obliged the federal legislator to make the legal regulation of the issue at hand more concrete and certain.