German Gov To Ban Paintballing After Shooting 580
whoever57 writes "In response to the school shooting in March in which 16 people were killed, the German Government
plans to ban all games in which players shoot at each other with pellets. The rationale for this is that 'paintball trivializes violence and risks lowering the threshold for committing violent acts.' Fines could be up to 5,000 euros."
Re:Germany is turning into a fucking preschool (Score:3, Informative)
True, but while I personally am not American, I can vouch that their system is better at avoiding censorship.
Look at all the idiot laws that Jack Thompson and his fellow crusading geriatrics tried to get passed. All of them, to the last, got struck down by the courts, or never made it out of the state legislature. That is an example of the system working as it should - the courts protect the rights that the lawmakers selectively ignore.
In Germany, those same sorts of restrictions have been, and continue to be, passed into law. There has been no restrictions upon the ability of the lawmakers to take away the freedoms enjoyed by the citizenry.
I'd say the German legal system is fucked. The American one is also fucked, but batting down censorship is perhaps one of the few things it gets right. Mind you, the moment the censors in the US try to ban sex instead of violence, the whole thing falls apart.
Re:Haven't these people learned? (Score:4, Informative)
Haven't these people learned that they are just going to cause a much bigger problem then they are trying to solve? It saddens me to see how they are going after everything but the cause of it. Banning paintballing isn't going to solve a thing, stuff like this is still going to happen. Next thing you know they are going to try and ban all FPS games over there. Get to the root of the problem, not something they "think" is the cause.
Actually some aspects of the proposed laws do indeed get to the root of the problem. For instance tightening the restrictions on how registered guns are stored (the gun in this shooting was registered by the father but was not locked away -- had it been, this particular shooting certainly would have been much more difficult). As it is, there's talk of punishing the father through "involuntary manslaughter" under the existing laws (because the father knew his son was depressed and should have known this might happen) but that seems like vague retribution for the incident having occurred rather than unambiguous preventative legislation instructing gun owners that their guns must be securely locked away. Banning paintball is an odd reaction, but so far this is only a proposed bill -- AFAIK it's usual for proposed bills to be debated and to have things that turn out to be a bit silly taken out of them on the way through parliament (the Bundestag).
Re:Haven't these people learned? (Score:1, Informative)
It wasn't a problem for Germans? You know, they also went after the disabled, mentally ill, homosexuals, communists, and anyone else they didn't like. The Nazis killed a lot of Germans.
Re:Haven't these people learned? (Score:1, Informative)
I don't see how this is the government subjagating its population. More like being a stupid hysterical parent
"In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way."
-Franklin D. Roosevelt
Re:Really Germany? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Haven't these people learned? (Score:3, Informative)
This backfired big time allready (Score:3, Informative)
This is in the news here since two days ago and basically backfired big time allready, with even the police union turning to the CDU and saying 'totally hairbrained stupid idea'. Particularly hilarious is the reaction of one of those supporting the programm in an spiegel-online interview [spiegel.de] from yesterday (it's in the last fourth of the video - in German though - but you can catch the tone nonetheless). The guy loses his cool the instant he is asked about it, having been bugged the entire day about it. Very funny indeed and the comentary of the video doesn't stint on snide and whitty remarks on this political botch either.
Re:Ah, yes. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Really Germany? (Score:4, Informative)
An FBI wounding study found that even with their heart destroyed, a suitably determined individual can preform voluntary actions for 10-15 seconds. Furthermore, it reached the conclusion that often a combatant drops out of the fight not because they'd been physiologically rendered unable to fight, but because they saw how bad a gunshot wound looked and psychologically gave up.
Re:Reminds me of something Herman Goering said onc (Score:2, Informative)
Herman Goering said this in his interviews for the Nuremberg trials.