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Germany aims to kill Paintball

Started by Syt, May 07, 2009, 10:50:05 AM

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Syt

Only halfway decent English version I found:
Germany aims to ban paintball after school shooting
QuoteBERLIN, May 7 (Reuters) - The German government wants to tighten gun laws and ban paintball games in response to a school shooting in which a total of 16 people were killed in March, coalition sources said on Thursday.

Experts from Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives and her Social Democrat (SPD) coalition partners had agreed to ban paintball games, in which players shoot at each other with pellets containing paint, the sources said.

The governing parties say games like paintball trivialise violence and risk lowering the threshold for committing violent acts, the sources said.

Infringements to the new rules, which the cabinet hopes to pass before a general election in September, could incur fines of up to 5,000 euros ($6,660), the sources said.

A 17-year-old shot dead 15 people in the southwestern town of Winnenden, before killing himself in March, stunning many Germans and leading politicians to call for tighter gun rules.

The teenager had shot many of his victims in the head with his father's legally registered pistol. His father, a member of a shooting club, had 15 guns at home - fourteen were locked in a gun closet as required by law but the pistol was in the bedroom, officials have said.

Germany toughened its gun laws in 2002 after 19-year-old Robert Steinhauser shot dead 16 people, mainly teachers, and himself at a high school in the eastern German city of Erfurt.

The changes raised the minimum age for gun ownership to 21 from 18 and required gun buyers under 25 to present a certificate of medical and psychological health. Gun laws already required applicants to pass rigorous exams that can take up to a year.

The new rules would also grant authorities more rights in conducting checks with people owning guns, the sources said.

Sources in the SPD said the parties were also moving towards on agreement on the creation of a nationwide weapons register and were considering setting up biometric security locks for weapons' stores.

:bleeding:

I suggest they outlaw children playing cops and robbers or cowboys and indians, too, or playing with toy soldiers. :rolleyes:
I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.
—Stephen Jay Gould

Proud owner of 42 Zoupa Points.

Valmy

Hmmmm...the 17 year old already had the gun illegally how does raising the age from 18 to 21 and adding a bunch of tests help prevent more 17 year olds from shooting people?
Quote"This is a Russian warship. I propose you lay down arms and surrender to avoid bloodshed & unnecessary victims. Otherwise, you'll be bombed."

Zmiinyi defenders: "Russian warship, go fuck yourself."

Valmy

Quote from: Syt on May 07, 2009, 10:50:05 AM
I suggest they outlaw children playing cops and robbers or cowboys and indians, too, or playing with toy soldiers. :rolleyes:

I am pretty sure banning all toy guns and other violent toys is coming.
Quote"This is a Russian warship. I propose you lay down arms and surrender to avoid bloodshed & unnecessary victims. Otherwise, you'll be bombed."

Zmiinyi defenders: "Russian warship, go fuck yourself."

derspiess

"If you can play a guitar and harmonica at the same time, like Bob Dylan or Neil Young, you're a genius. But make that extra bit of effort and strap some cymbals to your knees, suddenly people want to get the hell away from you."  --Rich Hall

Ed Anger

Stay Alive...Let the Man Drive

Syt

It's news stories like these that make me glad I'm not in the German nanny state and instead in the state of xenophobe racist schnitzel friers. At least no one tells me here which movies I can watch, what games I can play or what music I can listen to. :lol:
I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.
—Stephen Jay Gould

Proud owner of 42 Zoupa Points.

Valmy

Quote from: Syt on May 07, 2009, 10:54:31 AM
It's news stories like these that make me glad I'm not in the German nanny state and instead in the state of xenophobe racist schnitzel friers. At least no one tells me here which movies I can watch, what games I can play or what music I can listen to. :lol:

Austria really is a distinct culture from Germans.
Quote"This is a Russian warship. I propose you lay down arms and surrender to avoid bloodshed & unnecessary victims. Otherwise, you'll be bombed."

Zmiinyi defenders: "Russian warship, go fuck yourself."

Habbaku

Quote from: Syt on May 07, 2009, 10:50:05 AMI suggest they outlaw children playing cops and robbers or cowboys and indians, too, or playing with toy soldiers. :rolleyes:

I'd say they should ban all wargames, too, but those silly Germans can't handle anything that doesn't have glossy, hard-board maps and a theme related to dinosaur time-travel.
The medievals were only too right in taking nolo episcopari as the best reason a man could give to others for making him a bishop. Give me a king whose chief interest in life is stamps, railways, or race-horses; and who has the power to sack his Vizier (or whatever you care to call him) if he does not like the cut of his trousers.

Government is an abstract noun meaning the art and process of governing and it should be an offence to write it with a capital G or so as to refer to people.

-J. R. R. Tolkien

Habbaku

The medievals were only too right in taking nolo episcopari as the best reason a man could give to others for making him a bishop. Give me a king whose chief interest in life is stamps, railways, or race-horses; and who has the power to sack his Vizier (or whatever you care to call him) if he does not like the cut of his trousers.

Government is an abstract noun meaning the art and process of governing and it should be an offence to write it with a capital G or so as to refer to people.

-J. R. R. Tolkien

Malthus

I am discovering that a lot of parents are not okay with their 3 year old kids playing toy gun type games.

Seems a hopeless thing to control. How do you stop a kid from pointing a finger and going "bang!"?
The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane—Marcus Aurelius

Habbaku

The medievals were only too right in taking nolo episcopari as the best reason a man could give to others for making him a bishop. Give me a king whose chief interest in life is stamps, railways, or race-horses; and who has the power to sack his Vizier (or whatever you care to call him) if he does not like the cut of his trousers.

Government is an abstract noun meaning the art and process of governing and it should be an offence to write it with a capital G or so as to refer to people.

-J. R. R. Tolkien

Valmy

Quote from: Malthus on May 07, 2009, 11:05:33 AM
I am discovering that a lot of parents are not okay with their 3 year old kids playing toy gun type games.

Seems a hopeless thing to control. How do you stop a kid from pointing a finger and going "bang!"?

If I had a son and he did not play guns I would not be okay with it.  That would just be weird.
Quote"This is a Russian warship. I propose you lay down arms and surrender to avoid bloodshed & unnecessary victims. Otherwise, you'll be bombed."

Zmiinyi defenders: "Russian warship, go fuck yourself."

garbon

Quote from: Valmy on May 07, 2009, 11:11:31 AM
If I had a son and he did not play guns I would not be okay with it.  That would just be weird.

:rolleyes:
"I've never been quite sure what the point of a eunuch is, if truth be told. It seems to me they're only men with the useful bits cut off."
I drank because I wanted to drown my sorrows, but now the damned things have learned to swim.

Valmy

Quote"This is a Russian warship. I propose you lay down arms and surrender to avoid bloodshed & unnecessary victims. Otherwise, you'll be bombed."

Zmiinyi defenders: "Russian warship, go fuck yourself."

garbon

Quote from: Valmy on May 07, 2009, 11:16:42 AM
What?  I know you did.

That doesn't mean that it doesn't strike me as a ridiculous statement.
"I've never been quite sure what the point of a eunuch is, if truth be told. It seems to me they're only men with the useful bits cut off."
I drank because I wanted to drown my sorrows, but now the damned things have learned to swim.