German Gov To Ban Paintballing After Shooting

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."

Comments

Re:Haven't these people learned?

[williamhb]

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:Really Germany?

[Terminal Saint]

There are plenty of examples of people having been shot(even with assault and battle rifles) and failing to notice until later. Adrenaline is a powerful thing and it's better to teach a soldier to fight through having been shot. A paintball at close range hurts a lot more than a MILES laser, and is still a useful tool toward that objective.

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.