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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."
I had a similar experience with Airsoft(plastic BB guns essentially)when I was about 17. I also realized how much proper instruction in gun safety was after several of my friends shot themselves accidentally. I had been taught about pistols and rifles as I grew up, and my father took me to the shooting range a few times over the years, so I had the safety training they didnt get. If they had decided to pick up and play with a real gun they found, they could have seriously injured themselves.
Back on topic, I do think to a degree, these war games can be an encouragement for using violence to work out your frustration. I continue play airsoft regularly, with about a dozen people for years now. Inevitably someone will start to take things too seriously, so we have rules in place where we can send them off to cool down. That being said, I think banning it because some might have obvious mental instabilities that would make this lead them to shoot people with real guns is absurd. Will they ban toy swords and water guns next?
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31 people in 7 years? That's nothing. Germany has something like 1 intentional homicide per 100,000 people (about 1/4 of the USA murder rate, which is about half of the Zimbabwean murder rate ... not that the US needs gun control).
Germany has 82 million people, so that's 820 homicides per year. I am guessing that the biggest offenders will be husbands, and the next biggest offenders will be wives.
I say they should ban marriage - it's obviously a far bigger cause of violence than paintball games.
It's even more ironic that they plan to ban pellet sports. The soldiers in training use lasers, which involve no pellets, and the guns are real and fitted with blanks. So if anything, they are making the more violent/practical sport a legal alternative. Way to go legislature.
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When people in our society believe they can't as individuals, make a difference, it's bad for all of us. "Powerless" people become apathetic and toss in the towel, which means others have to carry them on their backs, or they become hostile and try to tear down a system they can't understand and don't believe they can control. This attitude pervades our world. Some of its symptoms are declining productivity and senseless violence.
Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme was one of those who became hostile. She attempted to gun down President Gerald Ford. After her arrest, she explained, "When people around you treat you like a child and pay no attention to the things you say, you have to do something!"
The "something" Squeaky did was psychopathic and self-destructive. Her self-perception was miles off base. She didn't realize that she had other alternatives that were socially acceptable and legal. She didn't realize that a criminal act, regardless of its goal, is almost always an abuse of power.
I think it is a problem in society of people not seeing things clearly. It is the same problem that we have with poverty: people living in the slums could pick themselves up, get an education, get out and greatly improve their lives, but it is hard for them to see the path to accomplishing that. Sometimes it is hard for them to believe they are even capable of it, so they stay stuck where they are. The two are often related: people killing each other because they don't understand how the world is, and people remaining in poverty because they don't understand how the world is.
Life sucks, but you can change things. We need to get that message out to people. It will be a lot more effective than banning guns.
Qxe4
This is a living memory only for a few old people, the young people and probably even all of the ruling class has heard about it but it's part of history rather not remembered just like the templar knights and the inquisition.
My grandfather remembers it since he was arrested and sent to Bergen-Belsen, escaped, betrayed and sent to Buchenwald because he was in the resistance (sabotage) but he's 89 years old. He was also in the Belgian Congo and as he described it: shot blacks with spears off a bridge with a machine gun while being dropped by parachute to extract a "diddling" priest, the only white man in the village while there was an unusual amount of "mulatto" children. I had a friend that has lived it because of his religion (even went through the Death March) but he died last year.
What I think is the main problem is 1) education: the gritty details are not being revealed to children because they believe they are too shocking while a lot of the media around it is romanticized or only described from one side (the winners side or what the soldiers had to go through to win) 2) shame: the survivors are to this day (with exceptions) ashamed to talk about it, the people or nations that went along with the nazi's (Germany, the Netherlands, the Catholic Church, Switzerland) are ashamed/afraid to admit wrongdoing. 3) Hitlers empire and the power he exerted over people is a wet dream for many politicians and rulers, if you analyze the political standpoints (without taking into account the blind hatred for minorities) you'll notice that politicians have been trying to do the same thing in a different way over and over again. What he promised was good jobs for everybody and to get rid of whomever seems to be the boogeyman for the current problems in exchange for their basic rights and freedoms all wrapped in a thin veil of hope for the children and pride in their own country.
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As far as I'm concerned the only possible solution is to keep these people from acquiring the weapons that allow them to inflict high numbers of casualties or to allow people carry sufficient protection to put one of these people down when they snap
By LTC (RET) Dave Grossman, author of "On Killing."
"Most of the people in our society are sheep. They are kind, gentle, productive creatures who can only hurt one another by accident. Most citizens are kind, decent people who are not capable of hurting each other, except by accident or under extreme provocation. They are sheep.
I mean nothing negative by calling them sheep. To me it is like the pretty, blue robin's egg. Inside it is soft and gooey but someday it will grow into something wonderful. But the egg cannot survive without its hard blue shell. Police officers, soldiers, and other warriors are like that shell, and someday the civilization they protect will grow into something wonderful.? For now, though, they need warriors to protect them from the predators.
"Then there are the wolves and the wolves feed on the sheep without mercy." Do you believe there are wolves out there who will feed on the flock without mercy? You better believe it. There are evil men in this world and they are capable of evil deeds. The moment you forget that or pretend it is not so, you become a sheep. There is no safety in denial.
"Then there are sheepdogs," he went on, "and I'm a sheepdog. I live to protect the flock and confront the wolf."
If you have no capacity for violence then you are a healthy productive citizen, a sheep. If you have a capacity for violence and no empathy for your fellow citizens, then you have defined an aggressive sociopath, a wolf.
But what if you have a capacity for violence, and a deep love for your fellow citizens? What do you have then? A sheepdog, a warrior, someone who is walking the hero's path. Someone who can walk into the heart of darkness, into the universal human phobia, and walk out unscathed.
Let me expand on this old soldier's excellent model of the sheep, wolves, and sheepdogs. We know that the sheep live in denial, that is what makes them sheep. They do not want to believe that there is evil in the world. They can accept the fact that fires can happen, which is why they want fire extinguishers, fire sprinklers, fire alarms and fire exits throughout their kids' schools.
The sheep generally do not like the sheepdog. He looks a lot like the wolf. He has fangs and the capacity for violence. The difference, though, is that the sheepdog must not, can not and will not ever harm the sheep. Any sheep dog who intentionally harms the lowliest little lamb will be punished and removed. The world cannot work any other way, at least not in a representative democracy or a republic such as ours.
Still, the sheepdog disturbs the sheep. He is a constant reminder that there are wolves in the land. They would prefer that he didn't tell them where to go, or give them traffic tickets, or stand at the ready in our airports in camouflage fatigues holding an M-16. The sheep would much rather have the sheepdog cash in his fangs, spray paint himself white, and go, "Baa."
Until the wolf shows up. Then the entire flock tries desperately to hide behind one lonely sheepdog.