General

[Painthappy]

The governing parties say paintball trivialises violence and risks lowering the threshold for committing violent acts. 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 (£4,400).

Germany to ban paintball in wake of high school shooting - Telegraph

Other related articles from other sources:

FT.com / Germany - Germany considers ban on paintball

Germany aims to ban paintball: World: News: News24

...

Germany's laws on paintball guns were already strict as far as I can remember. Dan from Triggernomics had a bad run in with the German officials over his paintball guns (even though they were not in working order).

But an outright ban on paintball and even lazer tag games is a bit over the top in my opinion.

[Phantom63]

Let's see what happens. But for here,

NIMBY

[desertT1]

Sounds a bit extreme. An unintended consequence of this might end up being an increase in the amount of real shootings. Most of the time paintball is just a ton of fun, but there's a little bit of stress relief/therapy in there as well.

[RaSs_FR]

We're just talking about this today on our main french boards. Germany is just aside us.

Basically a teenager shot 15 people in his school with his father's rifle (did you heard about it in USA?), he was a kind of freaky lone werd, always playing Counter Strike, COD4 and paintball.

So... yes, you got it... they decided to ban paintball to avoid this kind of incidents. Germans should be glad that video games aren't banned too (I know, it's not a good joke).
And for some paint on some walls in the streets, France is on the way to make us declare our paintball guns as real firearms, and mil-sim looking guns as automatic weapons such as M4s, G36s, MP5s and such... ABut a least, the law isn't voted yet.

We always keep on giving your example, I mean in USA, that you people must be laughing by hearing these craps. You're all rolling with guns as a normal part of your lives, and paintball guns are just toys! Right here, it's a weapon. WW2 just left some deep scars.

[Hyjinx]

Isn't this like banning sex to prevent rape? 0_o

[Match]

All I can say is I'm glad I'm not a European. I didn't see in the article how paintball was the cause of the school shooting. Sounds like an excuse to pass a law...like NCLB in a way.

[desertT1]

Originally Posted by JoeGrine

We're just talking about this today on our main french boards. Germany is just aside us.

Basically a teenager shot 15 people in his school with his father's rifle (did you heard about it in USA?), he was a kind of freaky lone werd, always playing Counter Strike, COD4 and paintball.

So... yes, you got it... they decided to ban paintball to avoid this kind of incidents. Germans should be glad that video games aren't banned too (I know, it's not a good joke).
And for some paint on some walls in the streets, France is on the way to make us declare our paintball guns as real firearms, and mil-sim looking guns as automatic weapons such as M4s, G36s, MP5s and such... ABut a least, the law isn't voted yet.

We always keep on giving your example, I mean in USA, that you people must be laughing by hearing these craps. You're all rolling with guns as a normal part of your lives, and paintball guns are just toys! Right here, it's a weapon. WW2 just left some deep scars.

CoD:4 has an 'M' rating over here, and if he was 15 (assuming the laws are parallel) somebody had to have bought it for him. How did the kid get access to the guns in the first place? This happens to paintball because it's the low hanging fruit and easiest to target and blame.

Thanks for the info Joe, I hadn't heard any of this story, so details are nice to have.

EDIT: Oh wait, I read that while doing something else and mis-read it. I saw '15' and thought that was his age... Still though, 17 is still a minor over here and restricted on what they can buy.

[RaSs_FR]

Sounds like an excuse, you got it... the worst thing is everything sounds like an excuse nowadays in here.

I like the "banning sex to prevent rape" example. That's it!

A mate told me today, in Germany, the great paintball tournaments used to be on old US military base.. so that way it was not going on the German land. Pretty amazing, doesn't it?

[acesn8s]

Originally Posted by JoeGrine

We always keep on giving your example, I mean in USA, that you people must be laughing by hearing these craps. You're all rolling with guns as a normal part of your lives, and paintball guns are just toys! Right here, it's a weapon. WW2 just left some deep scars.

We're not laughing at you at all. There are people in the USA trying to ban paintball markers and violent video games.

[Kahnif]

Better idea! We need to ban baseball bats!

I'm tired of people hitting my mailbox.