Germany aims to ban paintball
2009-05-07 16:19
Berlin - The German government wants to
tighten gun laws and ban paintball games in response to a school
shooting in which 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, the sources said.
Previous incidents
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.