No Guns or Computer Violence for Kids
June 21, 2002
Robert Steinhäuser has changed Germany. Two months ago, the 19-year-old former student stormed into his old school in the eastern German city of Erfurt armed to the teeth. Within 20 minutes, he killed 13 teachers, two students, a policeman and, finally, himself. The Erfurt school shooting was Germany's worst post-war massacre.
Erfurt gave endeavors to tighten gun laws in Germany new momentum.
Before the massacre, numerous efforts to tighten the country's already strict gun-control regulations were blocked by the conservative Christian Democrats. On Friday, however, politicians of all parties stood united on the issue in Germany's upper legislative chamber, the Bundesrat (photo).
On Friday, there was no disagreement among the heads of the 16 German states, or Länder, that are represented in the Bundesrat. They unanimously ratified a proposal to raise the age limit for gun ownership and ban the use of pump-action shotguns. The new gun law raises the age for ownership from 18 to 21 and requires gun buyers under 25 to present a certificate of medical and psychological health.
The lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, had okayed the bill just a week ago.
Only the first step
After Friday's vote in the Bundesrat, Interior Minister Otto Schily (photo) said the new law was the first step towards wider reforms. "The re-worked law will give us more control and security. But it is only one step of several," Schily told the upper legislative chamber.
But Schily added that the real danger doesn't come from legally-owned weapons. He said that attention should now focus on illegally-held guns.
The estimates on how many illegal weapons there are in Germany vary considerably. What is known, however, is that there are 7.2 million legally owned guns in Germany. Out of a population of 83 million, 2.3 million people in Germany are registered gun owners.
Gun laws the key to security?
Shortly after the Erfurt school shooting, Interior Minister Schily said tougher laws could not have prevented the massacre. Steinhäuser, the 19-year-old who ran amok, had been able to obtain his weapons legally, since he was a member of a gun club.
But the government still advocated tightening restrictions on weapons. In the weeks following the Erfurt school shooting, Interior Minister Schily and Chancellor Gerhard Schröder (photo) became the driving forces behind a cross-party coalition to tighten gun control laws.
Their goal was also to restrict the sale and distribution of violent videos and computer games. Steinhäuser was known to be a big fan of such violent electronic entertainment.
Tighter monitoring of violent computer games and websites
Along with tightening gun laws, the Bundesrat on Friday also approved tighter controls for violent computer games, websites and videos.
All computer games now have to bear a label indicating how old kids should be to play them. A similar procedure of parental-discretion labels is already used to keep children and young people from buying or renting videos that are unsuitable for them – e.g. pornographic films or videos that glorify war.
To make the tracking of age-sensitive media easier, the Bundesrat also approved a simplified procedure to put extremely violent or pornographic websites on an index.
But placing restrictions on the content of video games, films and websites is a thorny issue – and Interior Minister Schily is well aware of it. In May, he acknowledged that such restrictions could be seen as infringing upon the right to free speech and artistic expression.
"The question of art and free speech is difficult to resolve...There are violent scenes in Shakespeare but no one would ban Shakespeare," Schily said then.