I haven’t been posting for a very very long time. But one news has shocked me to ‘出山’, or literally come out of the mountain from hiding.

Germany moves to outlaw paintball

Read the above article and you will soon be able to understand why I am furious.

I am relieved and glad that the German government is responding to school shooting by addressing the issue of gun control. However, to ban games that ‘encourages violence’ would help do nothing about the whole problem. As a baller, I am pissed that politicians are messing around with this sports without full knowledge of its implications. Politics is a career, but it is a career that will affect your fellow countrymen based on the decisions you make.

Abstract
This is all about politics. The 11 March 2009 Winnenden School Shooting has struck the German public dearly. A boy of 17, committed mass murder with his father’s gun, killing 16 (including himself).

• The public wants to see something done to address the issue.
• The strong gun lobby does not want anything to be done to them.
• The politician must please the electorate.

Combat games, like paintball and lasertag, are therefore banned to show the government’s determination in preventing school shootings from happening again. This post will address the impacts of the Winnenden shooting on German politics, the gun lobby and the paintball scene within Germany.

The Shooting
The summary of the whole incident can be found on Wikipedia.

The last stage before elections
Career politicians earn their living by serving the people. Therefore, approval ratings and reelections weigh heavily on the politicians’ minds as they worry about paying the bills and feeding their families after their term ends.

The Winnenden shooting was not Germany’s first school massacre. It certainly will not be the last. Therefore, parents across the country, especially those who lost their children in the killings, are concerned about gun control and want the government to intervene in the matter. German firearms laws are already strict, and the process of obtaining and possessing an arm is labourious and long. But evidently, these steps are not enough. The government therefore has to ban something, but what can they ban?

“Hunters, weapons technicians and law enforcement professionals must undergo a simliar process, which helps explain why they make up a majority of the 2.3 million people with gun licenses in Germany. The groups also make up a significant gun lobby, which has kept things the same for the last 20 years. Because of the relatively low level of gun violence in Germany, an vocal anti-gun lobby on the level of the United States is almost non-existent.” ^[1] This group of people mentioned makes up a significant percentage of voters which neither the CDU/CSU nor the SPD would wish to lose in the upcoming 17th German federal election currently scheduled for 27th September 2009. Another voter group as important is the worried parents of students who are potential victims of future school shootings. What else can the Bundestag do but to compromise and placate both parties the best that they can?

The innocent victims
“The governing parties say paintball trivialises violence and risks lowering the threshold for committing violent acts.” ^[2] These politicians know zilch about paintball, have no authority in this field of sports but they butt into the scene to ban the game. Does participation in paintball necessary lead to the acceptance of violence?

Paintball is a slowly gaining prominence around the world as a sports. Therefore no matter which form of paintball one engaged in, woodsball, speedball or scenario paintball, each is governed by its own set of rules and regulations. The games roughly revolves around the concept of capturing the flag, and a great deal of the game is cooperating as a team to fulfil this objective. Painting the opponents, and therefore eliminating them, is therefore a mean towards the goal, for one can always run to grab the flag and hang it in speedball if he is fast enough.

The game encourages teamwork through communication between players to strategise on movements. It tests on individual skills (e.g. snap-shooting) just as any other sports does. How this sport can trivialise violence is therefore puzzling, since the sports builds a man’s character through his interactions with his mates (teamwork), with his opponents (sportsmanship), and his adherance to the rules and referee’s decisions (integrity).

FYI. The murderer in Winnendon is 17 and has not played paintball before. One needs to be at least 18 to play.

Populist Placebo Policy
Instead of restricting access to guns and remedying the weakness in the current gun control framework, the politicians chose a quick, strong move that can prove their stand on this issue by tabling the ban on paintball and lasertag – the urgency to act stemming from the Bundestag scheduled recess in July 2009 and the upcoming elections in September 2009. The ban might touched the hearts of many, especially since the perception of paintball amongst the people is tainted with the government’s description that it is violent, but it will have no real effect on the situation. Guns will still remain obtainable legally by students and their parents, and 1 loose gun and an insane person is enough to recreate the shooting once more.

35 German teams played in the Millenium European Paintball Series in 2008. Many more teams played in the local Deutsche Paintball Liga in the same year. Whether professional teams like Frankfurt Syndicate (#9 in Millenium Series 08) will continue playing, we do not know. What can be seen now is defence efforts by the paintballers in Germany to save their sports – players driven by their passion for the game, the industry driven by their need to save the ricebowls of those employed in the industry.

To the German ballers, I wish you the best of luck.

[1] “Gun Control: Pulling the Noose Tighter”. www.dw-world.de. 30-04-2002. http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,1564,508926,00.html. Retrieved on 09-05-2009.

[2] “Germany to ban paintball in wake of high school shooting”. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/. 07-05-2009. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/5291891/Germany-to-ban-paintball-in-wake-of-high-school-shooting.html. Retrieved on 09-05-2009.