Erfurt leads to calls for games ban
Killer played Counter-Strike - quelle surprise
Earlier this week a German teenager called Robert Steinhauser walked into a school in Erfurt carrying a pump action shotgun and a pistol. During the next twenty minutes he shot dead 16 people, including two students and a police officer, and wounded several others before eventually being confronted by a former teacher and apparently committing suicide. But now, as Germany comes to terms with one of the worst shooting sprees we've seen in Europe recently, some politicians are starting to point the finger at .. you guessed it .. computer games. It seems that Steinhauser, like hundreds of thousands of other gamers around the world, was a Counter-Strike fan. Unlike the many other people who spend hours playing the world's most popular online shooter each week though, Steinhauser was a member of a local gun club and legally owned four firearms, including the ones that he used in the attack this week, along with an astounding one thousand rounds of ammunition. Naturally a lot of attention has been focused on gun control laws in the wake of the massacre, but today Christian Democrat leader Edmund Stoiber called for an immediate ban on violent video games, with (funnily enough) his Minister of Culture Monika Hohlmeier demanding that "the trash must finally be forbidden". No doubt she'll be organising some nice cosy bonfires down there in Bavaria to burn copies of Quake and Half-Life, maybe with a few books thrown on for good measure... Ironically Germany already has some of the toughest laws on violent games in Europe, with many titles eventually ending up on a list which prevents them from being advertised or openly displayed in shops. If Stoiber and his cohorts have their way though, many violent games and movies could end up being banned outright.