Legal Research

Video Games, Gun Laws Eyed in German Shooting

By David Badertscher, PLL

Source: Crime and Justice News, March 13, 2009.

"In light of this week's school shooting there, German politicians are calling for tightened gun laws and pointing fingers at the video games and media for promoting what they see as a culture of violence, reports the Christian Science Monitor. Within minutes of the tragedy, images of police and grieving students covered television and computer screens. Experts say the coverage only compounds the problem that might be helping to sow the seeds of such attacks."

" 'The amount of attention we're giving this shooting can have an enormous effect on others' thinking about the same thing,' ' says Bernd Holtusen, of the German Youth Institute in Berlin. 'People's readiness to use violence becomes greater after a shooting.' Wednesday's shooting at a school in Winnenden, a suburb of Stuttgart, was the nation's worst since 2002, when another teen gunman killed 16 people in a school in Erfurt. The gunman, Tim Kretschmer, was described as a diehard table tennis player with a passion for horror films and violent video games."

Christian Science Monitor

Full post as published by New York Supreme Court Criminal Term Library on March 13, 2009 (boomark / email).