Once again, there are politicians attacking video games. This time, they’re proposing an outright ban on “killer” video games.
The debate over violent video games has been rekindled in Germany after a recent school shooting left students and teachers hospitalized. 18-year-old Sebastian Bosse returned to his secondary school in the town of Emsdetten yesterday and opened fire, terrifying the school and wounding several people (none have died) before taking his own life. He wore a trench coat and a gas mask, and carried smoke bombs and pipe bombs. He was also known to play video games for hours, leading several politicians to call for a ban.
They list no other factors that surely must have contributed to this outbreak of violence. No one is going to go shoot up their school just because they play Doom. Notice he “returned” to his old school; this wasn’t exactly random violence.
Christa Stewens, the Family Minister for the state of Bavaria, said in a statement that the federal government should now ban both offline “killer” games like paintball and video games like Doom 3 and Counter-Strike. Der Spiegel reports that Wolfgang Bosbach, a conservative parliamentary leader, said, “If it’s true that the 18-year-old perpetrator intensively played so-called killer games, it’s finally time for parliament to take action.”
(emphasis mine)
