November 21, 2006
A school shooting in the German town of Emsdetten has sparked renewed government concerns about violent video games in the European nation.As reported by CNN, an unnamed 18-year-old man (seen at left) stormed his former junior high school on Monday. Armed with a variety of weapons, the shooter wounded a number of staff and pupils before taking his own life.
The English language version of Spiegel Online has more, including word that the suspect, who referred to himself as a "loser" on a personal website, had a troubled background. He was scheduled to be in court today to answer to a weapons charge. His web page, now taken down by German authorities, contained the words "I loathe people" and "I am gone."
According to Spiegel, he listened to death metal music and spent his days playing computer games. German language site tagesschau.de reports that the Emsdetten shooter played the first-person shooter Counter-strike and details the renewed calls for violent game regulation by German politicians.
During a news conference, prosecutor Wolfgang Schwer said:
Based on the note, he appears to have acted out of general frustration and a feeling his life had lost all meaning.
A 2002 school shooting in Erfurt prompted calls for violent game bans in Germany after it was learned the shooter was also a fan of Counter-strike.
GP: Many thanks to several of our European readers who helped pull this story together, including Lazy Otaku and Soldat Louis.
Comments
Günther Beckstein (the guy who invented the word "Killergame") arrogated today, that "Killergames should be classified in the dimensions of child-pornography, so that there are sensible punishments".
I guess he's talking about selling and distributing them.
No joke - sadly.
By the way: he is one of the most conservative assholes in a party of conservative assholes (who wouldn't have guessed...).
And what these so called "Killergames" exactly are and how they should be defined and classified remains unsettled... of course.
P.S. I'm acting contradictory from the Rule of Rose comment and being all prejudist just like the conservatives oy, but we can fight fire with fire ,can't we oy?
...
nawww... lets blame the games!
Ugh. How completely ridiculous.
Which just goes to show how much of a scapegoat they are being made into.
People should really ask questions before they assert answers.
"not one American School shooter was ‘influenced by Counter Strike’."
I think thats because no one who attacks videogames in america has ever heard of CS. And if they have, they dont know what it is and don't care. Untill they can pin it on a killing that is.
Nope, guns didn't kill people. Video games killed people. Why aren't THEY regulated more strictly?
"Tha guy killed no one (except himself), it's a proof that video games produce bad shooters"
LOL... although I shouldn't
"It proves that 'Counter-Strike : Source' is for nOObs. An 'America's Army' player would have killed 17 people"
But every single one of those millions of people who played Counterstrike has gone on a killing spree! It must be the games!
Until someone can make the above statement while being 100% honest (with whatever video game applies in place of Counterstrike), I will never, ever understand these people's logic...
Maybe he was trying to rely on his aimbot, and got frustrated when it didn't work as intended.
Oddly enough, he reportedly had pipebombs strapped to his chest, but didn't use them.
Actually, there's some confusion on that from what I've heard. The police aren't talking, and an autopsy is scheduled to determine if he killed himself with his saw-off rifle, or if one of his home-made smoke bombs blew up in his face.
Considering how long he was in the school, for someone who "literally trained" on a first person shooter, which we all know turns you into a marksman who can outshoot goverment agents (or was that 3rd person shooters... ;)) he had terrible aim.
He should have turned on his wall hacks and bought a ton of flash nades to blind his team at the start of the round. Then spray pron all over the walls, then it would be more like CS. Any way, i guess for me it's time to play the waiting game and see how this goes down. It will eather be dismissed and it will die off. Or be picked up by an anti-videogame person and this story gets milked for all it's worth.
"During a news conference, prosecutor Wolfgang Schwer said:
Based on the note, he appears to have acted out of general frustration and a feeling his life had lost all meaning."
It's so great to have experts to break this stuff down for us!
It does raise the question of what to do, though. Let's agree, for the sake of argument, that violent video games do not incite violence but that violent people, by their nature, play violent games. It's not much of a stretch that such violent people might also be fascinated with guns. Crying for gun control or game legislation is treating the symptoms - when more than anything we need to find the root of the disease if we want to keep these tragedies from happening. But that is a much more complicated solution - and policymakers have made it clear that they prefer a solution that's quick and looks nice in the papers.
I recall a quote, though the source of it eludes me, that is something to the effect of: "Every problem has a solution that is simple, obvious, and completely wrong."
"In 2004, GameSpy statistics showed over 85,000 players simultaneously playing Counter-Strike at any point in time, and in 2006, Steam regularly shows over 200,000 players for Counter-Strike".
If Counter-Strike was indeed responsible for teens becoming killers, the effect would certainly be felt globally and certainly more often.
I think we need to take a look at his kill/death ratio on Counter-Strike. I think he was just an angry noob who got so frustrated at everyone pwning him that he decided to go shoot up a place, just like in all those CS-related Flash videos.
It's that heavy gaming (especially with violent games) is a sign/symptom of people prone to violence... much as looking at various types of porn can be a sign of various sexual preferences.
Nobody is going to know the exact difference between how violent movies densensitize us to violence (which is proven), and how violent intereactive media pushes that further (and it's starting to pan out that it probably does).
My greatest fear is that people will start to take playing violent games as a sign that you might have an underlying problem which is part of the reason you're attracted to that type of entertainment.
Even when they get fragged? "Ow, I've been splodied, better take a nap..."
There are indications that he ordered his weapons over the internet, and I read that his father might be have been a hunter or sports shooter. Interstingly he was supposed to appear in court over an "illegal weapons posession" charge or something to that effect. Probably didn't have a license.
Anyways, it's always the same response by the politicians and most of the media. People are unable to deal with a complex reality and need simple answers. This will be forgotten in a few weeks and nothing will come from it.
There are also some sane opposition politicians who don't like the simpleminded scapegoating either
I can't speak in great detail about Bundeswehr SOP, but with a few rare exceptions like Switzerland and (in some caes) Israel soldiers are not allowed to keep their weapons at home. Also, psychiatric evaluation is expensive and time consuming and so not standard for soldiers unless they're pursuing a specific career path that A) involves high security clearance and there's some question raised during the standard BG checks and/or B) involves specialized training (In the US for example SF or SFOD-D selection, Sniper, etc require a basic MMPI/CPI evaluation).
Bundeswehr conscription is a 9-month term, the minimum age for which is 18, and 3 months of which are occupied by basic training. In other words, At -most- this guy qualified with the G-36 and perhaps a few other weapons in Basic, and -perhaps- had one or two days at the range in the six months of active duty -assuming- he's almost nineteen and had already served his entire commitment, and assuming that he even went to the Bundeswehr in the first place instead of the various civilian alternatives (less than one in five conscripts actually go military in Germany now, apparently).
His weapons were two muzzleloading rifles and a muzzleloading pistol, including the suicide weapon (15mm ball, which means about a .60 caliber ball if I'm doing my math right), and a Kleinkalibergewehr (small caliber rifle, but from a context search I'm tentatively translating it as "target rifle" as in the accurized .22LR rifles you see used in marksmanship competitions and the olympics).
In short, I don't think the military was involved in this one in any way.
But as said, they only conscript a small percentage these days, which has to do with overall personell reductions and the greater need of better trained specialists.
But that has nothing whatsoever to do with the topic at hand.
The two antique muzzleloaders he had (one used for the suicide) were legal at the age of 18. For most other guns, the age limit is 25 I think
Interstingly he was supposed to appear in court over an “illegal weapons posession” charge or something to that effect. Probably didn’t have a license.
I believe it was for carrying a handgun in public, which is illegal in Germany.
He wanted to kill himself, but suicide was not enough for him. He needed to get even with society. Violent video games have nothing to do with it. Those people, who think that they did, are retarded and completly DEE DEE DEE!!!!!! I think anti-game activists, who truly believe that an innocent game like Half Life Counter Strike had anything to do with that incident, should go get a DEE DEE DEE award from Carlos Mencia.
He was obviously depressed and nuts and he probably thought the world was responsible for his failings in life. He did it because, like Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, he was crazy!!!!!!! There have been many people that have gone on these kinds of mass killings where they kill everyone and then themselves and many of them haven't even been gamers.
Games have nothing to do with the mental state of the people who play them. Also think about this, If he was crazy enough to do that, then it's possible that he was also very angry and he probably took out his anger on these games and that delayed his madness from overflowing, but the notion that he wouldn't have done it, had it not been for these games, is ridiculous, as well as, retarded. The only person to blame for that is the killer himself not violent video games.
He didn't go to a Gymansium, but one schooltype lower that goes to the 10th grade. But he just finished school and worked in unskilled jobs.
In that case it isn't unusual to be conscripted several years later (they can do that until 23) so that people have time for a 2.5-3.5 year apprenticeship.
As for the pictures. You can easily buy camoflage cloths in specialized shops or online. But most of them were more Matrix/Neo-like with long leather trenchcoats
Exactly how does two shooters, one that we know had a troubled background, and both liking Counter-Strike make it the game's fault? That's like saying two people from different states, who happened to like Doom, both being violent and assualting someone close to them.
Wouldn't it just be a coincidence that they enjoyed a similar game? SIMPLE ANSWER: SCAPEGOATING
After seeing so many articles about psycho video game killers, I know it's inevitable that I'm going to become a mass murderer.
This guy fits the stereotypical gun-slingin' school shooter: Mentally unstable, prone to suicidal tendancies, and has a fascination with anything that is violent. Of course, this type of issue sprouts up every now and again and the gamers put on a major persecution complex while the same slackjawed talking pundits share their skewed perception of the issue.
Sure, we could say "Games are not the cause" until we are blue in the face but in the end, only rational people will think of it as something else. For what it's worth, gaming blogs are quicker than the politicians themselves to point the finger at the videogame angle simply because we have been through this before.
Besides, it has become a spectator sport for censorists to point the blame on a inanimate piece of entertainment rather than the 10,000 variables that materliazed this guy's train of thought.
Same shit, different shooter.
Makes alot of sense eh? It's like Muetank said. They have a game of madlibs they play:
We must ban/regulate (noun) to protect the children from (verb). This kind of (adjective) entertainment will only lead to (verb) in our (adjective) (noun). We owe it to our future (noun) to (verb) this.
That sounds about right.
@ Daniel
Way to go man! You made a great point! People who are mentally unstable or violent maybe, and probably are, drawn to violent entertainment, but that doesnt mean that they, or anyone else, will behave in a violent and destructive manner. When we finally learn to find and treat the source not just the symptom society will be better off. Just hope we all grow up sooner rather than later. Besides what is recorded history if not violence and war? Maybe we should ban history?
I'm gonna say it again. Protect your children. Don't protect me.
Thanks for the corrections, whodathunk I'd learn a little more about the german military today!
Quote from Sydney Morning Herald (Australia):
"Volker Beck, a leading Greens member of parliament, said it would be better to focus the debate on the proper use of computers and not jump to conclusions before it was clear what motivated Bosse."