Deadly shooting at German school

[Tribun]

Right now I can already hear all the media singing in chorus in their crusade against so-called "killer-games" and the usual suspects (conservatives) screaming to ban every game with even remote adult content.

Video games are their black man.

[Broomstick]

Call me silly, but wouldn't about 3-5 guns satisfy most hobby and sport shooting needs?

Depends.

Here in the States there are different hunting seasons for different weapons, so a hunter may want several different ones to take advantage of different seasons. If, in addition, this person is also a target shooter then he might have several more for different categories of that. Perhaps our hypothetical gun owner also inherited a weapon or two from relatives.

I have a friend who owns over a dozen guns, some for hunting, some for target shooting, and four he received from his father and grandfather as part of an inheritance. Owning that many guns is perhaps not typical, but it need not be sinister either.

[salm]

<Conservative>The guy was a loner with low self esteem and a mobbing victim who had announced his crime in the internet -> Let´s ban all violent games RAR!!!</Conservative>

[Edi]

<Conservative>The guy was a loner with low self esteem and a mobbing victim who had announced his crime in the internet -> Let´s ban all violent games RAR!!!</Conservative>

If you have nothing but spam to contribute, shut the fuck up.

[Coyote]

Now we have MSNBC's take on it.

School shooter warned of attack, official says
17-year-old German discussed plans in Internet chatroom the night before

School horror
Gunman, 17, dressed in black opens fire at his former high school.

German student kills 15, himself
March 11: A 17-year-old German gunman opened fire in a school and a car dealership early Wednesday, killing 15 before shooting and killing himself. ITN’s Robert Moore reports.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

updated 16 minutes ago
WAIBLINGEN, Germany - The 17-year-old gunman who went on a rampage at his former school and killed 15 people had warned of his plans in an Internet chatroom the night before, a state security official said Thursday.

The teenager told others in the chat room that he was "sick of this life" and planned to attack his school, said Baden Wuerttemburg state Interior Minister Heribert Rech.

"You will hear from me tomorrow, remember the name of a place called Winnenden," Reich said the suspect wrote.

Rech said a Bavarian man alerted police of the chat conversation on Wednesday after the school shooting in Winnenden had taken place. The man said his 17-year-old son only told him about it after seeing the news reports and had not taken the threat seriously.

Let's see, a warning that is ignored, yup. Next!

...Many female victims
There was no immediate indication of motive, but the gunman's victims were primarily female: eight of nine students killed were girls, and all three teachers were women. Three men were killed later as the suspect fled.

Sabienne Boehm, 12, said she recently had met the shooter and that he had claimed fellow students at the high school had mocked him and teachers there ignored him.

Three weeks ago, she said, he showed her a note. "He wrote to his parents that he's suffering and he can't go on," she told the AP outside a memorial service at a town church late Wednesday.

Okay, and we again have the outcast who felt persecuted and another warning about "not being able to go on" which he told his parents.

The dark-haired teen, shown wearing glasses in pictures on German television, apparently took the weapon from his father's collection of 16 firearms along with a "multitude of ammunition," police said. His father was a member of the local gun club and kept all the weapons locked away except for the pistol, which was kept in the bedroom.

The father was mostly in compliance with German law, it seems, but I still have a beef with him-- why would he leave a gun unlocked when he's not home, and when his son told him three weeks before he was having issues and saying "I can't go on"? Strike against the father, for certain.

A 17-year-old who would give only his first name, Aki, said he had studied with the shooter at a private business school, and described him as a quiet, reserved person.

Aki said the two played poker together, both in person and online, as well as a multiplayer video game called "Counter-Strike" that involves killing people to complete missions.

"He was good," Aki said.

Yup, quiet lonely outcast that played eeeeevil video games.

Things seem to follow a pattern:

Event
Event
Pop Culture connection: Video Games/Rock Music/Dungeons & Dragons (insert anywhere along the event chain)
Event
Event
Event
Event + Warning Behavior
Event + Warning Behavior
Snap + Guns
Post-Snap (Warning Behaviors suddenly "Discovered")

Apparantly, in Europe, it's the "pop culture connection" that gets the blame. In the US, the "pop culture connection" is sometimes blamed, but also as often it is the guns that are blamed. Odd how rare it is that the "Events" and "Warnings" never seem to be heeded until too late, and then the Post-Snap blame goes to the things rather than the Events.

Everyone talks about how important it is to "pay attention to clues" and "take warnings seriously" and "watch out for bullying behavior" and the like, but when these things happen, it always seems to follow the same pattern-- warnings, bullying, and other clues are ignored; and after the Snap the same old "things" are blamed rather than the lack of vigilance or intervention on the part of the people around the killer.

And so the cycle goes on.

[salm]

Here´s a video of the last minutes of the killers life:

Sky News Link to Cell Phone Video

[Vendetta]

Apparantly, in Europe, it's the "pop culture connection" that gets the blame. In the US, the "pop culture connection" is sometimes blamed, but also as often it is the guns that are blamed. Odd how rare it is that the "Events" and "Warnings" never seem to be heeded until too late, and then the Post-Snap blame goes to the things rather than the Events.

Certainly. Videogames are Europe's biggest killer. Ask Keith Vaz.

Hell, at one point he managed to blame videogames that only the victim had played.

[Dahak]

<Conservative>The guy was a loner with low self esteem and a mobbing victim who had announced his crime in the internet -> Let´s ban all violent games RAR!!!</Conservative>

If you have nothing but spam to contribute, shut the fuck up.

That's not spam...
That is the (shortened) standard reaction of a German conservative politician to any of these events. It is already happening, the usual suspects have crawled towards the cameras, and it will continue to do so until the next media event gets them to shift attention elsewhere.

Also, the guy seems to have had mental problems, as he had been in treatment for depression.

[salm]

Apparantly, in Europe, it's the "pop culture connection" that gets the blame. In the US, the "pop culture connection" is sometimes blamed, but also as often it is the guns that are blamed. Odd how rare it is that the "Events" and "Warnings" never seem to be heeded until too late, and then the Post-Snap blame goes to the things rather than the Events

No, no, it´s the same here. After our first big shooter in Erfurt (17 dead) they made the gun laws tougher twice. Now, after this incident they´re screaming for even toughter gun laws. Personally i think that´s a joke. The gun laws already are very strict and making them even stricter probably won´t do anything. I mean, the son didn´t have access to the gun because of the laws, he had access to the gun because the father (probably) broke the law (currently being investigated ) by not locking it away.
But, as we know from other school shootings, the politicians have to say something so it looks like they care and are willing to react and get rid of the problem. They look for easy targets - gun laws, video games - and ignore the tough but important ones like the social problems. Interestingly all the real experts, allways talk how it´s the social problems.

[[R_H]]

I watched the police press conference that was originally broadcast at 12h30.

Some information from it:
- shooting club members are allowed to buy up to five rifles a year
- the father owned two other pistols (two revolvers)

And from an interview with Christian Pfeiffer, a criminologist and former justice minister of Niedersachsen:
- rant about video games, they're also responsible for so many males doing badly academically (compared number of female graduates to male graduates from institutions of higher learning)
- said solution is not to ban (violent) video games, but to lure people away from them
- posting guards at schools wouldn't help, shooters would just shoot them first (the guards can't be ready for a shooter all the time)
- stronger firearm regulations wouldn't be of any help, the two million Sportschützen are too powerful, and the laws are strict enough
- there are a little over 2 million legal gun owners in Germany, most of which are Sportschützen
- there are over 10 million legal firearms in Germany, however, there are between 20 and 30 million illegal firearms


And like in Germany, there are calls for banning violent video games and stricter firearms laws. Unlike Germany, in both cases, the Socialists are making all the noise.

[Tribun]

Try to ignore Pfeiffer.

Everyone here knows that his opinion is mostly shit.

[[R_H]]

Try to ignore Pfeiffer.

Everyone here knows that his opinion is mostly shit.

His opinion about video games, or about everything in general?

[Starglider]

(list of things that wouldn't work)

What about trigger locks, particularly biometric ones? The US gun lobby is constantly whining about how these are evil and wrong due to possible reliability issues (in a self-defence situation), but that isn't relevant for sporting guns.

[[R_H]]

(list of things that wouldn't work)

What about trigger locks, particularly biometric ones? The US gun lobby is constantly whining about how these are evil and wrong due to possible reliability issues (in a self-defence situation), but that isn't relevant for sporting guns.

It was reported that the father had his weapons locked away in a safe, and the ammunition locked in a seperate cabinet.

However, the pistol used by the shooter was left in the parents bedroom.

At the conference they reported that the shooter had over 200 rounds with him, and by the time he killed himself he had fired off roughly 100 rounds (around 40 in the school).

[Zixinus]

What about trigger locks, particularly biometric ones? The US gun lobby is constantly whining about how these are evil and wrong due to possible reliability issues (in a self-defence situation), but that isn't relevant for sporting guns.

They're worthless, they can be circumvented by anyone with a screwdriver and hammer.

[Dahak]

Try to ignore Pfeiffer.

Everyone here knows that his opinion is mostly shit.

He, and Wolfgang Bosbach.
In "Hart aber Fair", he answered to being asked if he has ever played a computer game that he hasn't since (danger, may hurt your brain...) "he doesn't need to be a tree to be for the protection of the rain forest".

[Aratech]

Try to ignore Pfeiffer.

Everyone here knows that his opinion is mostly shit.

He, and Wolfgang Bosbach.
In "Hart aber Fair", he answered to being asked if he has ever played a computer game that he hasn't since (danger, may hurt your brain...) "he doesn't need to be a tree to be for the protection of the rain forest".

I'm not seeing the logic to his statement, at all. *scratches head*

Is this guy kinda the German equivalent of Jack Thompson?

[Dahak]

Try to ignore Pfeiffer.

Everyone here knows that his opinion is mostly shit.

He, and Wolfgang Bosbach.
In "Hart aber Fair", he answered to being asked if he has ever played a computer game that he hasn't since (danger, may hurt your brain...) "he doesn't need to be a tree to be for the protection of the rain forest".

I'm not seeing the logic to his statement, at all. *scratches head*

Is this guy kinda the German equivalent of Jack Thompson?

He's a German conservative politician, and it seems that in his knee-jerk reflex regarding computer games, he is not unlike Thompson...

[charlemagne]

He's a German conservative politician, and it seems that in his knee-jerk reflex regarding computer games, he is not unlike Thompson...

He's also fucking nuts, he even supports the notion that computers and internet are "the devil". Nothing coming from this guy is worth considering, it's all "rah rah video games create killers". It's worth mentioning that police investigating this shooting have said that video games have nothing to do with it, as do most rational experts.

In similar news, in my hometown police have arrested a 15-year-old who according to his classmates threatened to kill people at his school (I couldn't find an English news report about this, only this snippet from a local TV station. Awareness is surely pretty high right after killing sprees. The school he attended is connected to the elementary school I went to.

[salm]

Ok, seems the police got trolled by some krautchan user which is apparently some German version of 4chan. The killers announcement on the messageboard was just a photoshop and the school shooter did not post that on the board. According to Spiegel.de they had the information before it was released in the press conference but didn´t print it because it wasn´t verified nor verifiable. Apparently Baden-Würtembergs minister of interior didn´t care about that and released the info anyway.

[Big Orange]

I openly howled at the TV as soon as violent video games were mentioned in a negative light, but judging from the shooter's alleged last online posting he was clearly suffering from some kind of psychotic paranoia if he felt "everybody" was laughing from him and had to be taught a terminal lesson. The fruit-loop got a single Berreta pistol left in the bedroom while the rest of his dad‘s big arsenal was locked away.

And while this may be a scoffed at opinion I get feeling the police put the poor prick down like a mad dog, by shooting to kill, and same goes for most other similar cases where a deranged shooter supposedly "turned the gun on himself". It seems too convenient and common, sorry.

[charlemagne]

And while this may be a scoffed at opinion I get feeling the police put the poor prick down like a mad dog, by shooting to kill, and same goes for most other similar cases where a deranged shooter supposedly "turned the gun on himself". It seems too convenient and common, sorry.

Well, I don't think you can blame them for "playing it safe" when a lunatic wields a gun and already shot several people. And really, "poor prick"? More like "mad dog" as you said yourself.

But, as far as I know this guy got shot in the leg first before he got up again and turned the gun on himself.

[Broomstick]

And while this may be a scoffed at opinion I get feeling the police put the poor prick down like a mad dog, by shooting to kill, and same goes for most other similar cases where a deranged shooter supposedly "turned the gun on himself". It seems too convenient and common, sorry.

What do you EXPECT the police to when someone has just murdered a dozen or more people, has ammo left, and is still shooting? What alternative course of action do you suggest?

[Ryan Thunder]

And while this may be a scoffed at opinion I get feeling the police put the poor prick down like a mad dog, by shooting to kill, and same goes for most other similar cases where a deranged shooter supposedly "turned the gun on himself". It seems too convenient and common, sorry.

What, is that a bad thing? Threat removed => Objective accomplished.

[salm]

I openly howled at the TV as soon as violent video games were mentioned in a negative light, but judging from the shooter's alleged last online posting he was clearly suffering from some kind of psychotic paranoia if he felt "everybody" was laughing from him and had to be taught a terminal lesson. The fruit-loop got a single Berreta pistol left in the bedroom while the rest of his dad‘s big arsenal was locked away.

The online post was a fake.

And while this may be a scoffed at opinion I get feeling the police put the poor prick down like a mad dog, by shooting to kill, and same goes for most other similar cases where a deranged shooter supposedly "turned the gun on himself". It seems too convenient and common, sorry.

They didn´t kill him. They shot him in the leg and then he shot himself.

I think it´s standard procedure here to first try to injure them. At least i get that impression because whenever people are shot by the cops they are often only shot in the legs. But i could be wrong on that.