Interesting because all German males are required to serve in the military for 9 months when they turn 18 (link). The shooter in the school incident that triggered this knee-jerk was 17 - they were about to indoctrinate him with mandatory training in REAL weapons anyway. Does a drill sergeant make that much difference to an unstable mind?
 

First two facts you might not have known until now:

- In the "School Shooting Rankings" Germany is at rank 2, right after the USA.

- After the massacre before the last (Steinhäuser) one political party tried to issue a manufacturer prohibition for "killer games" (this has become a common term in the media for FPS games). But they didn't knew that killer games are produced internationally in countries around the world. When they found out they dropped the idea as quickly as they came up with it (but first they built up a huge media hype and got people to vote for them because of the mentioned prohibition).

I'm German myself and the government is getting really crazy about war games lately (computer based like the mentioneed Counter-Strike and real world games like Paintball alike).
But this is not the first time. The last time was when the last elections were coming up. And guess what? We're closing in on the elections again and some politicians need something in their agenda to get some votes in (mainly the older folks).

They try to scare the people and instill fear. Reminds me a bit of old times 50 years ago.

Older folks don't know much about computer games or war games.
When the politicians and the media tells in a commercial spot something like "hey did you know your kid is playing this computer game called Counter-Strike and he just killed two people with an assault rifle by shooting them in the head while sitting upstairs in front of his computer?"

The only reason for this behavior is to get votes, they don't search for reasons why this kids get on a killing spree, but insist that war games and computer games are the reasons. But I wonder, when something like 3 million kids in Germany alone play war games and computer games every weekend, why don't we have a massacre every day?

I think there are other reasons. I'm sure the games do their part in the minds of this kids but the games are definately not the reasons why they do it. Something is going horribly wrong here.
 

The politicians in Germany (and anywhere else for that matter) have completely lost any sense-making. They ban paint ball while real guns are still Ok. Sport shooters are currently laughing their ass off about this decision. On the realistic side nothing will change. Another typical case of placebo politics!
 

Well, there have been several times in the U.S. where shootings have been cut short by armed citizens (including the shooting here in Salt Lake City a few years back), so banning firearms is at least debatable as an appropriate response as well.

But the bottom line is that politicians are bullies. They go after weak victims that are less capable of defending themselves in order to appear tough to observers, and to show action. Paintball and video games don't have the political muscle of the gun lobby, so they are far easier to pick on.