A few days ago I read about how Germany is mulling a ban on Paintball. They feel that paintball glorifies violence and teaches children how to kill each other.
Now, I understand that killing other people is something you don’t want to encourage, but this is not the right way to go – banning things that might be vaguely similar in some kind of knee-jerk reaction to try to “fix” the problem. It won’t solve anything, and will only serve to further stamp in the popular opinion that politicians are power-mad morons who can’t see reality even if it hit them on the head.
I’m not a big pro-paintball type of guy. I’ve only played paintball once, and while it was great fun I didn’t really get hooked. It just wasn’t my type of sport or game or whatever you might call it. But I’m in some kind of shock that the German government is so blunderingly stupid that they think paintball is the cause of all evil when it comes to those horrendous school-shootings.
If we’re going to ban everything that might inspire violence, then why aren’t we banning all the militaries in the world? Or banning toy guns? Or model kits of tanks? Or super-soakers? Or heavy-metal music?
Hey, lets just force everyone to do nothing but sit in a field of flowers and listen to the sound of silence? That way no one might get inspired to kill someone else.
I like your frank interpretation of the potential German paintball ban. One of our directors called in and spoke on BBC radio, as there was talk of UK Politicians introducing severe restrictions on games like paintball. I think it is a case of politicians looking to be seen to be doing something as a pose to dealing with the underlying reasons as to why these atrocites occur in the first place.