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Forums - General - Germany moves to ban Paintball, Lasertag

fmc83 on 10 May 2009
mrstickball said:
fmc83 said:

 Sorry, but I must tell you that you seem to have no idea about Germany under Hitler.

After the 1st world war, different armed civil groups were fighting each other until the mid 20ies (The SA and the SS where just 2 out of many). And under Hitler Germany had probably the biggest percentage of weapons in the population.

When Hitler finally took over, he strongly encouraged being armed and taught even children in the Hitler Jugend (Youth) how to use different weapons from pistols to grenades.

So much for Hitler didn't want an armed population.

"The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the supply of arms to the underdogs is a sine qua non for the overthrow of any sovereignty. So let's not have any native militia or native police. German troops alone will bear the sole responsibility for the maintenance of law and order throughout the occupied Russian territories, and a system of military strong-points must be evolved to cover the entire occupied country." --Adolf Hitler, dinner talk on April 11, 1942, quoted in Hitler's Table Talk 1941-44: His Private Conversations, Second Edition (1973), Pg. 425-426. Translated by Norman Cameron and R. H. Stevens. Introduced and with a new preface by H. R. Trevor-Roper. The original German papers were known as Bormann-Vermerke.

Sure, while you are in the middle of a war you let people have weapons in occupied territory. Show me one country who did that.

 

Nazi Weapons Act of 1938 (Translated to English)

  • Classified guns for "sporting purposes".
  • All citizens who wished to purchase firearms had to register with the Nazi officials and have a background check.
  • Presumed German citizens were hostile and thereby exempted Nazis from the gun control law.
  • Gave Nazis unrestricted power to decide what kinds of firearms could, or could not be owned by private persons.
  • The types of ammunition that were legal were subject to control by bureaucrats.
  • Juveniles under 18 years could not buy firearms and ammunition.

 

From Wikipedia:

Regulations on Weapons Ownership, which declared that "all firearms, as well as all kinds of firearms ammunition, are to be surrendered immediately."[2] Under the regulations, anyone found in possession of a firearm or ammunition was subject to five years' imprisonment and a fine of 100,000 marks.>

So this was actually the situation before, the 1938 law. The 1938 law made it actually easier to acquire guns - not harder. Just to disprove your occupied territory point, why do think the "Regulations on Weapons Ownership" was declared 1919? Does a bell ring? By the way the under 18 part is ridiculous, because it was over 21 before the 1938 act.

 

Hitler also banned firearms in Nazi-occupied territories during the war. For example, Holland after conquest:

The Holland Poster banning guns (click for closeup). Citizens had 24 hours to surrender all firearms to the Nazis or face the death penalty. Printed in German on the left and Flemish on the right. For translation, see below. From Die Deutsche Wochenschau, May 15, 1940. (Photo by Moser + Rosié, Berlin)

Regulations on Arms Possession in the Occupied Zone

1. All firearms and ammunition, hand grenades, explosive devices and other war matériel are to be surrendered.
The delivery must take place within 24 hours at the nearest German military administrative headquarters or garrison, provided that other special arrangements have not been made. The mayors (heads of the district councils) must accept full responsibility for complete implementation. Commanding officers are authorized to approve exceptions.

(quoted from here)

 

Again in a war you won't give any weapons to your fresh occupied enemy. That's not Nazi logic, but common sense. Did the USA allow guns in Vietnam? I guess not.

 

Hitler wanted an armed Nazi population, thus offering training to Hitler Jugend, while banning firearm ownership of Jews and occupied territories. Not really consistent with an armed populace...Only armed people that were willing to die for Hitler.

Off course he wanted an armed Nazi population. Therefore Nazi-party-members (about 10 % of the populace at that time, highpoint about 12-13%) where freed from getting a permission to bear arms. But all the others (except for Jews= 0,9 % of the populace, Sinti, Roma (0,04%) and known communist or socialists), where allowed to get a permission to get one. Again they weren't allowed to get one before due to the contract of Versailles and the following "Regulations on Weapons Ownership" from 1919.

 

 



http://nintendo-geheimtipps.blogspot.com

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highwaystar101 on 10 May 2009

I don't really know who's fighting what here, but I do know that the German civilians were "disarmed" at the end of the war, so I'm guessing the ones who supported the Nazis had firearms



fmc83 on 10 May 2009

highwaystar101 said:
1. I don't really know who's fighting what here, but I do know that the German civilians were "disarmed" at the end of the war, so I'm guessing the ones who supported the Nazis had firearms

 

2. Actually Germany are pretty much breaking rule number 1 in preventing mass shooting by doing this.

The idea is to let everyone forget about it and don't change a rule due to one directly isolated incident like this, if your going to change one don't mention the incident. It spurs more people to go killing than it prevents.

 

Mr. Stickball, if I got him right, wanted to argue, that if in germany there would've been no or lower gun possession laws the Third Reich might have never happened. And I wanted to show, that this wouldn't have necessarily worked, because the Nazi-regime lowered the possession laws themselves, but for another reason.

 

As to your comment, you always try to disarm occupied countries, because you want to fight resistance no matter from what side. There are always plenty of guns in a country where there was just a war.

 

As to your 2nd comment:

That's not how things work in Germany. It might seem stupid, but the reason why we didn't go back to become a mass murdering country for the second time, is because we broke and still break this rule number 1 in the case of the Third Reich. In the case of a school shooting: Yes, this might spur people to do it as well, but it might prevent more from doing so in the long run.

 

But as for paintballing I still think it's way over the top



http://nintendo-geheimtipps.blogspot.com

Riot on 10 May 2009

Just wondering...why are you guys talking about Hitler and the Third Reich? The Topic was the ban of Paintball and Lasertag, wasn't it?

 

But since some people told some weird things about Germany, I think I have to make something clear: Most of the Germans don't hold anti-Semitic views anymore. In fact today Germany is maybe one of the countries which fights racism the most. Of course we still have fascists here (like every other country does), but that is thankfully only a small minority.



Sommernacht on 11 May 2009

Funny how Hitler just popped up in a discussion about banning paintball

Anyways... as a member mentioned before: this is merely some "sabor-rattling" of the conversative parties, facing the upcoming elections this year...

I would be surprised if they actually get to ban paintballing.



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ctk495 on 11 May 2009
RCTjunkie said:
I played paintball once. Most terrifying experience of my life.
OT: That's just dumb! Has there been any scientific links between the shooting and the games?

I heard it hurts.

jv103 on 11 May 2009

If Germany wants to be consistent they should disband their military - I mean those are real weapons, right? Of course, that would be stupid as that is an easy way to get annexed by another country (They know this quite well). Silly Germans.



Riot on 12 May 2009
jv103 said:
If Germany wants to be consistent they should disband their military - I mean those are real weapons, right? Of course, that would be stupid as that is an easy way to get annexed by another country (They know this quite well). Silly Germans.

 

Of course it is stupid to ban paintball.It is even more stupid to forbid all those "violent" video games. But here in Germany for our politicions tend to overreact, whenever something bad (like the school shooting) happens.

Of course they should do something. For example try to solve the problems in society which are the "real" reason for the shooting (e.g. giving our youth a perspective for the future). But they prefer to chose the easy way and ban things just because the public needs a scapegoat. This here is just acting for the sake of acting.

But I'm pretty sure in the end nothing will happen at all and you'll still be allowed to play paintball here. Or at least I hope so...

Oh and one more thing concerning your "Silly Germans": please don't generalize us!



jv103 on 12 May 2009
Riot said:
jv103 said:
If Germany wants to be consistent they should disband their military - I mean those are real weapons, right? Of course, that would be stupid as that is an easy way to get annexed by another country (They know this quite well). Silly Germans.

 

Of course it is stupid to ban paintball.It is even more stupid to forbid all those "violent" video games. But here in Germany for our politicions tend to overreact, whenever something bad (like the school shooting) happens.

Of course they should do something. For example try to solve the problems in society which are the "real" reason for the shooting (e.g. giving our youth a perspective for the future). But they prefer to chose the easy way and ban things just because the public needs a scapegoat. This here is just acting for the sake of acting.

But I'm pretty sure in the end nothing will happen at all and you'll still be allowed to play paintball here. Or at least I hope so...

Oh and one more thing concerning your "Silly Germans": please don't generalize us!


No more generalizing - my bad. Germany is the largest (or one of the largest I forget) exporting country in the world - so at least you have (had) a smarter economy. 



Riot on 12 May 2009
jv103 said:
Riot said:
jv103 said:
If Germany wants to be consistent they should disband their military - I mean those are real weapons, right? Of course, that would be stupid as that is an easy way to get annexed by another country (They know this quite well). Silly Germans.

 

Of course it is stupid to ban paintball.It is even more stupid to forbid all those "violent" video games. But here in Germany for our politicions tend to overreact, whenever something bad (like the school shooting) happens.

Of course they should do something. For example try to solve the problems in society which are the "real" reason for the shooting (e.g. giving our youth a perspective for the future). But they prefer to chose the easy way and ban things just because the public needs a scapegoat. This here is just acting for the sake of acting.

But I'm pretty sure in the end nothing will happen at all and you'll still be allowed to play paintball here. Or at least I hope so...

Oh and one more thing concerning your "Silly Germans": please don't generalize us!


No more generalizing - my bad. Germany is the largest (or one of the largest I forget) exporting country in the world - so at least you have (had) a smarter economy. 

 

We also build the best cars, have the best beer and a pretty good welfare system...oh, and our women look damn good, too (and on top of that are allowed to appear nude in television without creating a scandal)

 

But aside from that, some things here totally piss me off. Especially some of our politicians do a very bad job at the moment and many, many stupid laws are enacted.

Mostly concerning the so called "Jugendschutz" (protection of minors). The ban of paintball is just the tip of the iceberg. For example a politician from the CSU called Joachim Hermann recently said that ego-shooters are as bad as child porn...yeah, you've read right. The bavarian minister of the interior actually said that Killzone, Counterstrike and Halo are on one level with one of the sickest crimes on the planet and should be dispised.

Oh, and for someone who collects DVDs they have made another stupid decision. In order to prevent kids from buying DVDs which aren't suited for their age, they attached big ugly labels right on the front cover of every single movie. So it ist impossible to buy a good looking steelbook and I have to import all of my DVDs from Austria or Switzerland...and just in case you're wondering how the front covers now look here in Germany:

...and no, you cannot remove the ugly label, because it has to be printed on the frontcover.

 

To be honest, it is good to see that also people from other countries think that our goverment is doing a lot of BS right know. We would need someone like Obama, who takes a chance on a fresh start.

Don't get me wrong. I absolutly love my country, and many things here in Germany are very good. But some of the crap that is going on here at the moment, makes me wonder if it wouldn't be better to live somewhere else for a while...