Word: winnenden
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...There has been heated debate over Germany's gun laws ever since a school shooting in the southern town of Winnenden on March 11, when 17-year-old Tim Kretschmar went on a rampage, killing 15 people before turning the gun on himself. After much wrangling between the conservative CDU and the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition government, the parties have finally agreed on a number of measures aimed at tightening Germany's gun controls, which are already quite strict compared with other European countries. (Read about Merkel in the TIME...
...locked away properly; raising the legal age for using a high-caliber weapon for target practice from 14 to 18; amnesty for people who hand over illegal weapons to the authorities; and biometric security systems to ensure that weapons are being used by their rightful owners. After the Winnenden shooting, it emerged that Kretschmar had used his father's gun, which he found in his parents' bedroom. His father had a permit to own the gun, but current law dictates that it should have been stored in a secure location...
...villages across Germany. According to the Interior Ministry, there are 10 million registered weapons in Germany and - more worryingly - up to 20 million illegal weapons. Germany tightened its gun-control laws in 2002, after a school shooting in the central town of Erfurt left 18 dead. But after the Winnenden shooting earlier this year, campaigners lobbied the government for even tougher legislation, which, they say, could prevent further massacres. (See pictures of the Virginia Tech tragedy...
...relatives of those killed in Winnenden say the proposed measures don't go far enough. They are calling for tougher controls, including a ban on high-caliber firearms and on violent computer games and videos. "The new measures are just cosmetic because the government is under public pressure to do something to tighten gun laws before the election in September," Hardy Schober, chair of the Winnenden Action Group and father of 15-year-old Jana, who died in the shooting, tells TIME. "We want high-caliber weapons to be banned, and handguns should only be stored under supervision...
...crimes are more disturbing than violent murders at schools. We deplore the tragic shooting in Winnenden, Germany, that left 16 dead on Friday. Such attacks shake communities to their cores, and we understand that, in the aftermath, societies must look within themselves to both understand why such attacks happen and to help prevent them in the future. In the aftermath, a call has gone out to remove violent video games from store shelves. Banning video games or enforcing a blanket social restriction, however, is not the answer...