MMR: Germany's New Berlin Wall for Video Games

When I first read the headline about a new proposed law in Germany that would essentially outlaw violent video games, I scoffed at the idea and dismissed the chances of the bill actually being implemented in Germany or any other country belonging to western civilization. For those that don't know, the regional governments of Bavaria and Lower Saxony drafted legislation that would put game designers, publishers, and yes, players, in jail for up to a year for "cruel violence on humans or human-looking characters." That's right: human-looking characters in video games.

Why has such a fascist, reactionary bill been created? Apparently, a recent school shooting tragedy has pushed stringent video game laws to the next level in Germany.

Last month, 18-year-old student Sebastian Bosse showed up at his secondary school in Emsdetten, Germany, and opened fired on students and teachers before turning the gun on himself and taking his own life. Luckily, no one was killed but more than 20 people were reportedly injured during the tragedy.

If you don't already know where this is going, then you haven't been paying attention to current events over the last five or so years. Bosse was an avid video game player and loved titles like Counter-Strike and Resident Evil. Thus, legislators in Germany quickly made the connection that the video games were to blame for Bosse's actions. And as a result, lawmakers in Bavaria and Lower Saxony drafted a bill that would equate real-life violence and loss of life with the trivial killing of digital characters.

I haven't followed this story as closely as others, but from what I've read there has been no reported discussion among legislators about how Bosse got his hands on the firearms, which certainly raised my eyebrows. Bosse reportedly purchased three guns on the Web via an Internet auction site called EGun. That's right; he legally bought the guns, which apparently require no license, on the German version of eBay for guns. I've read scattered reports about how Bosse was miserable because he was viewed as a geek and social outcast by his classmates, yet I doubt the issue of bullying and teen depression came up much during the rush to indict video game developers and players.

But the truly shocking development came when I read that Bosse, who wore a dark trench coat and gas mask during his attack, took inspiration from Eric Harris, one of the two killers from the Columbine High School massacre in 1999. Several excerpts of Bosse's diary were published in the aftermath of the shooting spree, and indeed Bosse wrote frequently about how he idolized the Columbine gunmen as heroes because they struck back at the peers that bullied and abused them. In one diary entry, he wrote "Eric Harris is God."

If you think that's chilling, well, then don't watch Bosse's video diary.

"Since first grade, people picked on me, and I was a loser," Bosse says on the video. "Every kid in school who is different from the majority is a loner." He goes on about how he wanted to have friends, but was never accepted by his peers or his school.

He closes by saying: "This is war."