On: Germany lifts Doom sales ban after 17 years

[soult]

This is what annoys me the most about the whole "Killerspiele" debate.

I played Counter Strike a lot, and yet pretty much everything I thought I knew about firearms from that game turned out to be completely wrong. How did I find out? I was conscripted into my country's armed forces.

[mhd → soult]

If I remember correctly, there are two main arguments: First, tactics. You learn how to move in a combat situation, you can theoretically recreate your school in your favorite game etc.

Secondly, it (along with violent movies) makes you more callous towards violence, so that you're able to pull the trigger (repeatedly) in the first place.

The latter is actually somewhat based on reality. The military has spent lots of effort in the last few decades to increase and focus the killing instinct of their soldiers. If I remember correctly, soldiers in WW2 (on any side) often shot over the head of their enemies because they couldn't imagine themselves killing another human being. Needless to say, the world's armies have spent a lot of moolah to correct that.

And while Germany apparently thought that once you're 18 it's okay to imprint you in that manner (well, theoretically, it's not like the German Bundeswehr does a good job with this -- or anything at all), adolescents should be "protected" from this at any cost.

It's a slippery slope with civil liberties in Germany. It's somewhat understandable that there were laws being put into place in '49 to prevent a Fourth Reich from rising. The problem is that once you start censorship for one reason, it's getting increasingly easier to extend the principle to other areas.

Meanwhile, I haven't read a single news item that has any problems with the fact that a lot of people on the African continent get killed by German guns. I hear that the G36s are quite popular on both sides of the Libyan conflict.