interesting. thanks jehu.
this from today's guardian, more information about this situation which complicates the original story, as often seems to happen:
Quote:
Germany's broken schools
The rigid, old-fashioned German education system is a sad factor in the growing number of attacks on schools
Comments (70)
* Sabine Rennefanz
*
o guardian.co.uk, Thursday 12 March 2009
Yesterday's massacre at a secondary school in south-west Germany was the third gun spree at a German school in less than ten years. In 2002, a 19-year old murdered 16 people in his former high school. Four years later, an 18-year old entered his school with guns and explosives. Thirty-seven teachers and students were injured.
The pattern is always the same: a male teenager, living in a provincial town, the son of middle-class parents. As in the previous cases, Tim Kretschmer of Winnenden is described by classmates as "the quiet one". He left school last year, started an apprenticeship, loved table-tennis and horror movies: a typical teenager until he put on combat gear and went on a killing spree of shocking brutality.
What went wrong? It is tempting to demand stronger gun laws. After the shooting in Erfurt in 2002, the gun laws were tightened and the minimum age for owning a firearm raised from 18 to 21. Anyone under 25 trying to buy a gun needs to pass a psychological test.
But Kretschmer did not need to buy a gun. He had a father who was an active member of the local shooting club. Shooting clubs are popular in rural Germany. The father apparently did not think it necessary to lock away his weapons or ammunition. He stored his weapons collection as other people might store stamps or stuffed animals. The son just went to his father's workshop and took a Beretta and enough ammunition for 100 shots.
Besides the shockingly irresponsible behaviour of the father, one also needs to look at the situation in schools to explain why Germany might be susceptible to US-style shootings. When the Erfurt shooting took place in 2002, it was partly blamed on the difficult transition from the repressive society of the GDR to an open society. But Winnenden is in the so-called Musterland, the role model federal state of Germany.
There seems to be something wrong with German schools. After the US, Germany is the country with the highest number of teenage gun sprees. In Baden-Wuerttemberg, a number of threats of gun massacres have been made to the police in the last few years. Thankfully, they mostly remained fantasies.
More generally, attacks on teachers and students have become regular incidents. In one borough in Berlin it has been so bad that the council has introduced US-style private security guards at schools.
It might have something to do with the way the German schooling system works. German state schools have remained traditional, hierarchical institutions. Teachers are often quite old and lack social and psychological training. The average age of a teacher in Berlin, for example, is 54. The competition among pupils is tough and performance is the only thing that matters.
Studies have shown that Germany is one of the countries with the least social mobility in Europe. If you fail at school, your chances in life narrow dramatically. During the past ten years – after drastic reforms of the labour market and cuts in the welfare system – the social pressure has risen. Both the teenagers who became killers had problems at school, and for Tim, his former school seems to have epitomised the society he hated.
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Sabine Rennefanz: Germany's rigid, old-fashioned education system is a sad factor in the growing number of attacks on schools | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
so you have several factors introduced here.
first, the kid got the weapons from his father, who was a member of a local shooting club. this seems to abstract the situation from questions pertaining to gun control laws as such and pushes it onto micro-level stuff like why didn't this kid's father feel the need to lock up his guns?
second, you have a pattern that's set up and a general explanation for it--of the two, the second seems to me more important, but it isn't developed particularly well in the article (despite the title, which sets it up as the point)....
what do you make of this explanation?