Following the infamous Winnenden school massacre on March 11, 2009, in which a 17-year-old shot dead 15 people in the southwestern town in Germany, before killing himself, the German government has agreed to tighten gun laws. According to media reports,  random checks for gun owners will be implemented and paintball and laser tag will be banned.

This has lead to a debate erupting in the paintball and laser tag scene. Paintball is a sport in which players use air guns and rifles to shoot small paint pellets at opponents; whilst in laser tag, players wear vests with sensors and shoot at each other with an infrared-emitting gun.

“They simulate killing,” the deputy head of the conservative Christian Union parliamentary group, Wolfgang Bosbach, told the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung.