Thursday, May 7, 2009

Major League Paintball Held Hostage: Alert!

It hasn't been the Millennium Series month, has it? Seems it's silly season for German politics and that means it's time for more gun laws--even if your gun isn't, er, really a gun. German law already requires paintball markers to have the dreaded "F" stamp, the .68 caliber designation and an authorized dealer's mark but that's not enough apparently as the politicians are debating the wisdom of banning markers altogether as they allow peeps to simulate violence or some such similar absurdity. (In past years German authorities have confiscated plenty o' paintball markers for being insufficiently stamped.) And all this just in time for the MS's Bitburg (Germany) event at the end of May wherein the Millennium is going to try to rectify the failures of Malaga.
Will they (the politicians) or won't they? And will it have any impact on Bitburg? Heck, does all the legal hoop jumping to even bring a marker to Germany to play for a weekend impact the turnout? I'd be inclined to think twice but then I'm lazy and that all sounds like work.

UPDATE: It was late and I forgot to add any links last night but anonachris had your back and posted this one in comments. It's an English translation of a German story from Der Spiegel.

4 comments:

anonachris said...

I wonder if our industry is getting big enough to where we need to start "donating" money to our benevolent leaders (in both parties). Oh no no no, it's not buying influence of course. We'd just be supporting those who's policies we like....

Maybe at election season we could see them playing paintball instead of duck hunting.

anonachris said...

FYI, here's the translated news article about paintball being banned in Germany. The two major political parties are both in agreement to the ban. Germany is actually a huge market so this will be a big blow to the industry if it passes.

http://209.85.229.132/translate_c?hl=en&u=http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/0,1518,623312,00.html&rurl=translate.google.com&usg=ALkJrhjjKmZZm2x1q3pX1dy6rQscpZ3GWQ

raehl said...

The problem is that you not only have to donate money, you have to beat the gun lobby, which is nigh impossible.

The politicians can't do much with guns, but have to look like they're doing something, so they're just going after the weakest thing they can find.

Baca Loco said...

Thanks A-C
IT was late last night and I forgot the links in this post and one above. Was just dropping by to fix that and see you've handled this one already.