Berlin - Responding to a school rampage in March in which a teenager shot 15 people dead, Germany's government on Wednesday approved tougher gun laws, including spot checks to make sure private guns are locked up. A controversial ban on paintball, a game in which teams ambush one another by shooting paint pellets, was dropped from the bill.
An aide to Chancellor Angela Merkel said earlier that parliament would instead be invited to pass a resolution calling for a prohibition on paintball.
The bill, which must now go before legislators, steps up checks on guns, toughens penalties for those who flout the terms of gun licences and makes it illegal for persons under 18 to use large- calibre weapons.
Police will be able to conduct spot checks on arsenals if they believe that gun locks are not properly secured, rather than only being able to intervene after a crime has been committed.
"Our aim is to make it harder for young people to get access to guns," Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said in statement. The March massacre triggered calls for tighter rules, but German shooting clubs and paintball players campaigned against plans for a much tougher crackdown on all gun-like weapons or events where people play at being soldiers.
Tim Kretschmer, 17, a former pupil at a school at Winnenden near Stuttgart, shot nine pupils and three teachers on a rampage on March 11. He killed three more people as he fled, before killing himself.
On Tuesday, Wolfgang Bosbach, deputy leader of Merkel's Christian Democratic caucus, said a ban on paintball and "practical shooting," another form of gunplay, could be promulgated by regulation if parliament passed a resolution calling for this.
The latter sport, using pistol-style guns to rapidly shoot at moving targets, follows a code set by the International Practical Shooting Confederation (IPSC), founded in 1976.
