Virginia Echoes in Erfurt

The rampage at Virginia Tech in the United States on Monday that saw 33 killed has struck a chord with people in Erfurt, the site of Germany's worst school shooting.

"When I see and hear all the reports on the news about Virginia Tech, everything from five years ago comes flooding back," said Christiane Alt, the principal of Erfurt's Gutenberg Gymnasium, the school where 16 people were killed by a 19-year-old student who then took his own life.

Christian Drechsel, a pupil at the Erfurt school at the time of the shooting, said he can understand how the Virginia Tech students must be feeling.

"I know the feelings of the people, and if a group of people experience the same tragedy, it kind pulls people together as if they were a family," Drechsel said.

"You get closer to people because they feel the same way you feel," he added. "If you look in their eyes you will see the same feelings you feel."

Reliving the horror

Some of the Gutenberg Gymnasium pupils who lived through the massacre are still undergoing psychological treatment.

"The people I'm helping now who experienced the massacre sought psychological help very late," said psychologist Alina Wilms. "They first tried to deal with the situation on their own and at some point realized that just doesn't work."

Wilms also said that seeing reports of the Virginia Tech massacre sometimes cause victims or eyewitnesses to relive their own trauma again.

Calls for tighter gun controls

As Virginia Tech students begin and the people of Erfurt continue to deal with their shock, a political debate about tighter gun control law has reignited.

Drechsel, however, said he believes such incidents are the result of social problems rather than the availability of guns.

"These people have problems, and if they are not helped, such things will happen again in America, and again in Germany," Drechsel said.

In comparison to the United States, Germany had strict gun laws even before the Erfurt shooting.

In Germany, all firearms must be marked and registered. Fully automatic weapons are banned, and people wanting to buy a hunting rifle must undergo background checks that can take up to a year.

In Virginia, although guns are widely available, they are banned on any university campus.

Criminals, not guns, kill people

German gun lobbyist Joachim Streitburger said it's people who are dangerous, not guns.

"The legal gun owner is not a problem for public safety," said Streitburger. "It's the illegally held gun that is."

Of all the gun crimes in Germany, less than 1 percent involve a legally owned gun.

Streitberger, from a group called "Forum Waffenrecht" (Forum for Weapons Rights), said that when a shocking killing spree takes place, politicians always leap on the issue of tighter gun controls.

"After the shooting in Erfurt, one proposal was that we have to prohibit every pump action gun," said Streitburger. "The fact is that the guy who did the shooting at Erfurt didn't even use the pump gun; he had one with him but he didn't use it."

Targeting legal weapons, however, won't stop further attacks from criminals, he added.

Streitburger's arguments are in line with those of the US gun lobby, which say that to eradicate firearms completely punishes law-abiding citizens not those who break the law.

As ceremonies for the victims of the Virginia shooting continue in the United States, officials at the Erfurt school have said a memorial service is planned for April 26 to commemorate those killed in 2002.