Stupid kid, stupider dad

The Times has an article by Fran Yeoman and David Charter about poor gun control:

The 'unremarkable' teenage killer who went on a rampage yesterday in southern Germany with his father’s Beretta had a deep fascination with guns and ready access to a domestic arsenal.
Germany was in shock last night after Tim Kretschmer killed fifteen people in a three-hour spree, including nine pupils and three teachers from his old school in the town of Winnenden, near Stuttgart.
To most who knew him, Kretschmer seemed normal, but the seventeen-year-old from an affluent family, who came back to terrorise the school that he left last year with poor grades, had a dark side that few would have guessed at.
His father, Jörg, who runs a packaging company, had a collection of fifteen firearms. He stored them in a locked cabinet at their large, comfortable, suburban home, apart from one handgun, which he kept in the bedroom and which his son stole.
Jörg seemed worried about his son’s lack of academic achievement and had taken him on as an apprentice at his factory. He had also introduced him to another adult world: the Leutenbach gun club, where he occasionally brought his son to share the thrill of high-calibre weapons.
Reiner Wehaus, a friend who shared his love of guns, said: “He knew his weapons really well. These were mainly air pistols, which fire pellets. He got himself his own arms cabinet and that covered several square metres of his wall; I reckon about thirty to forty weapons. Every day he went shooting in a forest somewhere behind the house. He was a rather good shot.” Mr. Wehaus described summer air pistol shoot-outs in the woods, with the boys wearing protection from the pellets. “Once or twice a year we would have air gun battles in the summer,” he told the Stuttgarter Nachrichten newspaper. “Everyone had protective goggles. He always shot me.”
All of this is still a far cry from explaining the devastation that Kretschmer wreaked on the community where he grew up and the school that he left at sixteen. What happened to the boy who excelled at table tennis and posed proudly with his trophies in school pictures? There were theories last night that being rejected by a girlfriend could have sent him over the edge. Investigators were focusing on the fact that almost all the school victims were female, perhaps suggesting a grudge. One neighbour noted that he had put on a lot of weight lately, another said that he had a collection of horror films. But police said that they remained baffled about a motive.
Palmieri Vincenz, 61, who works in the Bosch factory nearby and rents a house from the Kretschmers, has known the family for nineteen years. He said that the killer’s father was a “very nice, normal guy”. Mr Vincenz said that he had known Tim Kretschmer for years and saw him on the street regularly. He described him as a “normal and friendly . . . he did not seem like he had any problems”. Mr. Vincenz was at home yesterday morning when the police arrived at speed, accompanied by a helicopter. He went into the street and saw the teenager’s father go into his house with police. Officers then ordered Mr. Vincenz to go back into his own home. “They said, ‘Shut the windows, stay in the house, don’t move’. My heart was pounding. There were so many armed police in the place. Tim’s sister was in the same school. I heard that the sister jumped out of the window.”
Jutta Lautenschlager, who works in the small post office at the corner of the Kretschmers’ road, said that she knew the killer’s parents, but had not realised until yesterday that they had a son. “They were very friendly. They had a lot of money and a big Mercedes,” she said. “This is normally a quiet place; people are sad and shocked. They cannot believe what has happened. It is very sad for the parents.”
Ralf Michelfelder, a local police director, said that the killer’s parents were “absolutely shocked”. He added: “They are victims themselves. You must imagine if your son does that it was completely out of imagination.”
Few of the clichés about loners morbidly obsessed with apocalyptic internet chat rooms or violent video games seemed to apply to Kretschmer – although police seized his personal computer yesterday for examination. An online profile purporting to be his gave few clues. “What do I like? Nothing,” it said. “What do I hate? Nothing. Job? I’m afraid I’m still a pupil.” He did dress all in black, as had Robert Steinhäuser, Germany’s notorious pupil-killer of 2002, a nineteen-year-old from a middle-class family who killed sixteen with a pistol and shotgun at Gutenberg high school, in Erfurt.
Mr. Wehaus added: “He had no trouble with pupils or teachers at school, nor was he the type who was bullied. He was not the most liked but he had friends. He seemed fairly normal.”

Rico says let's see, kid's a loner, dresses all in black, has poor people skills... Nah, couldn't have seen that coming.