[purplepatrick]

Perhaps it has to do with the fact that Germany has a written legal code. This could mean that punishments are more strictly classified than under a, say, precedence-based common law system. Changing the classification could move these kinds of crimes into harsher punishment bands.

[andrewflnr]

The law being written does not prevent changing it[0]. Someone changed the written law once to add these weapon-specific provisions, they can do it again. And unless the optimal provisions for date rape drugs are identical to those for weapons, they probably should do it again.

[0] It might actually be easier to change a properly written law. I hate our stupid precedent-based system in the US.

[Beijinger]

No law, no crime. [nullum crimen sine lege]

If aliens land in Germany on a field and a peasant shoots them with his shotgun, he would have committed no crime in my opinion. No murder, since Aliens are not humans. It would not be illegal hunting, since aliens are not animals. Illegal discharge of a firearm?

In the US the outcome may be very different.