Germany does not need to tighten its gun laws in response to school shootings by a teenager in southwestern Germany last Wednesday, Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said.
Some German politicians have called for a ban on private gun ownership and urged authorities to set up airport-style security systems at schools in response to the massacre, which left 16 people dead, including the killer.
"I can't see how a change in weapons rules would contribute anything to solving the problem," Mr Schaeuble, an ally of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, told Reuters.
In Germany's worst school shooting in seven years, 17-year old Tim Kretschmer shot dead 12 people at his former school and three more outside before turning his gun on himself after being wounded in a police shootout.
The teenager used his father's legally-registered nine-millimetre Beretta pistol. The father, a member of a shooting club, had 15 guns and 4,600 rounds of ammunition at home.
Germany toughened gun laws in 2002 after a school shooting in the eastern city of Erfurt.
The changes raised the minimum age for gun ownership to 21 from 18 and required gun buyers under 25 to present a health certificate. German gun control laws already required applicants to pass rigorous exams that can take up to a year.
Mr Schaeuble ruled out setting up weapons detectors at schools.
"Do we now want to treat pupils like passengers at the airport? Imagine the effect on children growing up under such circumstances. It's absurd! I think it wouldn't help us at all."
"We shouldn't think about tougher laws all the time, but think about what we can change in society," he said, asking whether it was useful that Germany's two main TV channels were showing boxing matches on Saturday evenings and criticising a rise in violent action films.
"It used to be sex. Now violence seems to be the new temptation," he said.
Mr Schaeuble described the shootings as a "horrible event".
"He gets the weapon. He has masses of ammunition with him. He enters the school and then shoots, shoots, shoots."
Mr Schaeuble addressed youth crime and violence at a G6 meeting of interior ministers from the EU's six largest countries in Berlin yesterday, where officials from Britain, France, Italy, Poland, Spain and Germany would be joined by new US Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.
"The Americans just had a shooting spree too," Mr Schaeuble said, referring to a rampage in Alabama last week in which a man killed 10 people. "There's nothing specifically German about this. We will talk about it," he said.
The ministers also addressed cooperation in the fight against international crime and terrorism, as well as migration.