In Germany every federal state has local laws for certain things, one of them is the educational system.
Unless they changed it, if you dropped out of school in Thüringen by failing to graduate, you would have no official qualification at all. You would not only not graduate, you would also lose all official qualifications you archieved during your school career. You'd have to start back in first grade, basically.
Two years ago or some point around that time, a student went on a killing spree in his school after getting into that situation. His parents were clueless because he was an adult (i.e. 18 years or older) and as such it was his decision whether his parents were to be informed about problems he had at school or not.
Of course people blamed tv and computer games for that and IIRC he conveniently had some nazi icons in his room, so it was easy to just call him insane and get on with life instead of thinking about actually changing anything.
I don't know whether the censorship (Oh, sorry, I meant to say "child protection") laws getting stricter had something to do with it, but it'd be likely.
AFAIK the laws were changed to conform to the ones all other states had: you can drop out, but you always keep all qualifications you earned.
Weapon laws DID get stricter tho, not like that'd have any effect (as you already needed a license for most kinds of weapons anyway and those licenses are not as easy to get as in some other countries).