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I tire of irrelevant old people legislating my life.

by Kupok

In direct response to last month’s shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, the following has happened:

* Senator Jay Rockefeller introduced a bill calling for the U.S. National Academy of Sciences to study how video games and other media affect children.

* Three separate events were organized to collect and destroy violent video games.

* The Massachusetts Department of Transportation removed nine violent arcade games from four public rest stops.

* Vice-President Joe Biden asked representatives from the video game industry to meet with him and others to discuss how to prevent future school shootings.

* President Obama called on Congress to “fund research into the effects that violent video games have on young minds.”

* In discussing how to protect children from gun violence, the White House said, “The entertainment and video game industries have a responsibility to give parents tools and choices about the movies and programs their children watch and the games their children play."

* Representative Diane Franklin put forth a bill proposing a 1% tax on violent video games pay for mental health programs and law enforcement efforts related to the prevention of mass shootings.

* Representative Jim Matheson introduced a bill to “prohibit the sale of adult-rated video games to children.”

* In propping up a new bit of gun legislation, Senator Christopher Murphy said, "I think there’s a question as to whether [the shooter] would have driven in his mother’s car in the first place if he didn’t have access to a weapon that he saw in video games that gave him a false sense of courage about what he could do that day."

* Countless opeds have been written calling for the regulation or outright ban of violent video games.

Gracious, the shooter must have been positively obsessed with violent video games for this much hoopla to be made over them.  Right?

Well, no.  Here’s the thing: there is very little evidence that the shooter even played games, let alone was fixated on the violent ones.  Did he play games?  Yeah, he probably did.  Most of us do.  Like wearing shoes or eating cereal, it’s a very normal thing to do.  But where are we getting the idea that he was big into violent games?  Do you really want to know?

From the UK tabloids.

Yeah, I’m not kidding.  Every specific piece of evidence I’ve seen can be traced back to the following two tabloid articles.  You’ve probably heard two titles mentioned in connection with the shooter: Call of Duty and Dynasty Warriors.

The Call of Duty bit comes from The Sun which interviewed a plumber who’d done some work at the shooter’s home.

Yes.  A plumber.  This is what he said:

"

“It was a beautiful house but he lived in the basement. I always thought that was strange. But he had a proper set up down there — computers, a bathroom, bed and desk and a TV. There were no windows.”

“[The shooter] moved down there [after his brother had moved out]. The boys were fans of the military. They had posters all over the wall in the basement. They had one poster of every piece of military equipment the US ever made. It was a huge poster with every tank every made. The kids could tell you about guns they had never seen from the 40s, 50s and 60s. The kids who play these games know all about them. I’m not blaming the games for what happened. But they see a picture of a historical gun and say ‘I’ve used that on Call Of Duty’.”

Yeah.  That’s it.  Somehow this got twisted into “[he] spent hours playing bloodthirsty computer games such as Call Of Duty.”

Okay, now what about Dynasty Warriors?  You know, that T-rated series of games that feature no guns?  (The games take place in ancient China so all the weapons are swords, staffs, spears and the like.)

Well, that comes from Express which said that the shooter had an “unhealthy obsession for violent computer games” and that “Chillingly, his favourite video game was said to be a shockingly violent fantasy war game called Dynasty Warriors which is thought to have given him inspiration to act on his darkest thoughts.”

Where did Express get this information?  Who knows?  It’s not sourced.  At all.  For all we know, the author just made it up.

Read that list at the top of this blog again.  All that’s happened in the last month.  All that fear.  All that hysteria.  All that handwringing.  All of that stemming from the assumptions of a plumber and the unsourced claims of a UK tabloid writer.

( Kyped directly from Andrew Eisen at Game Politics. )

Viewed:	44 times
Added:	11 years, 2 months ago 26 Jan 2013 11:04 CET

16 Comments on this Journal

Leave a Comment...

KevinSnowpaw

11 years, 2 months ago

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sounds to me like being a fan of the military was a larger contributeing factor to the killings then any violent video game XD at least by there logic.

Im sick of this two, frankly it's allso an entirely impotent argument. The Supreme Court already ruled video games a protected form of speech. Any bill they pass into law can and will be over turned. The have done it before, literally, when california tried to make it illegal to sell M rated games to minors and tried to require a special lable for said games. It passed into law and immediately into nonexistence as the Supreme court fliped a table on there ass. XD

Still im damn tired of these morons who literaly know nothing about video games useing it as a excuse to et votes and show there supporters there "doing something" in office. It's a feather in there cap. The realy SICK thing is it takes a bunch of little kids DIEING before anybodys motivated to make these "positive" changes.

I love my country but I tell you,l I fucking hate my government X3 to meny poeple who dont have a clue.

Yiffox

11 years, 2 months ago

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I think if he didnt have access to a car...then no shooting, no fool would walk that far to kill people

so let's get rid of cars

KevinSnowpaw

11 years, 2 months ago

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@ Yiffox

i like the statement were he likely wouldent have drove the car to the site of the shooting had he not been enblodened by a firearm he likely saw in violent video games.

Because being obsessed with the military he wouldn't have POSSIBLY seen it ANY place other then a FPS.

Like a magazine, tv a movie a military poster a comic...I think im done here.

Flygon

11 years, 2 months ago

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@ Yiffox

As a railfan, I advocate getting rid of every single automobile on Earth.

RuscoIstar

11 years, 2 months ago

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@ Flygon

"I like trains :) "

Flygon

11 years, 2 months ago

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@ RuscoIstar

:p

FoxWolfie

11 years, 2 months ago

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People seem to have a need to blames some thing or some one whenever something bad happens.  The reality is that we are all different, and different things have a greater influence on each of us. Our biggest influence is usually going to be friends or family. Without having access to his private records, everything is only guessing.  I think he was simply one of those people who became unstable, for whatever reason, and happened to have a mother who taught him how to use guns, bought him the guns, but didn't follow through with teaching how to use them responsibly. It is possible that he had some mental reasons that made it difficult to be responsible. A good parent should be aware of that though. There is just no easy way to know why and what caused it to build up without asking him, and that chance died with him.

Not all of the reactions are unreasonable, but some clearly are.  Since everything affect all of us to different degrees, we can't say that games or movies did not affect him more than usual. We can't say that they did either.. They have some effect on some people, but so does almost everything else.

Here is one you mentioned that is good.
* Vice-President Joe Biden asked representatives from the video game industry to meet with him and others to discuss how to prevent future school shootings.

It is just a call for discussion to see if anything can be done, without assumptions that anything is to blame.

Here's one that is ridiculous, since it is already in place.
* Representative Jim Matheson introduced a bill to “prohibit the sale of adult-rated video games to children.”
It isn't always enforced, but most reputable game stores won't sell the adult stuff to younger kids. Admittedly, the age range between 13 and 18 is a gray area, and really does depend on the kid involved, but few places with sell an adult-rated game to a 10-year-old as it is.  Kids aren't supposed to be allowed into r-rated movies without parents either, but most theaters don't enforce it if a kid appears to be over 13. It's about the same as with games. It's not really the job of a theater or a game store though. They are already pretty watchful of the really young ones. It's more the job of parents and their own kids.  More laws aren't going to fix that one.

This one is unreasonable paranoia.
* Three separate events were organized to collect and destroy violent video games.

This one is potentially a good one.
* Vice-President Joe Biden asked representatives from the video game industry to meet with him and others to discuss how to prevent future school shootings.
Discussion is always good, as long as everyone involved is open and actually trying to help, without stepping on anyone who is not being a problem.

This on is already in place.
* In discussing how to protect children from gun violence, the White House said, “The entertainment and video game industries have a responsibility to give parents tools and choices about the movies and programs their children watch and the games their children play."
We already have parental tools. Games and movies already have rating systems. All TVs sold in the US have the V-chip, which allows parents to block programs by either channel or rating.  Information on all movies and games is easy to find on the internet.  Given that the tools have been in place for years, I'd say it's up to parents to actually use them if they feel the need.  We don't need more tools when few people are using the current tools to begin with.

Anyone who tries to blame a single reason is probably getting it wrong - whether it is games, movies, available guns, bullying, bad parenting, mental illness, whatever.  The real reasons are surely more complex, and can include some percent of all of those things, in different amounts for different people.  The best we are likely to do is to become a society where people can find an acceptable way out, prior to snapping - a viable pressure relief of some sort.

mogmoogle

11 years, 2 months ago

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They can take my video games at the same time they take my firearms. (That will be after all my ammunition is spent and I'm dead with the barrels of my rifles still glowing.)

yiharbin

11 years, 2 months ago

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our government is retarded >.>
absolute idiots, the lot of them....

Teko

11 years, 2 months ago

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http://www.geekosystem.com/violent-video-games-removed/

"...a life-sized, mounted machine gun on a video game."

Y'know, I can sympathize, to a point. But I don't deal well with liars.

The arcade games in question are Beach Head 2000, in which you fight off planes in a gun turret, and Time Crisis 2, in which you use a light gun to fight bad guys who kidnapped the President's daughter (yes really).

I've been to these rest stops. NONE of the games have a "life size machine gun". Nothing even close.

I'm not sure why those games are considered more violent than the space combat games that're still there, in which you kill hundreds and hundreds of bad guys. I guess it's because you're using lasers and not fake guns?

Of course, there's still dozens of gun stores all around the area, and they seem to have no trouble with those.

Alfador

11 years, 2 months ago

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@ Teko

If we want sheer numbers, I've killed more in the space of two minutes in a particular game on Steam than all the first-person-shooter gamers in the world have, ever.

Solar 2. You can smash star systems together and eventually turn into a black hole that eats the entire universe full of life-bearing planets and all their starships.

MaDrow

11 years, 2 months ago

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We should all move to Antigua and Barbuda because they give the finger to the meddling US gov.

All those game restrictions makes me roflmao because those give a right of existence for game warez DDL sites.

Even as a software engineer student, I'm surprised how some little children have even better computer skills than me or play adult games younger than i did.

Also friend to friend sharing / borrowing is booming in kindergarten / basic school. Almost every kid wants a R4 or Acekard for their DS instead of the legal games.

So yeah, more legalisation about restricting the people to play games doesn't help. A parent who cares about their children and raise them wisely but with a decent level of freedom for the development of their children will do.

RuscoIstar

11 years, 2 months ago

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