Yeah, so maybe this one will get me in trouble with the gamers, but I seem to be a trouble magnet lately, so bah. I do not believe playing violent video games CAUSES violent behavior, but I do think that violence in video games is a contributing factor in a lot of Columbine-style teen shooting sprees, and was in Columbine in particular. Sorry, but if absolutely everything in your life is wrong, AND you have very little adult guidance, AND you live in a culture that is swimming in firearms…then playing a few thousand hours of deathmatch Doom is just going to spark some ideas. You’re bound to think, “I’m so good at solving problems with a gun in a virtual arena, but so bad at solving them in life, maybe I just lack the appropriate tool.”
I still disagree with all efforts to ban, label, censor or ostracize video games. Better to attack harder but more significant targets, like parental and peer responsibility. I just think it’s ridiculous to say that video games have no share of the responsibility for teen violence. They have a small part in it, but it’s far outweighed by their entertainment value to people who are not already completely batshit crazy.
How about taking away the guns? There is a reason shootings are higher in the US than in other countries. It’s the crap firearms laws.
mallory said How about taking away the guns? … … It’s the crap firearms laws. The myopia is strong in this.
How about ADDRESSING THE CAUSE instead of addressing a symptom ? How about fixing a culture so broken that it worships jocks and belittles nerds — a culture in which jocks victimize and terrorize and torment and bully nerds until one day a victim snaps and feeds an Uzi magazine to his tormentors ?
And then you throw throw up your hands in horror and say “It’s the computer games.” or “It’s the fluorine in the water.” or “It’s the crap firearms laws.” or any other stupid excuse you can think of, because you can never admit to yourself that your darling little jocks could ever do anything wrong.
Until you fix the culture, you’re going to keep on having Columbines.
Canada has plenty of guns. Where are all their school shootings?
It’s not the guns. It’s not the video games. It’s none of these totally external things.
Check out Japan. No guns. No hand gun violence. You can play all the first player shooters you like, and no effect!
I don’t think there’s that many guns here in canada. People kill each other with knives, screwdrivers (and in one case a snowshovel :S) Yeah, there are shootings that go on, but here you can’t buy a gun in a bank
To add, I don’t think video games are the Cause of violence. Like, it may have some influence… I mean, after playing some GTA I dream of cruising the streets at top speed. However I’d have to be stupid to actually do anything like that. And I definitely won’t go shooting people.
You can all see the point Im going to make, just because you like shooting people and zombies and whatever else in a game, doesnt make you a dangerous or nasty person, All my friends are gamers to some degree and it gives us yet another topic to discuss, how to become better and all the related things that go with it, I too have had dreams of cruising around Liberty City, but I wouldnt go and actually do it. I think its a lot to do with bullying and your perceptions of the world you live in. You have a problem in a game, you shoot it dead, thats where it ends for most people. Others carry this over into the real world, and Im guessing thats under a tonne of bad and angry and revengeful emotions. I guess you will never know what goes through these kids minds to make them finally snap and to think ‘I have had enough of the antagonists, lets waste them’. I live in the UK and thankfully the law forbids firearms. Yes there are shootings but as far as I can see, the majority are gang related, sometimes it spills over into others lives, but I can not remember a huge amount of deaths in one happening, all by gunfire. Im sure there are loads of people in the UK that have gone through the exact thing as our US counterparts, but the lack of easy access to firearms have curtailed their ambitions. I can see the problem and its causes, but I would not know how to go about fixing the issues these kids have, simply because I never got the help I needed when I was bullied at school, just like them, the system failed me.
How would you go about fixing the issues raised here?
Mark.
I still don’t agree with you.
If a person was that bat shit crazy, there’s enough violence on television and the internet anyway. Singling out video games because they allow the user to interact with the environment is ridiculous.
Mark, are you forgetting the Dunblane Massacre we had, which is why we have stringent limitations on firearms? It works by the way – but it sadly won’t stop the crazies stabbing the shit out of each other. I’d also like to point out that the perpetrator of the Dunblane Massacre, Thomas Watt Hamilton, wont have played video games. He was just bat shit crazy. If you’re bat shit crazy and have access to a gun you’re going to have these incidents, the effects of video games will be minimal at most. Leave games alone. Mark is completely right: it’s about curtailing access to firearms.
Cheers for your time,
John.
Ignoring the fact that all the evidence suggests well-balanced people don’t have a problem with separation of reality from fantasy. And forgetting that murders with guns, even in the USA, are vastly inferior in number to other methods, and murders with assault weapons are near-non-existent. (Outliers exist, like Columbine, but they are VERY rare)
Placing all this aside and suggesting perhaps violent video games might lead some already unbalanced people to chose assault weapons over a knife, to kill groups of people and not just themselves, and to be more capable at it because they are more trained through the game; is still not reason enough to censor them.
Agoraphobia, not acrobphobia. Acrophobia was an online acronym word game.
Norway has as many guns per capita as the U.S. , but less than one tenth the number of gun related crimes pc.
So I s’pose you must be doing something wrong over there.
The guns aren’t the problem, even if they are, the benefits still far outweigh the risks.
The video games aren’t the problem. As long as a person can differentiate between reality and fantasy they are harmless. And if he can’t it can be any number of entertainment that could cause the shootings. Movies/tv involve violence, books involve violence, I even sometimes dream of violence.
The problem is society, unless a person is raised in a healthy environment there will be consequences. But considering the state of school environment, I’m surprised the shootings aren’t more common.
Jeff A,
Acrophobia: abnormal dread of being in a high place : fear of heights.
Agoraphobia: abnormal fear of being helpless in an embarrassing or unescapable situation that is characterized especially by the avoidance of open or public places.
He got it right.
Quick note: Areas in the US with the most violent crime are the same areas with the strictest gun laws. Why would someone willing to ignore laws about not killing people be stopped by laws saying they can’t have a gun?
Looking at the excuses of past eras (and some of these are still blamed today) shows the blame for violence on rock music, Dungeons and Dragons, TV, comic and other books, Black or Irish people, etc. In any case, someone who lacks the ability to separate fantasy from reality and feels no sense of personal responsibility is a danger even if they never read/watch/play anything.