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Highway Shooters Claim To Emulate GTA
Thanks to Yahoo! for their story regarding teenage stepbrothers who randomly fired at cars on a Tennessee freeway, killing one person and wounding another, and told police they were inspired by Grand Theft Auto's sniper mode. According to the piece: "From a wooded area near their home at the Smoky Mountain Country Club, the boys fired a .22-caliber rifle up to 25 times through a break in the trees at cars driving along Interstate 40 about two miles east of Newport. They said they were bored and decided to shoot at tractor-trailer rigs, just like in the video game, 'Grand Theft Auto.'" According to this IOL/Reuters article, "Prosecutor Al Schmutzer told Judge Ben Strand that the boys told authorities they were mimicking the video game by trying to hit the sides of passing trucks."
I did this as a kid (with a BB Gun) and that was before GTA. I guess I can blame it on the Duke Boys.
so that's what you're suppose to do in the game...
no wonder I suck playing GTA3.
-my other sig is your mom
There's not any tractor-trailers in GTA.
Sorry Mr. Prosecutor, got to come up with something better than that.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
We need to make a game where people jump off a cliff and kill them selves to finally clean out the shallow end of the gene pool? Sheesh. People will say anything these days to shift blame from themselves.
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Unix is very user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are.
When I was nine, I wound up in the hospital with three broken fingers becuase I tried to imitate Super Mario by punching bricks that were floating in the sky. Those were the days.
The ESRB rating for GTA3 and VC is 17+. What were these kids doing with a game that they shouldn't be playing? They should sue the parents for negligence.
the pun is mightier than the sword
The real question is, who was dumb enough to give these kids a gun.
They should receive the same punishment, because through their action/inaction they helped kill this driver.
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Unix is very user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are.
"Prosecutor Al Schmutzer told Judge Ben Strand that the boys told authorities they were mimicking the video game by trying to hit the sides of passing trucks."
Yeah, and he probably forget to mention to the judge that due to the lack of parental attention and involvement in these boys lives, they grew up to be anti-social and depressed kids who deep-down really just wanted somebody to pay attention to them while their parents sat on the couch, drank beer, and worshipped the idiot box.
Now if they were imitating a game by shooting at tractor trailers and trying to hit the trailer (those of which ther are none of in GTA3/GTA:VC) how the hell did they hit people. They must not play many FPS's either if they cant hit the broad side of a truck without hitting a person in another car ... This is just what the Games=Violence activists need, more ammunition (no pun intended)
Maybe they should outlaw tractor-trailer rigs. That will fix this little problem.
Kids these days are awfully lucky. When I was a kid, we actually got blamed for what we did. If I'd had excuses like this childhood would have been a hell of a lot more fun.
I was unaware that Tennessee was even a state still. Damn NY public schools.
and went on a fencing spree into the city and also had sex with anything i saw..
seriously, geez...
i don't remember shooting tractor rigs in gta though..
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
I think the sad facts are, idiots and psychos will always find something bad to emulate. If there were no games, they would been inspired to shoot at people by a movie. If there were no movies, they would have been inspired by the Washington sniper, or the US government.
If someone doesn't know the difference between fantasy and reality then obviously playing computer games and watching TV could cause them to do something bad. But the problem is with them, not with the game or film.
Ok... let's be frank. I believe in Personal responsibility. If I do something dumb, I'm supposed to pay. I believe that if I smoke, I get cancer, I died, I asked for it... but let's assume for a minute that the companies should live under the same rule.
For smoking, this means the following. The fabric industry is the cause of a very small amount of publicly spent medical costs per year. The smoking industry is (indirectly) the cause of the majority of medical expenses per year. However, both the fabric and smoking industries pay the same amount of taxes (at least before the suits). Is this responsible? I'm not sure where I fall on this because I'm still trying to figure out my stance.
On an individual level. Say, I never work out, so I'm fat. I get so fat that I can't work, so I live on welfare. And I completely live off of the guy who takes care of himself and works hard. Is this responsible?
I think I've decided that the smoking industry is the fat guy who doesn't work. I think the same thing about the piece of the porn industry that the justice dept is sueing right now. And truthfully, I think the same thing about Rockstar.
Nintendo and Super Mario cause very little aggression. The one guy's post about mario inspiring violence was marked funny because you never hear about someone killing someone else with a hammer they can't keep from bouncing and playing a tune. However, this is not the first violent act performed because of (at least) some relationship to video games. It's very difficult to argue that these things have absolutely no effect on you. If you see violence all of the time, it's difficult to argue that it has no effect. If you take part in violence all of the time (real or unreal), it's difficult to argue that it has little effect.
All that being said, Rockstar and Nintendo pay the same amount and are recognized as equals. Is that responsible?
Certainly every man at his best state is but vapor
Point 1) There are No Tractor-Trailers on the roads, for shooting in either Grand Theft Auto III or Grand Theft Auto Vice City. Looking into previous revisions of the game, which don't have the aforementioned 'Sniper Mode', the closest you can get to a Tractor Trailer is a snub-nosed fuel tanker truck.
Point 2) Where did they get the gun? Notice how everyone is 100% ready to jump on the video game... my question... WHERE THE FUCK DID THEY GET THE GUN? I mean, of course the gun isn't dangerous. No way. Guns never kill people. That's why cops and 'sportsmen' carry around RAZOR SHARP DVDs.
It's fucking obscene. I can't wait to see what happens to such good titles (and yes, you have to admit, even if you hate the content with a passion, the games are done really well..)
Informatus Technologicus
The best line by far is :"I didn't want to hurt anyone"
.22 rifle and shoot at cars...wtf are you trying to do?
You got to be shitting me. You take a
If you're shooting a rifle anywhere but at the shooting range, you're shooting to kill as far as I know.
Even in GTA, you only ever shot to either blow up the truck or kill the driver.
It's absurd that anyone believes their bullshit.
In Soviet Russia, the television watches YOU!
What if I start a bunch of really sick and twisted lawsuits against major companies, and loose in court,
can I say I was inspired by SCO and blame it on insanity and get away with it?
Sure it's conceivable for a 13-year-old to have a concept of "the rest of my life", and for him to imagine the guilt he will feel over that length of time, but could that maturity and self-awareness really exist in the sort of kid who shoots at cars because he did it in a computer game?
Methinks an adult had a hand in writing that letter.
Personal responsibility and accountability is perhaps the most important thing that people can teach their kids. However, it seems that popular culture is increasing making it appear that people are rewarded for lying, cheating, killing, bribery, getting something for no effort, etc. Take Enron, WorldCom, the current Republican administration, reality television, nationalized health care proposals, Grand Theft Auto (to be on topic, of course), public schools, the Earned Income Credit, short-term cash loans, pre-approved credit, six-year car loans, no-money-down mortgages, rent subsidies, many organized religions and labor unions, student loans, professional sports, soft drink commercials, and so forth.
People need to be much more cynical than they are. They need to realize that both large government (whether Republican or Democrat flavored) and large corporations do not act in the interests of individual people. They are much too wealthy, powerful, and corrupt to care. They are their own means and their own ends. People need to stand up for themselves in the midst of this, vote their conscience with both their wallets and their ballots, and be prepared to sacrifice materialistic prestige and social popularity in favor of knowing they made the right decision and did the best they could. Corporations and government need to become more modest and come back to realizing that they exist because of and for the People, not the other way around. It seems that every day the opposite of this is actually happening, and, ultimately, people will exist miserably in a rusty machine of regulation and consumption and live in complete fear of their creditors and their own government.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
From the article: William Buckner, 16, and Joshua Buckner, who turns 14 Sunday, pleaded guilty to reckless homicide, reckless endangerment and aggravated assault.
A 13-year-old and a 16-year-old. Now, I think the argument could be made that a 16-year-old MIGHT be mature enough to play GTA (obviously not Billy-boy, though), but WTF was a 13-year-old doing playing that game?!? To add on to that, why have I seen kids - young kids - in game stores getting M-rated games? My wife and I watched a 9- or 10-year-old kid and his mother buy Vice City earlier this year, and the mother asked him if he wanted the strategy guide! Obviously that's one smart little kid...
Now, don't get me wrong: I love the GTA series, but I'm 30. I wouldn't have let me at 13 play GTA, and I sure as hell know my mother wouldn't have, either. At 13, I couldn't handle that game, I know that.
Where the hell are these kids' parents? Is Tennessee going to prosecute those idiots (I hope!)?
25 charges of public mischief.
24 charges of attempted murder.
1 charge of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill.
1 charge of murder one (since they clearly planned it).
The statement that they were inspired by GTA is irrelevant. In the 16th century, some Catholic nuns started to walk around with heavy pelvic thrusting all the time. They claimed it was because Satan had visited their convent and ravaged them in both holes with his evil, barbed, bifurcated penis. Did Satan really do that? No, not any more than GTA is responsible for this.
An action is not the same as an idea -- it takes a diseased mind to put an idea like, "it's fun to kill people" into practice.
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
I tried the same excuse when I bit a guy's finger off and jumped to my fiery death in a pit of magma. I'd read about it in a book and it seemed cool.
But seriously folks gun control is this issue here, not video games, or movies, or the sulky, moody, violent, careless, callous and fundamentally stupid nature of teenage boys.
America has a lot of such boys and a lot of guns. Together they'll cause deaths. They'll never be rid of the boys so they'll have to do something about the guns.
If they have to be pried from Charlton Heston's cold dead fingers I say "your proposal is acceptable".
erroneous: look me up in a dictionary
I hope when I finally do something stupid and evil that there is something popular that I can blame it on.
Ehh...
Doom made me do it...
GTA made me do it...
Satan speaking through my dog made me do it...
Further proof that there should only be one punishment for violent crime; an industrial meat grinder.
You can't blame video games for sheer stupidity.
I can tell a lot of readers have lived in/near big cities most of their lives. A .22 is a small caliber rifle, and lots of people have them. To give them the (marginal) benefit of the doubt, it was the probably older kid's and meant for hunting. These were a couple of bored kids tired of shooting squirrels or stop signs and decided to shoot at moving targets, and are now (hopefully) horrified by what happened. (That's giving them the benefit of the doubt obviously - they may only care that they got caught, not that they hurt anyone.) The mere fact that they had a rifle doesn't mean anything; the fact that they seemed to think shooting at vehicles with people in them was ok does mean something.
GTA is a smoke screen, and probably came from leading questions from the prosecutor hoping to get a name for himself or to shift blame - there is no point in GTA where you randomly shoot at trucks. You shoot at people, so if they were emulating the game then they knew full well that people could die.
The sad part is that the 'juvy' distinction should be lifted for homicides. These murdering kids will be out at 19 each, and aren't going to be able to do anything besides turn to crime.
R: That voice. Where have I heard that voice before? B: In about 365 other episodes. But I don't know who it is either.
A 40 year old man was arrested in Chicago this morning:
"He started acting weird" mentioned his coworkers, Timothy Arcade 40 year old, went and bought a bunch of aspirins and throw them in the floor across all the cubicles, then he proceeded to eat them while making a "snacka" "snacka" sound effect, several coworkers and security officers tried to stop him, but he elluded them succesfully, in his way he also grabbed some cherries that were in the middle of the office for no apparent reason.
When the police finally arrived and arrested the man, he stated he was just trying to emulate pacman after hearing this the policeman let the poor man go and went to burn down namco's office on chicago.
Later that afternoon , the police had to arrest Timothy again, after eating a large Pill in one of the corner cubicles he actually attemped to eat the coworkers that were chasing him.
In other news some other 40 year old, was arrested yesterday for soliciting but he was let go when he confessed he was just emulating Leisure suit larry. The police is looking for sierra's offices to burn them down.
VideoGames: the best way get you off the hook... always!
Go ahead MOD my day!
More opinions here
I'm currently a free man! And I owe it to this kind of defense! I was one of the first to download that Postal 2 demo... and stabing people in the face with a shovel, covering them in gas, then lighting them on fire was the most fun I've had in years! I had been doing that for like an hour a day... every day. Well, when there was a power outage and I couldn't get my daily dose of stabity death, I took my shovel and gas and headed into the next subdivision.
Long story short, I'm free because I was "insane" and needed "help". And blaming the game helped me stay out of prison for 3 counts of murder.
For anyone who is still pending litigation and wants to go full-on for the insanity plead, fire your lawyer and defend yourself... go for the chewbacca defense. It adds a special bit of believeability.
Once in a great while, a couple of nuts raised by twats go off and kill somebody. Obviously it's a very rare case. Or should we try to make it impossible? Oh, this is America, we're working for a zero-risk world. See you in Utopia!
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
sorry about the "moron" barb in my other comment. a bit out of line.
MORTAR COMBAT!
...can a pair of stupid kids play a game, get a gun, and start shooting people... ...and have people immediately jump on the fact that they played a game instead of HAVING A FUCKING GUN!
I see my shadow changing, stretching up and over me...
Everybody knows in GTA3 you can only fire uzi's out your car window, and unless you are doing a job, you can't pick up anyone else.
Amateurs.(Vice City was in the past, doesn't count)
Some people love their country as a child loves a dog. As far as the child is concerned, the dog can pee on the carpet, chew up the shoes, and bite the neighbors all it wants -- the child does not see these flaws, and continues to love the dog unconditionally.
Some people love their country as an adult loves a dog. The dog shouldn't pee on the carpet, chew up the shoes, or bite the neighbors, and the adult gets mad at the dog and does what they can to stop the inappropriate behavior -- but at the end of the day, the adult loves the dog, too, as much as the child does.
- - -
I am not calling anyone a child here, but simply making an analogy. I believe that Michael Moore, myself, and many others love this country as adults love a dog, while a whole lot of other people love this country as children love a dog.
Here's the good news: at the end of the day, the dog is still loved, and neither type of love is a threat to the well-being of the dog.
Here's the unsurprising part: those that love this country unconditionally believe that pointing out the flaws of this country == not loving this country. That is simply not true, and while you can shout us down all you want, we're going to keep on pointing out the flaws, for one reason:
We want to fix the flaws so that the country, like our dogs, can live a long and healthy life. I think we can all agree on that.
-Dave
Wait a second, this is sounding like the FBI profile they always turn out five minutes after they find out there's a serial killer of any kind.
Yes, I agree that the parents probably weren't doing their job. But at some point you have to blame kids for what kids do. These weren't little 6-year-olds with no conception of the permanence of death, or the lethality of bullets. They were teenagers. They knew what they were doing, and they did it.
You say "people are once again looking for the scapegoat to blame" yet yourself blame the parents. Sounds like scapegoating to me. The blame for this rests on the shoulders of the perpetrators.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009