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Kids Kill, Victim Sues Game Maker
qbproger writes "Sadly, two kids decided to go outside and start shooting cars. They were mimicing a video game they had been playing, Grand Theft Auto. I think it's about time parents started paying attention to the rating on video games." The family of one of the victims has decided to file suit against Take Two Interactive, presumably deciding that blame should be assigned to whoever has the deepest pockets instead of to those who actually did something wrong.
That totally sucks as an insanity defense, and I'm calling these kids on it. "It's-a Mario Kart, you honour!" as a plea? Now a that's a spicy-a meatball. (fr1st)
How many of these cases have to be thrown out before people figure out they're not going to win?
What, do you expect parents to mentor and teach their children? It's all ClearChannel, XBox, and MTV from here on out.
Banaaaana!
Well, there's a name I didn't expect to see in a news story about frivolous lawsuits.
Jack "2 Live Crew, Cop Killer, Dear Policeman I Am God, EverQuest Killed My Son" Thompson, Florida's leading disgrace to the legal profession.
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who?
who?
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
On the other side of the coin, the victim might not be concerned about deep pockets. Instead, the victim is most likely in deep pain and may be under the impression the stopping the game company from making such games might also stop this pain from happening again.
Just on a personal note, I am not opposed to violent video games; I play them. I believe teenagers are more impressionable than adults, and we should be careful about their level of violence ingested.
it's not the fault of the parents that left guns around where little kids could get their hands on them. or for not teaching them to not shoot at cars. no way, that's too easy of an explination.
Just raise the taxes on crack.
This is another example of people not being responsible for thier own actions.
The game did it.
What happened?
In America we are imprisoned by our fear of them.
"Kids with guns don't shoot cars, Grand Theft Auto and Rockstar Games shoot cars!"
How to Download YouTube Videos
...I never liked GTA. There's a difference between cartoonish violence and one that approaches realism.
I think not! It's clearly a "crime simulator." I don't consider Microsoft Flight Simulator a game -- it's clearly a simulation, as its rules amount to replicating the reality of air travel. Grand Theft Auto clearly is attempting to replicate the reality of crime sprees, so why not just call it a crime sim?
Shame they didn't invent wolfenstein befor... :=)
I created my own player in Madden 2003 in which I placed myself on the New England Patriots.
Well when I showed up for training camp earlier this year they kept telling me to get the hell off the field. They wouldn't believe me that I really was on the team.
I'm seriously considering suing the makers of Madden for making me believe I really was on the team because they, of course, are at fault in this situation.
At least the linked article seems to take an objeective stance on whose fault it was, and present both sides of the argument. It even starts off with "For the middle and high school students who play the game for hours on end, it's a means of escaping the mundaneness of teenage life. But for two stepbrothers, 16-year-old William and 14-year-old Joshua Buckner, that escape turned deadly earlier this summer."
to this country?? Has the average intelligence dropped that fucking much?? Next thing you know people will be suing gun makers for the deaths of their kids. Or maybe suing McDonalds for getting fat. Wait a second. That's already happened. When the fuck did I get sucked into the Twilight Zone? And whatever happened to personal responsibility??
Who's the violent green guy playing basketball in the advertising bar? Is that another violent video game, or maybe a hosting company using violence to promote their product? How insensitive!
Well hopefully the people injured, and the relatives of those dead, will sue the parents for failing to teach their children the difference between consequence-less computer games and real-life actions that result in real effects.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
Let me tell you a bit about the experiences I had with my own son. You see, after his second viewing of The Silence of the Lambs, it took me a full month to remove the smell of the sewing discards from our basement...
So when are parents going to start being held responsible for their kids' actions?
They should be going to jail too.
"The industry needs to cough up money so victims and their families can be compensated for their pain," Thompson said.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again:
Any kids that went out and did stuff like that had problems before they ever got ahold of GTA.
The coolest voice ever.
That's exactly the right take on this, IMHO. Shortly after the loss of a loved one, it's going to be difficult for anyone to be completely rational and objective. How about cutting them a little slack and dropping the cynicism for once?
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
1: being irresonsible and leaving unlocked weapons around.
2: not teaching the kids gun safety
3: not knowing what the kids were up to
You never know, it might actually work! The next step would be, imagine this, that parents would actually be responsible for their childs actions!!
How is this
a) going to bring back their loved ones?
b) going to stop take two making GTA?
c) going to address the much wider issue of the availibility of guns to people?
From the article:
"The industry needs to cough up money so victims and their families can be compensated for their pain," Thompson said. "The shareholders need to know what their games are doing to kids and their families. They need to stop pushing adult rated products to kids. These products are deadly."
Amazing that some lawyer believes this...oh wait, no its not. If they win they'll make history for themselves as well as get a really good chunk of change.
Why can't I get on jury selection for stuff like this so when they ask me a question I can tell them what morons they are???
Kids are seeing that they can claim video games made them do it these days and they don't get labeled as murderers or as crazy. Its just another ploy to not accept responsibility.
Granted these kids admitted responsibility but they also blamed GTA. If they didn't they probably would have been in more trouble. Lesson for the kiddies out there. If you are going to commit a violent crime make sure you have a good scapegoat. These days movies and video games seem to work pretty well.
God Bless America, it is the American way. Hold those responsible for committing a criminal or murderous act for trial and maybe jail (unless they're politicians, CEOs, or rich kids with music, movies, TV, and/or video games excuses for murder), but accept that wrongs committed are life's little lottery games that you can collect on and should collect on to support the legal profession and win half the money.
Most good religious folks would do the same, I mean how much are you going to get out of a kid in jail or a parent that is so stupid as to leave weapons available for use by kids on themselves, parents, and others.
Some folks, like me, want to see the (children's' parents) owners of the improperly secured and loaded weapons used go to jail for 5 to 10 years. I believe, it would help over the long-run
OldHawk777
Reality is a self-induced hallucination.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
Violent games such as whack-a-mole have to stop. Next thing you know, your kids will start whacking random people with large mallots... will someone please think of the children? (and their victims)
It is so obvious that Jack Thompson jumped all over this. As I mentioned when this happened, whenever there is any juvenile violence that is remotely associtated with vidoegames, Jack Thomson is there to blame videogames and remove any possibility of personal responsibility.
This is the guy who said that the DC snipers were gamers and got nearly every mainstream media outlet to beleive it. This is also the guy who sent a 13 year old (possibly his son, I don't remember exactly) into Best Buy to guy M rated games. He has very good PR and is very good at getting media coverage beacuse he gives the media the kind of hysteria laden sound bites they love. This guy has an agenda and he needs to be watched out for.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
Are Parents the Gatekeepers?
How is this even a question? Yes.
Please allow me to quote Gabe from Penny Arcade:
"Like some kind of pornographic archeologist your 10 year old boy is probably rummaging through a stack of poorly hidden playboys from the 1970's at his best friends house right now. You cannot watch your kids all the time and you cannot ensure they will never see a boob or a gun before they are ready. What you can do is make sure that what they see and do in your house is appropriate and rely on some good old fashioned parenting skills to make sure that a quick glimpse of some blood in a videogame doesn't send them into a violent rage that ends with a school full of dead kids."
The coolest voice ever.
Just like every other idiot who's tried to place the blame on video game makers.
I don't know why some people don't realize that there's got to be something seriously wrong in a kid's head when he wants to go out and imitate killing scenes from video games. And that blame does not transfer to the video game maker. Just as the blame does not transfer to the maker of the gun the kid fired. If you consider how many people play/have played GTA, and then consider how many people commit violent acts "because of" GTA, you're looking at such a miniscule percentile that any accusation toward the game makers for "casuing" the violent acts to occur becomes moot.
Who doesn't like free music?
Well I guess they weren't that effective killing him...
*sorry
Until some kid walks into the hotel, runs over to the glowing, spinning tape, runs back out, heads right, outruns a car to hijack it, presses "X", hits "R1" as he fishtails around a corner on his way to the Ammu-nation, walks into the glowing disc, presses "X" again a few times to buy weapons, then auto-targets with "R1," I'm not going to believe that he learned how to do that because of Grand Theft Auto.
The game may present an idea, but there are far more steps involved in actually carrying this sort of thing out than those presented in a video game. What, did the kid run towards a spinning, levitating star after he shot at cars?
I really hate signatures, but go to my website.
The realism is much more fun.
GTA Three: Vice City: Now with better pedestrian-to-speedbump rendering
Banaaaana!
Your honor we wish to sue software company X because our son is a pimply-ass loser who's never screwed a real woman other than the digibabes on his console. We should be compensated for being deprived of future grandkids.
These juveniles have some very serious mental issues, and it's pretty clear the parents - in bringing this lawsuit - have a defect or two as well.
It's called TAKING RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR OWN ACTIONS folks. Or is that concept so long gone in today's nuclear family?
It's a crying shame that the courts could only lock these kids up until they are 19. They should lock the whole lot of them up for a good, long time.
This seems to be a theme that has been heard before, but sadly is tragic to both life and the and the innocent. While it seems like the game is the SOLE reason that these kids started doing this it is not so. There is a very good chance that the game may have prolonged this rampage instead of causing it. Today the average person is to be calm, reserved, with very little outlet. I myself find first person shooters a very nice way to relax if I am having a bad or rough day. Does this mean that I am going to buy some BFGs like I see on UT2003 and blow the crap out of everything that moves? NO! Many of these people who mimick movies or video games are already violent and mentally off balence. So by the parents suing Take Two is more to get money then justice. Instead of blaming incompitent parenting they blame an innocent company. Take Two is not sending messages that you sould in real life go and kill people, they simply made a sucessful game that is violent. For Take Two to be truely the problem or violent video games in general to be the cause of killing or violence there should at least be more then 1% violent crimes based upon them. There will always be violent people who will take ideas and construe them into wicked ways. People need to open there eyes and see that there are many things that we surround ourselves with that could easily be weapons but are used MAJORLY for good. I for one am sick and tired of the gaming industry getting hit below the belt because of get rich quick schemes and people who do not wish to take responsibility for their actions.
Next time I crash at 200 mph into a wall, I will sue Rockstar Games for making me think that the car would not get damaged and would bump away.
If a 14 year old and a 16 year old are too stupid to distinguish a video game from reality, their parents need to take some responsibility and keep their guns locked up. Also, these kids fired 25 shots at cars on the highway and got sent to juvie!!!. They should have been charged with murder one, and 24 counts of attempted murder and then left to rot the rest of their days in a cell. I can't believe that the judge actually considered giving them probation.
People who have a) that little regard for human life, and b) that little of an understanding of the difference between reality and a game, will NEVER be safe to have in the general population!
Parents that put more effort in outlawing adult entertainment than actually knowing whats goin on in their kids live are responsible for all this and for terrorism, too ;-(
I say we need more gay people to make this i-want-children hype stop.
From Carter, C. J., "U.S. Leads Richest Nations In Gun Deaths", Associated Press, Friday, April 17, 1998:
(selected figures for) gun-related deaths per 100,000 people in 1994:
United States 14.24;
Northern Ireland 6.63;
Canada 4.31;
Israel 2.91;
Australia 2.65;
England and Wales 0.41;
Japan 0.05
"You can justify anything by putting it in quotes, adding a famous name and making it a sig" - Albert Einstein
Wasn't this tried (and failed) after Columbine, or is my memory fading?
I can sue microsoft everytime I crash my car.
...is GTA3 really that good? ..awesome..
Here you have an organization lobbying against all form of weapons control in USA, and it's well know that they are very influential. Are they not in any way responsible for the profilation of hand guns?
A classic comic on video game violence: http://home.centurytel.net/mraymer/19981209l.jpg
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
Just pay attention to your kids.
Psychotics aren't born in a day.
The real question is, what would they have been sentenced if they had gone to the mall and shot a person in the head and another in the hip?
-----
Score 3? For what? Being wrong, at length? - smirkleton
Just a few days ago Penny-arcade had this insightful picture (mirrored because PA's SQL server died) describing quite accurately the situation.
Who bought the game for the kids ? Who allowed them access to firearms ? Who gave them an example of total lack of responsibility by defecting from their parenting roles ?
I can now complete the plan:
1) let your kids become totaly irresponsible and have a firearm well in evidence at home
2) wait for the kid to do something very stupid
3) sue for profit !
sure thing. we HAVE to watch what they're selling yOUR kids?
/.puppets.
.asp on that. when the lights come up, there'll be no going back, & no where to hide.
we HAVE to be inconvenienced/buy more crap, so that the felons don't have to fix the whoreabull BugWear(tm) crud on yOUR PCs/networks?
just so the walking dead can commit even more billyonerrors to their fraudulent execrable?
it would seem more prudent to join the planet/population rescue initiative.
that's right. this works on several (more than 3) dimensions.
it's also free, & available immediately to you/all of US.
as you can maybe already see, yOUR survival/success is not the least bit dependent on the gadgets of the greed/fear based corepirate nazis, & their phonIE ?pr? ?firm? buyassed
consult with/trust in yOUR creator. more breathing. vote with yOUR wallet (somtimes that means not buying anything, a notion previously unmentioned buy the greed/fear/war mongers). seek others of non-aggressive/positive behaviours/intentions. stop wasting anything/being frivolous. that's the spirit.
investigate the newclear power plan. J. Public et AL has yet to become involved in open/honest 'net communications/commerce in a meaningful way. that's mostly due to the MiSinformation suppLIEd buy phonIE ?pr? ?firm?/stock markup FraUD execrable, etc...
truth is, there's no better/more affordable/effective way that we know of, for J. to reach other J.'s &/or their respective markets.
the overbullowned greed/fear based phonIE marketeers are self eliminating by their owned greed/fear/ego based evile MiSintentions. they must deny the existence of the power that is dissolving their ability to continue their self-centered evile behaviours.
as the lights continue to come up, you'll see what we mean. meanwhile, there are plenty of challenges, not the least of which is the planet/population rescue (from the corepirate nazi/walking dead contingent) initiative.
EVERYTHING is going to change, despite the lameNT of the evile wons. you can bet your
we weren't planted here to facilitate/perpetuate the excesses of a handful of Godless felons. you already know that? yOUR ONLY purpose here is to help one another. any other pretense is totally false.
pay attention (to yOUR environment, for example). that's quite affordable, & leads to insights on preserving life as it should/could/will be again. everything's ALL about yOUR motives.
take care, we're here for you.
This is just so stupid. What, next month will we hear some asshat arrested for reckless driving tell how he was influenced to do it by playing too much Mario Kart? That game doesn't exactly teach you how to drive safely.
Surgeon General labels on their games. According to the Surgeon General, impact of media violence is very, very small. So small it doesn't really have an impact. Reasearchers in other countries conclude the same thing. See here
How many of these cases have to be thrown out before people figure out they're not going to win?
These kids already won. They fired a gun at passing cars 25 times, killing one person, wounding another, and got off with a slap on the wrist. They should have been charged as adults for murder, and several counts of attempted murder, and done major hard time. Instead, the judge sent them to a juvenile prison that they will get out of in a couple of years. The judge even considered letting them off on probation!!!
Thank God they didn't play Medal of Honor or they would've been found in a dinghy off the coast of Normandy trying to invade France...
What game did the 9/11 dudes play? Was it a Microsoft flight sim? Now that could be a huge cashola lawsuit if I ever saw one.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. --Edmund Burke
I'm reminded of a line out of a Batman comic that I have in which a paramedic tells Batman not to feel bad after a maniac shoots several people because he (Batman) couldn't have known. Batman's response is something to the effect of:
"I don't. I didn't shoot anyone."
I think that applies here fairly well. Noone at Take Two shot anyone (at least not in relation to this case), and it wasn't their job to watch and raise every fucking 90 IQ kid out there who plays their game when the parents don't screen their kids' purchases. A more apt lawsuit might be filed against the parents for criminal negligence and the fact that they let their mentally ill, retarded children anywhere near guns...
Actually, my apologies to all the mentally retarded people out there, I shouldn't have grouped you with people as ridiculously stupid as those kids...
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
but the title is "Kids Kill, Victim Sues Game Maker".
Even dead people can sue you in this country... that's it, I'm moving to Holland.
Learn something new.
The message of the game is not that violence is a good thing. I mean, shouldn't someone take note that these kids apprently didn't know, or didn't care that shooting at cars and people were wrong? Gee, and who is it that is SUPPOSED to teach right from wrong to kids....
Programming is simply the application of logic to creativity
We don't need less violent video games (for adults).
We need less "parents" fucking each other without caring about the outcome. Children need parents that care about them, not parents that care about the adult (read: not children) entertainment industry.
Oh, and get rid of your 2nd amendment, Charlton Heston won't life forever.
No, it is time to have exams for parenting eligibility. Seriously. There was a recent case that also blamed games for some shootout.
Never do the articles even MENTION how the f**k those kids got the guns! A 14 year old child with an access to loaded shotgun is clearly a problem but not a one caused by video games.
What are the parents going to blame if the violent games are banned? Oh, right, movies.
I'm sure the parents bought it them, but as a precautiion for this sort of thing happening I think all adult games should have very explicit covers. Naked women and men, mashed up corpses etc..
Violent games don't always look that bad when you look at the covers. Take GTAIII, it's all cartoon style violence. Ok there's big guns and explosions but is that much different to the box if Action Man?
Video games are more immersing than traditional toys and this is the problem.
Lawsuits like this are assinine and done out of anger. You should be suing the parents of the boys, not Take2Interactive. Obviously these boys were not mature enough to handle playing a game like this. Both boys weren't even 17, so where was the parential supervision? Suing Take2Interactive takes some of the blame off of the boys and their parents.
Video Games do not kill people. People kill people. What you see and play on GTA is just as bad as what you can see on cable TV, or you local news station every night.
The problem here, as I stated earlier is the maturity level of these boys, and their parents not supervising them. When I was 12 years old, I could have told you that this stuff was not safe to do, nor did I even remotely take any video game seriously. You can not blame makers of a game for something they clearly did not do. Well, you can, but you just look like a fool when doing so.
Of course, it wouldn't work without an unhealthy dose of denial on the part of the parents. You really have to have your head in the sand (or someplace else dark and possibly more moist, and certainly stinkier) to not realize that it's your parenting to blame here, not the game. When I was just a wee lad I had an NES and I played zelda, metroid, etc, but I never ended up picking up a sword or some kind of plasma cannon (well, that last part was only because they weren't readily available, but on a related note, parents who leave guns out are part of this problem too) and going out to kill people, damage property with it, et cetera. On the other hand, I did do a little graffiti 'tagging', and some petty acts of vandalism, in spite of not having any games which even had vandalism in them. A simpler time, indeed.
The fact is that if the kids couldn't have gotten their hands on guns in the first place none of this would have happened. This is not about gun control, except in the sense of controlling your own guns. Personally I think that when someone's kids grab their guns and run around shooting things with them, that person should have their right to own firearms revoked permanently on the grounds that they are not responsible enough to own them.
Further, while this is not covered by this article or anything, we should never ever be trying children as adults. They do not have the rights, why give them the responsibilities? Punish the parents and take their children away from them. (If the kids killed someone, I think you really ought to just go ahead and sterilize both parents, too, but I'm kind of doubting too many people will be behind me on that one.) Sure, a foster home or the state probably won't do a great job raising the kids, but obviously the parents themselves aren't accomplishing much.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
...can my next of kin sue the Duke Nukem people?
Where in the world did these idiots get a hold of these guns?
I'm not against gun ownership, but damn, if you are gonna own guns BE RESPONSIBLE.
Don't let your damn kids run wild with them for crying out loud!
Think about playing GTA. What happens the first time you try to play the game?
Chances are you end up with the boys in blue on your butt and you're being beaten to a bloody pulp. Nothing misleading there.
They should select a group of jurors with no experience playing the GTA games and have them each try playing the game -- the trial will last about 90 minutes before being thrown out.
Somebody get that guy an ambulance!
The NRA lobbies to keep guns legal for those that can legally have them today; and to enforce the laws that already exist, rather than succumb to the temptation to pass knee-jerk laws that diminish the freedom of all.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. --Edmund Burke
What kind of society are we in that takes pleasure out of simulating murder?
Hi,
I happened to have seen Bowling for Columbine yesterday. In it the solution, provided by a very funny black entertainer. Make bullets $5000 a piece.
Bert
Who appreciates a lot of what Michael Moore makes.
PC manufacturers are guilty of perpetuating monopoly abuse by M$ until they include a partition with Linux pre-installed
Okay, bad example, but you get the idea. Blaming a video game for your child's conduct is right up there with saying the devil made me do it. The video game convinced me to go out and start shooting at people. Yeah, and the neighbor's dog told Son of Sam to go kill people. He should have sued the neighbors! The dog made me do it!
I'd like to say more but my dogs are telling me it's time to go outside and throw the ball.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
After playing that game for a few hours, then hopping in the car to go to the store, I need to remind myself "there is no time bonus for running over those people."
While I was never really at risk for running people over, its still a bit disconcerting to even have the thought.
However, I agree with most of the above posts: the parents should not have had guns around, and they should have been aware that their kids couldn't separate the game from reality.
said one of the kids.....you were shooting at them!!
Programming is simply the application of logic to creativity
Ok, why isn't anybody asking where these kids got these guns from? Is it something so mundane in U.S. that you don't wonder about that anymore?
A quick google search turned up tons. Not just on the columbine insident but a few others. Here is a link to one of them.
Parents really need to start taking responsibility for their childerns actions. I'm a parent of two little girls. You don't see me trying to sue the company who made my sofa because my child fell of off it do you? It's a sad state of affairs when parents would rather sue some external company then look in apon themselves and their methods (or lack there of) of parenting.
Many questions surface in this too. Why did they have access to guns? Why were they playing this game in the first place? Who bought the gun/game? I have no guns in my house and I monitor what my childern watch and play. This is not a very difficult task and on top of it all it gives me time to spend with my childern. I watch tv with them, help them to play games (ok they are young but I don't use the TV as a baby sitter).
Really people, this whole "Let's sue so we can continue to let the gov/state gov raise our kids for us!" is getting old and dangerous. Not only that, it doenst work. Apparently these parents dont see that. I can put a thousand warning labels on things, sue a ton of movie and gaming companies, and it won't do a thing. All it will do is force a company to pay out money or put a label on something they these type of parents probably won't pay attention to any way. Instead of suing they need to stop what ever it is in their busy lives, reevaluate their lives and their childerns, and start being parents. Take the time that you would have used to sue a company and instead spend it with your kids. Now, I do understand that one of the victims is pressing suit here but it still doesnt change the fact that my above statements hold true. I think the victims should spend their time trying to work community instead of suing an entertainment company.
Who goes around randomly shooting at cars and says this? And where do they get guns? I can see Leiberman throwing a big stink about this right now. It's a real tragedy, but a civil suit against the deepest pockest isn't going to accomplish anything... and these games will continue to sell. Maybe this means that parents should actually pay attention to what games they're letting their kids play and teaching them what wrong/right and reality/fantasy is.
And call them by what they really are:
COMBAT SIMULATORS
Baseball is a game,
Quake, Unreal, and Ghost Recon are all combat simulators.
Grand Theft Auto = White Trash Simulator?
Or a Low Life Simulator?
Parents still need to be parents,
last time I checked - Grand Theft Auto didn't include real firearms in the retail box !!!
Gun Control is Hitting Your Target
"or for not teaching them to not shoot at cars"
How about just not to point guns at people? If the kids are so dense you have to tell them not to shoot at cars then they're probably too dense to know they shouldn't shoot at trucks or semies or mini-vans or SUVs, etc either without you specifically telling them each type of vehicle.
They should just throw the kids in jail for a very long time and be done with it.
They're obviously incapable of functioning in society. And the parents are obviously incapable of raising the kids otherwise.
And the parents who are suing the video game makers would be better off spending their time getting the court systems to stop feeling sorry for kids they'd like us all to believe "made a mistake."
A mistake is breaking a lamp. It is not a "mistake" to take innocent lives in such a malicious manner. They've crossed the sympathy line about 3 miles ago with this one.
The parents should simply be content with those kids locked away indefinitly.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
Seems pretty obvious where the blame falls to me. Parents that are not willing to help their children in school, or pay even the slightest amount of attention to their other activites invite this kind of shit.
Just to add to the lack of attention, the guns were gone for almost a week:
(from KnoxNews)
Kids not doing shit in school, playing M rated video games (at home, in the parents house), and guns missing for a week... yeah, blame TakeTwo.
As the owner of a LAN center, it pains me to read more and more articles about "video game induced crime" or what have you. Thankfully, we've never had to deal with angry parents complaining about violence in the games we carry (i.e. counterstrike, UT2k3, battlefield, etc.), but its an every day concern for us. We've concentrated on licensing titles that have a lot of strategy, teamwork, and strong multiplay options. We considered carrying GTA, but it didn't fit the criterion.
Our LAN customers are mainly between 15-18 yrs old, but some are significantly younger, like 10-12 yrs. The parents we've had in our store have mostly either recognized the games, and been o.k. with it, or specifically told their children not to play certain ones. I think the parents we've run into recognize that raising their kids *is* their responsibility, and they have to keep track of what they do in their free time.
Just a couple miles away in the neighboring town, there's an ordinance stating that patrons under 16 years of age need parental consent to play anything at a gaming center. I don't know if anyone actually follows these ordinances, but its the kind of laws that ppl could pass that makes running a LAN center (what I consider to be the "modern" arcade) a royal PITA.
This is where I get my recommended daily allowance of "Foot in Mouth."
Actually, I read the article and saw another one that focused more on the fact that they want video game makers to stop pushing adult games to kids. So in that sense, it's not much different from getting tobacco companies to stop advertising in 321 Contact or Highlights. :) (Yes I am that old.)
And regardless of whether any of us think games should be a scapegoat or not, the companies have already acknowledged it's not suitable for children by creating an industry rating system and rating GTA as for Mature.
But they should be suing the parents and the gunmakers also!
It offends my American sensibilities that Northern Ireland is not so far behind. I think we need to do a better job in our position of leadership.
"Everybody want to know what they were listening to, what movies did they watch?... Whatever happened to Craaazy?! What, you can't be crazy no more?... Fuck the records, fuck the movies, CRAY-ZEE.
here in Florida (and fourteen other states) it is illegal for adults to leave a gun where a minor can access it without supervision. Of course, it'd be nice if gun-owning parents rasied their kids with a healthy respect for guns in the first place, but lacking that, I'd rather see the parents in the clink than the GTA devs.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
My mom is going to sue the porn industry because I became a rapist.
No. I'm not really a rapist. But the analogy is the same, right?
What's so bad about being lazy? What if there was a war and nobody showed up?
Story here
I got mad because Windows blue-screened, put my fist through my monitor and now have 17 stitches. I'm suing Microsoft for the mental frustration, the monitor manufacturer for hazardous cuts from glass, the electric company because I could have been electrocuted, the manufacturer of the chair I almost fell out of, and finally, suing the kid suing Take Two Interactive for giving me the stupid idea in the first place.
if we talk about cencorship? and the other part of coin will pull the freedom thinggie? errr... i think we should censor games which have so violent so we can stop this horror from happening again to our kids/bros/sis/frens? for sure... the free world will react... anyways... lets us be constructive and not destructive... yah u companies getting more $$$ for this games... but think the lifes of the victims... u can make other games and be profitable and not always a game which is violent in nature... why not a wholesalme/family games? thats my 2cents poor written english grammar. forgive me. peace.
Moslemen M. Macarambon Jr. http://www.junmacarambon.com/
Let's get some kids, ensure they play violent video games leading them to get guns, kill some characters -err- bystanders, and cash in from law suits!
Parents have the responsibility to raise awareness in their kids. These parents were not aware of this.
Kids are not aware of their environment as most of us. What we take as common sense has not been taught.
This is just sad, not the deaths, but the law suit. The deaths were inevitable.
*secretly hides away document saying "our next game will inspire kids to kill their parents, this way we will avoid these law suits"*
This is society today in the USA. Society will evolve. Awarenes is the key.
but if it was GTA that triggered the shooting then GTA is to be blamed for these killings.
No, it's the parents that allowed the kids' mental imbalance to develop this far, and then allowed them to be bombarded with potentially incendiary stimuli, that are to blame.
The coolest voice ever.
You see, he is a very bad example too. He kills people, puts people in harms way and makes life less than what it should be for everyone on the planet.
So why can't we sue our own government for the same reason?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_U.S._Election_c
It's just another lawsuit with the purpose of getting rich quick over someone's death. Ignore it. The only ones who will profit from this one are the lawyers.
(followed by the poster's sig:)
I own SCO stock, hate me [slashdot.org]!
...Only on Slashdot...
As said, blame the parents for not teaching the kids the difference between real life and video games/television!
The boys wrote letters to apologize to the victims' families that were read in court Thursday.
"I didn't want to hurt anyone," Joshua wrote. "This will stick with me the rest of my life."
Right... I didn't want to hurt anyone, I just wanted to shoot guns at people, that's all officer.
Can someone please explain to me what the fuck is wrong with people these days? Not only do they take a rifle and shoot at people because they were "bored", they either lied about not wanting to hurt people or didn't realise that lead travelling towards fleshy humans at hundreds of feet per second can hurt!
-- iCEBaLM
4. Punishing them when they misbehave
If little Johnny gets grounded, spanked, a slap on the wrist, no dinner, whatever for punching his little brother in the shoulder, little Johnny is going think a little harder before giving his little brother a black eye.
Your list is very telling about the sad state of modern parenting when "punishment" doesn't show up on it. Society has deemed the line between punishment and child abuse too blurred and has decided that punishing kids is now a criminal offense.
"that parents would actually be responsible for their childs actions"
Sorry but we've evolved into a better race that doesn't follow such archaic ideas. We want to give children rights. We want to make clothes for them that even young adults would blush at. We want to do everything in our power to avoid punishing our children at home. We want to treat them like adults. And since they're adults, the parents are now no longer responsible for them.
And now shock and amazment, we treat them like adults and they go out and act like adults. Sometime committing crimes that previously only adults would commit.
And then they show up in court and discover to their delight that even the courts are too afraid to actually punish them.
And what have they learned from all of this? Nothing. And another generation goes one step farther down the shithole.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
I think its about time parents started paying attention to their kids, and not game ratings.
Sleep is for the weak.
Killing is part of his job description.
As a parent, I watch what my 10 year old son plays online (mainly looking up game FAQs) and plays on the console.
We do NOT let him play any games with guns. He plays racing games, goofy Mario type games and the like. We also teach him that people using guns on others is a very bad thing. We are trying to instill in him that guns are weapons for the sole purpose of harming and killing other things.
We're trying to teach him to be nice. To try to be a good person. To know right from wrong. What happened to being a nice person? Why is everyone so cynical now adays?
Are we perfect parents? No. Will what we're trying to teach him stick? I don't know...but we're trying, we really really are. It's hard to do with the media overblowing violence and crime most of the time.
When something like this happens, everyone points fingers and blames everyone else. But I feel there is no one thing to blame. There are many different factors at work here. Bad parents? Violent Videogames? Violent media and music? War starting presidents? Evil dictators? Religion? Environment? Bullies? School?
There are no answers, only choices.
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
I have observed this enough times to dub it Sarah Brady Syndrome:
- Something horrible happens to someone close to you.
- You decide that Something Must Be Done <tm> to prevent anyone else from suffering the same fate.
- After considering, and rejecting, the idea of using the existing laws that punish the person who actually caused the problem (especially if that person is the putative 'victim' himself, as in the case of cigarette smoking or McDonald's food), you settle on:
- Suing someone other than the perpetrator, under the theory that they aided and abetted the perpetrator by manufacturing one of the tools used, or wrote a book/movie/TV program/video game that 'inspired' the criminal act
- Lobbying your legislators for new criminal remedies against these enablers.
- Both.
I am heartened by the fact that the latest lawsuit against McDonald's (apparently for forcing kids to eat so much of their food as to have fat asses) was rejected with prejudice by the judge, but recent history is filled with too many examples that go the other way.We not only have the Brady Bill, but countless other laws named for a victim, and almost without exception, they're bad laws - unnecessary and counterproductive, because they punish people other than the actual perpetrators, which teaches the next round of dumb kids that it isn't their fault when they shoot up their high school, killing scores of people and giving Michael Moore a chance to make another preachy movie (and Katz an excuse to compile a book).
I expect someone to go paint a tunnel on the side of a concrete wall, run their car into it at 60 mph and their family sue Warner Brothers for making Road Runner cartoons give them the idea.
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
I can only imagine the grief of Aaron Hamel's family. My guess is that some lawyer is taking advantage of the second stage of grief - Anger - and getting them to sue. Unfortunately, by the time the whole thing is resolved in the courts, they will have been at the fifth stage - acceptance - for some time.
I'd rather see retribution for this through the justice system. However, according to the article, the biggest charge so far is reckless homicide. I'm having a hard time understanding how shooting at moving cars is "reckless" - if you're shooting at a moving car, you're shooting at the people inside of it. If you're firing a gun at random strangers, that's still intentional. Is the criminal court actually accepting exposure to a violent video game as a mitigating factor?
Less anti-videogame lawsuits and a sudden reticence by lawyers to go against videogames if he was.
The kids were punished, the parents are punished, and the people who created the incredibly stupid game trope will be punished.
Responsibility is not a zero-sum game.
How many of these people do we have to deal with? I'm tired of the whole "blame somebody else" mentality of today's parents. It's not the game company's fault that your kids are idiots, it's your fault for refusing to teach them the difference between what's real and what's not. If your kids are mimicing a video game, it's because of something YOU did, not because of some publisher.
Why did this happen in the US and not anywhere else? Is that game sorely sold in the US? No.
Check this site for Gun data.
The link between accessibility to firearms and death rates has been suggested in a number of studies. One study which examined the link between gun ownership rates and firearm deaths within Canadian provinces, the United States, England/Wales and Australia concluded that 92% of the variance in death rates was explained by access to firearms in those areas.
Canada is the closest neigbourgh and why is the ratio so low? They ban all handguns and you need to register all rifles.
I'd be more worried about Gun control than game ratings. You can buy a gun at walmart and yet you can't buy CD's with parental advisory stickers??!? What's going on in this country?
Yes, mom or dad bought the game, but what the hell were those kids doing with an unlocked gun? Those parents are as guilty and should be jailed by now.
-- Leeeter than leet
Seriously, take them out to a parking lot, and throw a couple of rounds into them in non-fatal spots. Take the kids and throw them into prison for a year or two.
It isn't the game manufacturers problem if they inspire psycho's like these to throw some ammo into traffic. It's the parents' fault for not raising them to not be psycho's and the kids' fault for failing to understand that shooting oncoming traffic is a bad idea, and probably moreso, societies fault for not accepting them as people, if society accepted them they wouldn't think it'd be a great idea to shoot at traffic.
Candy-Coated Knowledge
Just because we(teens) see something doesn't mean we emulate it. I mean, a lot of us watch porn, but you don't hear about us out having sex do you? O wait, nevermind. heh, maybe we are that impressionable. Yes, yes we are. (I just caught sight of my 10 year old neighbor in a shirt that looks like something Britney Spears would wear) godamn MTV...
Karma: Bad. Mostly because the only moderators that notice me are conservatives.
Let me see if I understand the situation. These kids "got bored" and decided to go shoot up trucks on the highway. Now, are we supposed to believe that the kids were too stupid to come up with the idea on their own? Or that they were too stupid to recognize that just because violence on a screen can be entertaining, it doesn't necessarily mean that the same violence is entertaining in real life?
Personally, I hate the entire GTA series. I think the glorification of violence is a bad idea, and that the game makers show a lack of social conscience. But I respect their right to make the games. Further, I believe that if we were to hold game makers responsible for the effects of their games on the people who buy them, it would have a profund chilling effect on free speech. That is unacceptable.
You know it and I know it: these kids were severely disturbed long before they ever got their hands on GTA. Hundreds of millions of people play video games, why aren't at least a few million of us out there emulating them? Because the vast, vast majority of us have too firm a grip on reality. We also share an ability to empathize with others and accept that their feelings are important. These kids, somewhere along the line, lost that ability.
Even if we accept that there is a small subset of humanity who--for whatever psycho/neuro/sociological reason--can be affected by video games in this way, that is not sufficient reason to stop creating the games. It doesn't make sense any more than it makes sense to stop making peanut butter just because a few of us are violently allergic to peanuts. The focus should be on finding these broken people and trying to fix them, because making the world safe for them is impossible.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
Thus, his parents might not be better that him, and the parents are not necessarilly able to take care of the kid aproprietly.
So for those households, which are very much in the minority with respect to this country's total population, the responsibility automatically falls on the video game companies to contingency-plan for the worst of situations? There are numerous organizations--the Department of Social Services, for one--that exist to rectify such circumstances. (And even they cannot hope for total success; there are entirely closed-in households where unspeakable things happen to the kids that live there, but if word never gets out, the rest of the world is poweless to help.)
The norm is healthy, the norm can handle violent video games. Skeptical about this claim? Why aren't cities absolutely stuffed to the gills with kids running amok with guns, shooting and raping everyone in sight? Because they would readily do so, but law enforcement is fortunately strong enough to keep them at bay? No. The truth is that the most common psyche is the balanced psyche. Whether this is a result of various sociological factors that just luckily happen to balance out, or of a widespread existence of actual decent parenting, is still up for debate, but in a sense it doesn't matter, because the forefront responsibility of parenting holds in either scenario.
The coolest voice ever.
"Guns don't kill people, computer games kill people!"
To all patriotic gun wielding Americans (paging that fucking freak Eric S. Raymond): You don't need guns. You only want guns because you spent so much time fighting for your right to have guns that your worst enemy is able to buy a gun. It's probably got to a point where it's all irreversible now though, and you couldn't safely outlaw handguns in the home in America. Well done you!
I don't care how much you flame me. Having no guns works. Don't give me any bullshit about your freedom.
-
Are minors restricted from possessing guns?
-
Is a license/permit required to buy handguns? No.
-
Are gun owners held accountable for leaving guns accessible to kids?
So there you have it. The gun nuts have made the gun laws in Tennessee so weak that it was legal for those kids to have guns. They could buy them legally and carry them legally. They could even have bought assault rifles, with more firepower, legally.State law restricts juveniles under 18 from possessing handguns without parental permission or authorized supervision. But there are no restrictions on juveniles possessing rifles or shotguns including semiautomatic assault weapons. (These kids used shotguns.)
No. No state requirement that gun owners take responsible steps to prevent children from gaining easy access to their firearms. Gun owners are not held accountable for leaving loaded guns around kids, even if a young child shoots themselves or someone else with a gun left in plain sight.
If they're going to let kids have guns, there's no point in worrying about video games.
I do *not* subscribe to the philosophy of Ted Kaczynski, AKA "The Unabomber".
</DISCLAIMER!>
He did mention in his manifesto though that, having conquered most natural threats, mankind turned to invented threats. 100 years ago these kids would have been in the woods hunting squirrels. They would have known first hand the consequences of discharging a firearm at some creature.
But this isn't 100 years ago. Today, if you die, you hit the reset button and try again. This does not excuse their behavior. I only point out the disconnect we have in modern society between many of our actions and the consequences.
Any comments?
To the toon of "Blame Canada" from South Park Bigger, Longer and Uncut
Times have changed
are kids are going to hell
they won't obey there parents
they think killing is just swell
Should we blame there parents
or violence on tv
or should we blame the youth socioty
NO!
blame GTA!
blame GTA!
it seems are kids just won't behave
since GTA was made
blame GTA!
Blame GTA!
We need to form a full asault
its GTA's fault
Don't blame us
for our son will
he played that evil game
and now he only wants to kill
I know I gave them the guns
and never taught them safty
But how was I to know
he was killing people lately
Blame GTA!
Blame GTA!
With all it's cops right there to pop
we just have to make them stop
For there guns and there whores
The crashis and wars
get these reporters off our backs
befor we're blamed for causing the atack!S
Apologies to trey and matt (cowers) please don't sue!
and thus brain shall rule us!
Seriously, I am tired of people finding someone else to blame just to get money. Laws are not for parenting. If you don't know how to be a parent then that is your problem, do not make it mine by making the government's job to be your parent because you are a lazy sack of crap.
Maybe it's time we took a step back. I am pushing 30 years old and my generation has it's good people and it's bad. I went to school in New Jersey, but never had metal detectors nor serious any problems with with weapons or kids shooting each other. We duked it out after school one-on-one, and took care of it that way. We had not nearly as many laws as kids do today, to dictate what we could and could not do, that's what our parents did. Oh, and if you say that "well tv, video games, and music got more violent" I would say to you "well, you know what, I wouldn't know because my parents monitored that stuff, and I wasn't allowed to watch rated R movies, and my parents didn't let me watch late night tv, why? because it was for adults, which I clearly was not!" Now, in today's world, it is the movie industry, or game industry's fault, and the child has to go to some kind of counceling? No wonder kids are going around shooting everyone at their 8-3 prison (aka school) that has metal detectors, and riots, and no money for books or pencils, and a chain-linked fence around the playground...if the playground wasn't removed due to the trailers that house the over population of the school building. If there weren't so many worthless lawsuits in this country maybe we'd have better school systems.
The victims should sue the parents for not being proper parents, not the gaming industry whose outcome will effect all of our lives. I did not vote for these people to make up laws for me! They need to attack those who are at fault, the lazy crappy parents who shouldn't even have let a freakin' gun laying around for the kids to use in the first place!
"The shareholders need to know what their games are doing to kids and their families." No, the parents need to learn how to read the damned warning labels, and what they are doing to their kids and families!
Nope, I'm not buying into that one.
Sure, the parents are greiving the loss of their kids. Who wouldn't? That doesn't mean I'm automatically going to "cut them some slack" though. Looks to me like a classic case of poor parenting catching up with them.
First, there's the obvious question of "How did they get ahold of the guns?" But assuming the guns were somehow borrowed/purchased from school buddies and the parents had no way of knowing about it, there's the bigger and even more important issue: Why weren't these kids brought up with a little more respect for human life? Why weren't they taught a little something about responsibility for one's actions? How did they get all the way to their teenage years without having any desire/motivation to do something more with their lives than go out and shoot at cars, trying to live out some video game fantasy?
Teens might be "more impressionable" than adults, but that's only by design. We're all born as babies with a "clean slate", and we strive to fill it with knowledge and information as we go through life. Teenagers may have all of the "basics" down, but their "slate" isn't quite filled with the more complex concepts yet. They're still trying to define their place in society, their personal religious beliefs (or lack thereof), and draw their own lines in the grey areas between "right" and "wrong" that suit them. If parents don't care enough to assist in any of this - then they might not like the results.
Simply because in most countries, most people don't have guns at home - or at all. It is not illegal, but it is very uncommon. And guess what? Lots of less people per capita gets shot.
"If you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns" - or what is that saying? Well, that is fine by me. Then you can bust anybody running around with a gun and get the problem out of the way. Seriously, how many lifes have the right to bear arms saved? How many has it cost? This system is what keeps deaths down in oh so many countries.
In my country, you are allowed to have guns. You have to pass some rigorous tests for it, and get a real license - just like to you have to pass tests to drive a car. To get any gun not suitable for hunting, you have to be a member of a shooting club, and you have to have been a member for quite some time. Also, nowadays, this permit is reevaluated every few years.
Responsible, test passing people are way more likely to keep their guns safely, and disassembled like they should do. You almost never hear about any incidents over here. Almost, of course, because nothing is idiot proof. But almost never. Wouldn't that be nice?
I'm gonna get soooo jumped for this, I guess, but I honestly, seriously do not get it. What the hell do you need those guns for? And if you really like to fire a weapon, how come a shooting club isn't good enough? And if you are a serious, law abiding, responsible gun user, how the hell can stricter rules on who gets to own a gun be a bad thing? You should applaud it, and if you are all of the above, you should pass any test easily.
Guns don't kill people, people kill people. True. But why give them such an easy way to do it?
Why is this stupid piece of lethal metal so fucking important to you people?
I'm more worried about posters who pledge allegience to the Gobots in their sig than I am about kids with guns who're too wall-eyed to even shoot straight.
You're absolutely right, I couldn't agree more. Truly a menace they are. It's a good thing my sig refers to the Transformers.
The coolest voice ever.
Should've really taken the parents to task over this-- trying to blame a third party when it is very obvious by their own inaction w/r/t the kid's performance in school that they are simply shitty parents.
~Philly
The lead kid was 16 years old. Think about that, he would have been a sophomore or junior in high school. If he still can't tell the difference between right and wrong or video game and reality, society has much bigger problems than simulated violence. Even his freind at 14 years should have known better. I'll admitt GTA3 is a captivating game, but it can't just make someone shut down their thought processes. It's obvious those processes weren't there to begin with.
If I were one of his victims, I would sue his parents for leaving an unsecured gun around a mentally disabled child.
Does that mean the clients are not responsible for this? Of course not, however in situations where a family is feeling trapped and powerless with no end in site, it doesn't take much to turn them. At first the lawywer makes it sound like it is all about "doing the right thing" and striking out against the evil capitalists bent on destroying families and the working man. The greed is that way conveniently hidden until later.
In the end it is of course a combination of foolishness and greed, because if anyone was really interested in "doing good" they would consider the effect of shifting responsibility and accountability to innocent parties. So what happens when their goal of worldwide destruction of all media that is seen as a bad influence is met? Well, ummm... they probably didn't think.
Parents need to quit being stupid. Stop making excuses for your kids and parent them. Parents need to stop blaming others and start kicking their kids asses. If little Johnny likes playing with guns, then little Johnny can enjoy his new life in a military school. If little Johnny can't comprehend the danger to property and more important lives of others (and not respect them) then little Johnny can spend time in a real correction institute where he will find that a life of slavery, beatings, starvation and having his legs broken daily would be preferable... all while learning some self discipline and reasoning skills.
Kick the kids asses as hard as you can, let them know clearly that such actions are not acceptable and come not only with heavy penalties but that is on top of the responsibilities for their actions. Make them pay in full the amount to repair the vehicles and then treat them like animals.
I am tired of seeing irresponsible animals make life difficult for others. Those of us who are responsible and ADD to society should not suffer from this stupidity. Again... KICK THESE LITLE BASTARD'S ASSES. They most likely think they are too good for silly things like law, much less respecting others. Typical of this mentality they will be the first to scream about their own personal "rights" if you try to make them pay for their actions (literally pay, like in $$$) or punish and monitor them. Sorry, rights are for those that deserve them, namely those who didn't make a conscious choice to do something stupid.
I repeat once more... KICK THOSE LITTLE BASTARD'S ASSES. Next we will kick the asses of the parents for not monitoring their kids. How did the kids buy the game? Obviously they lack the intelligence and reasoning skills to differentiate between a mindless fictional arena and real life. I don't feel like sharing my oxygen with stupid people. Furthermore I don't feel safe with idiots like that on the street. Then again... how can you expect kids to learn responsibility when the ONLY two responsible parties are exhonerated through a legal farce that is nothing more than passing the buck. I am surprised the legal system does not allow a plead of "Your a poopypants" or "judge, yo mamma so fat."
This lawyer needs his ass kicked next. I really hope people will start getting pissed and get pissed at the correct people. I can't stand mob mentality but here it might be acceptable to have the family and lawyers be couped inside a small shed surrounded by very angry people armed with baseball bats, chains and pitchforks.
Why must stupid people constantly ruin things for everyone else. Note: I could care less about the game... I personally think that game dev's show little restraint in their games and bow to the lowest common denominator much like the lawyers. (i.e. whore yourself if it sells good enough) However, there _IS_ a ranking system and with this game there _IS_ a very large amount of notoriety surrounding it...
Sadly, this is the American Way. No one take responsibility anymore and we live in the day where everyone is a victim.
(-1, American)
Most civilized countries have a system called Loser Pays. Where if the plaintiff of a lawsuit loses then they have to pay the legal fees of the defendant.
With the current system the plaintiff can bombard the defendant with paperwork until they give up and decide it's cheaper to settle out of court.
Loser pays would make people seriously consider the validity of their lawsuit before going ahead with it.
Mario has been prosecuted before for vandalism in Isle Delfino, as well as illegal drug prescriptions in Dr. Mario.
"There is no teacher but the enemy."-Mazer Rackham
I'm going to start bombing my neighbourhood in hope that my parents sue G. W. Bush
So how come when some 50-year-old guy goes and kills his ex-lover and her boyfriend we don't hear the media jumping up and down and saying it's Frank Sinatras fault because that's who the killer listened to?
Mmmm.. Donuts
What made these kids do it? I'm willing to bet the amish don't allow kids to play GTA3.
video games, what Jack Chick it to roleplaying games.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
... is the fact that a [b]FOURTEEN[/b] and a [b]SIXTEEN[/b] year old did this, then blame it on the freaking GAME? Get. A. Life.
If this were a 7 year old, I could [b]MAYBE[/b] understand that there might not be a proper reality adjustment here, but you're talking about teens that are [b]capable of having kids[/b]!
Oh, I'm sure they knew the difference. They just didn't care and are only remorseful because they got caught!
The fact that GTA is a "trigger" means that it definitely isn't the cause. The issue of rights, privileges and individuality hasn't stopped since the Philadelphia Convention in 1789. If the US is to have a society that supports individually and democracy, that *MUST* be supported with education and responsibility. Once you take education and responsibility out of the equation, the whole American experiment goes straight to hell and gives the elite a pretty good reason for greater restrictions on rights, privileges and individuality.
Laws are for people with no friends.
Another PA quote for you:
"Guns don't kill people, kids who play video games kill people". Irony? It's like iron isn't it?
I hate reading about parents that are quick to blame others for their child's actions. I agree with the poster, the parents should actually pay attention to what their children are doing. For example, how did they sneak off with a gun to go play GTA on I-40? Aren't their guns locked up and only the parents have the key?
Perhaps were focusing on the wrong problem. Maybe we should pay more attention to the parents.
--If only there was a license required to use a computer.
....the open source/slashdot communities would have long since dropped Mozilla and Linux and be putting the finishing touches to Lawyerkiller, SuperBallmerBall II and Grand Theft Intellectalproperty III.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
I think the short solution here is to not give guns and ideas to total idiots.
I've played every GTA in the series since i was about 16, i've also done some stupid things in my life but i wouldn't go around randomly shooting at cars what ever age i was! What strikes me so much about reading that article (coming from the UK) is that they never question how a 14 and 16 year old had a gun. For a start the right to bear arms is a totally contradictory law: If theres a civil uprising of course people are bloody well going carry guns - who's going to stop them!? that doesn't mean every idiot and kid should be allowed guns all the time. At my school we had a range, the idea was simple - you are supervised, the gun stays in the range, you shoot at things that are at the other end, where people aren't.
Are the media trying to say "don't blame guns"? because if they are, then why should they blame video games? A gun is something that put in the wrong hands will cause disaster, and by the same standards a video game is also something that put in the wrong hands will cause disaster.
By the "wrong hands" i mean retards, because at 14, if you haven't reached a sense of reality to understand that taking a gun and shooting at cars is going to end up badly then you must really have mental problems. (maybe they were rednecks?) This is probably why video games like this are rated 18 - so they can catch out all the slow learning kids and just hope that by 18, everyone in the country will have reached that point where they can understand simple concepts, maybe this should be higher like your drinking laws? maybe the gun laws should have a higher age too?
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
I think this is appropriate: http://feinorgh.homelinux.org/pictures/funny/despa ir/despair-poster-blame.jpg
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
should sue for a % of current NFL players salaries who played video football when they were young.
I mean if these companies can be sued for their negative influence, surely they are owed for their "positive" influence.
While I agree that the teens and their parents should be held responsible, not the company that made the game, your rant is way off the mark. It was not the parents of the teens that sued the gaming company, it was the family of one of the victims, which they are undoubtedly doing per the advice of their attorney, since the gaming company will have far deeper pockets than the teens' parents. In all likelyhood, it may have been the attorney defending the teens that prompted them to cite the game as their inspiration, to try to shift as much blame as possible away from them and their parents. Truth is in the eye of the beholder...remember to consider that the media-slanted articles that get posted on slasdhot often only report the most hyped-up, controversial version of the truth they can come up with.
I'm not going to make a judgement on the people suing the makers of GTA because I can't read their minds and I have no clue about their motivations; they might very well feel honest anger about GTA, I know that I find the premise and details of the game thoroughly disgusting. I wouldn't sue them over it, but then I haven't been shot by anyone either.
Maybe someone feels that the world would be a better place if a game like GTA vanished from the market and is using the legal system to try to achieve that goal. The motivation could even be altruism rather than personal gain.
Hard to tell from here what it is. I feel with the victims, but I hate the litigation approach with a vengeance. Unfortunately that includes "going after the parents" for negligence. Just think about the can of worms that would open: litigation lawyers being able to hold the threat of an "unfit parent" declaration plus child removal over someone's head.
These kids claimed to be mimicking GTA by trying to shoot at semi truck trailers. That alone should make it obvious that they are just trying to cover theire a$$es by blaming someone else. There is no point any GTA game that has you shooting semis with a sniper rifle - becuase there are no semis with trailers in any GTA game! There are semis without trailers, but there is never a mission that requires you to shoot them with a sniper rifle like they claim.
The only people who should be blamed in this case are the kids and their parents.
End of line..
Tale of Two Cities made me want shoot all the French people! It's his fault that I voted for Bush!
This is my sig.
We have just moved on from blaming Role Playing Games like Advancded Dungeons & Dragons to Video Games. Same story (my prayers are with the victims now) but different target. Maxis, get busy on SimTeen. Force parents to play it so they can see how to get better scores. This is a story where the players wish they could open from a previous auto-save.
Magic Eight Ball: Outlook not so good., Hmmm, how about Excel and Word?
Taco; You are a Fucking Idiot. The president of the company that produced Grand Theft is on record stating that the game is designed for adults. He and anybody else who plays with the minds of children with the goal of enticing them to give their money to him is responsible for what he does. This was true thousands of years before you were born and it will be true thousands of years after you pass into the dustbin of history. Spare us your pathetic grandstanding why don't you?
This is a standard idiom in english.
As for your examples of 'extreme examples', they are already used all over the place. Here, look. "Knife Death".. "Pool Death".. "Sea Death".. "Choking Death". Hey, look at that, the I'm Feeling Lucky for all four of those leads to a news article where the term is used in the headline. (Well, one is "Candy Choking Death".)
It was a death by way of a gun. It was a gun death. There's nothing anti-gun or newspeak about that it's just.. like.. an idiom.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Could I blame that on Mattel's B-17 Bomber?
Or Microprose 50 Mission Crush?
zombie like -- must restore B-17 and Bomb Berlin.
This is my sig.
some of you make the case that parents shouldnt let their kids play mature rated games. Haven't you considered that maybe the parents DONT allow such games? the kid could have gotten it off kazaa and played when the parents were at work for all we know (and the parents dont). there is some responsibilty to be put on the parents, but ultimately we are all accountable for our own actions.
> "I allege that SCO is full of it" -Linus
i find it interesting that the ABC article mentions shotguns and the yahoo article mentions .22 rifles..
.22 rifles aren't much use for anything more than squirrel shooting, while a shotgun is a much more serious affair..
i'm not a ballistics expert but
Suchetha
learn from yesterday, plan for tomorrow, party tonight
or one out of three ain't bad
Of course they do.
Where did they get the guns? Kid plays a video game, then gets a gun and kills. So the obvious thing we need to worry about is the game... right.
Reminds me of a few years ago when a kid had a super soaker and shot another kid with it. The kid who was soaked proceeded to go home, grab a real gun and shoot the super soaker bearer with it. The reaction by the city was to try to ban water guns.
People are stupid.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Doesn't follow, because numerous studies have shown that violent video games do infleunece kids. However, even more studies have shown that having: parents who know what their kids are doing, parents who spend time with their kids, parents who model proper behavior, parents who talk with teachers about school problems etc. make an even BIGGER difference. Furthermore, what's the bet these kids were spanked? One of the surest ways of making your kids more violent according to the same institutes that publish the studies about the video games. hrmmm
Little Brother, watching the watchers
We all know games are what makes people kill. It's a proven historical fact. After all, it is well documented that Stalin used to play chess. We certainly cannot allow such murder-simulators to taint our children. I for one believe congress should ban any and all games on the market. I believe they should start with checkers and move their way up.
If someone will go and kill because they saw it in a game, they have serious other issues and probably would have killed someone anyways. They might see the game as an especially fun way to go about the killing, but they would have done it regardless.
I'd put money on that.
Don't blame politicians, don't blame liberal gun laws. Don't blame the weapons industry lobby.
Because guns don't kill people, people kill people, right?
And the USA doesn't promote a culture of violence. Such a thing doesn't exist. There's nothing wrong with being the western country with the highest amount of children in prison, the highest amount of death by guns for minors and killing by guns for minors.
Let's not jump to any conclusions here, it's clear that people kill people, or you know, children. Guns don't. No sir.
I think, therefore I am...I think.
I can only hope they all get cancer and die.
When the parents were kids, they would spend every waking hour playing Grand Lawsuit .
Table-ized A.I.
I'm not from the US and I think that the American habit of sueing everybody everytime is tiresome. I hope that this behaviour doesn't propagate to Europe!! Oh, one more thing. Hopefully we don't get yhe American patent laws either.
So, if we opt not to have him buried, that will save us how much? Seriously, it just never ceases to amaze me how soundly the almighty dollar overrides morality in today's folk. The family in question here has chosen to commemorate the death of their loved by forfeiting diginity in exchange for cash. Disgusting. -Zeecog
-Zeecog
Gun Control.
You're a nation of psychopaths. How you can rationalize kids having access to guns, but not games, is all the proof anyone could ever need.
Obviously, you have your own ideas about what's best for your kids, and there also obviously is no One Right Answer That Everyone Must Subscribe To. However, I really don't think that having kids exposed to guns or nudity or whatnot makes them killers or rapists.
Kids have played with tin soldiers, played cowboys and Indians, cops and robbers, and games in the same vein forever. The fact that the current game involving shooting happens to be a video game simply doesn't justify it. The kid playing the robber in cops and robbers didn't run out and blast a couple of police officers with a real revolver.
The problem here isn't that people are exposed to violence. It's that they aren't making a good, informed decision about real life. I'd rather that they have already thought about the fact that guns kill people, and it it's a pretty bad idea to run around shooting vehicles. Frankly, I think that shielding people from something is a poor way to help them deal with it. People *are* going to run into violence at some point in life, and I'd rather sit down, talk about, explain my feelings, and encourage a kid to do what I think is best then to try to hide what I disagree with from him.
Remember Freud? He had some really good insights about the hyper-repressive Victorian society of his time. Sexual repression can cause a bunch of personality problems. I'm not a fan of "hiding" things or "covering them up". If people are getting shot, talk about it.
The most common argument I've heard against a sensible conversation is that "Junior isn't old enough." That's ridiculous. Pure age has very little impact on the way you think -- maybe some homonal changes, but that's about it. The difference between a ten year old and a twenty year old is experience. The only way to get experience is to come into contact with things, and I'd strongly prefer that Junior hear from me what I consider reasonable early on.
That doesn't mean you should *try* to shove things down someone's throat. It just means not actively trying to hide them. If Junior wants to jerk off to nudie magazines, fine. If he sees people getting killed on TV, fine. Just be sure that you also provide some guidance.
May we never see th
remove one of the two items from THAT equation, and the problem goes away. at least a problem of THAT magnitude. and maybe the parents should be more responsible.
Why can't parents ever acknowledge that their kids were incredibly stupid and that they really shouldn't have had any sort of acess to firearms. Let's look at this...
"I didn't want to hurt anyone," Joshua wrote.
Now, I'm not saying that these kids are kind of slow, but one would expect when you live in Tenesee where your parents let you wander over to the highway with some rifles, your parents would have taught you at the very least that when you shoot people with guns, they get hurt. I'm very certain that when these kids parents took them out Coon hunting or whatever brain dead sport people keep these useless pieces of trash around for (those would be guns) they explained very clearly that the buisness end of the gun should not be turned on other people and that when it was loaded and sighted, pulling the trigger would cause massive trauma to whatever was in front of the business end of the gun.
I'm sorry, but video games companies should start suing these kids and their parents for slander, because the other 500 million of us that played Grand Theft Auto have never shot anyone, and just becuase some retard, with a minimal understanding of causal relationships decides that blasting away with a gun is a good idea, doesn't mean that a game is involved. These people have been disconnected from reality for a good long while and it's time that we lock them away in quiet houses for crazy people where they belong.
To summarize, when you give a moron a gun, bad things happen. It is sincerely time to take people into account for their actions ("Hey kids you killed someone, wounded another, and cuased a deal of property damage, I'm thinking about letting you off on probation") it frustrates me to no end that this is the kind of society that we live in.
---
The second ammendment allows for the right of a well regulated militia to bear arms in defense of our nation.
---
You know what I just thought of, the core of the problem is that most people who own firearms (unless they're really messed up in the head) own guns for sport hunting. I think that the real root of this problem is that these people have introduced the idea of a gun as a source of entertainment far before video games.
Except, of course, that it's the family of the victims who are suing, and whom we might reasonably cut a little slack, not the parents of the shooters.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Yeah. I totally agree with you. We need to ban guns because too many people die because of guns. While we're at it, let's ban cars because cars not only kill more people each year than guns, but they're destroying the environment as well.
Plus, there was a gang-banger the other day who looked at me in a scary way. He should go to jail for being scary looking.
Plus, I hate people who disagree with me. I'm tired of free speech. We need to ban that because I get offended.
Also, there was this bully when I was in the third grade...
This is why we have courts and legal advisers. I rather suspect that when more objective people get hold of this, it won't go much further, and I'll be amazed if, even in the US, this results in any sort of damages against the game company. (Of course, if it turns out that the game company really was pushing a rated game to underage players, the court might take a different view.)
You have to let people take something to court if they feel they have a grievance against another party. Without that right, the whole justice system breaks down. Remember that taking something to court is a means to get a dispute resolved, not a guarantee of a telephone number in compensation.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
TETRIS MADE ME STAB BABIES IN THE FACE
(send suitcase of cash please)
I think we should blame these childrens' behavior on their exposure to the Bible. Has anyone read the gore in that thing? Yikes! King James needs to cough up money so victims and their families can be compensated for their pain.
When I was a kid my favorite relative was Uncle Caveman. After school we'd all go play in his cave, and every once in a while he would eat one of us. It wasn't until later that I found out that Uncle Caveman was a bear.
...that they didn't even enable the invencibility cheat
We'd all be running around darkened rooms, listening to repetitive electronic music and munching magic pills.
(yes, I am a raver)
50 years ago most boys aged 15-25 were fighting in a war with real guns and killing real people. How many of them came back and started shooting at people?
Why is it that some Americans are obsessed with protecting children from violent video games, but would not dream of taking away the guns that these kids have access to.
A kid that fires a gun at cars has problems, but a kid who has problems and no gun, can't shoot at anyone.
Take away guns not games.
It's like a species that "climbed" a competitive hill in the mutational state-space. You can't climb down, you are stuck with where you are.
There is no Silver-Bullet (sorry for the bad joke) that will fix the problem if indeed it is a problem.
We need to accept the fatalities that happens as a consequence, just as we accepts the 50.000 or so people getting killed in trafic each year.
There is no political will to make SUV's safer even though they kill three orders of magnitude more people than stemming from Game violence (assuming for this argument it is indeed the game makers fault)so why screw around with it
In the words of McNealy way out of context.
"Get over it"
Help fight continental drift.
Guns don't kill people. Games kill people.
Let me get an opinion in here from a soon-to-be 16 year old... Yeah, when I was NINE I got Quake. I bought Warcraft II with money I won from a coloring contest. I've played violent games my entire damn life, and yet I feel sympathy for hurt frogs I find in the back yard. I have no desire to go shoot people, and the times that I do feel that urge, it is because they hurt me and not because I fragged d00ds in Counter-Strike. This is insane. These kids have probably no father, live in a 2 story house by themselves, and have easy acess to anything they want. Their parent(s) aren't looking for signs of schizoid-like behavior or anything like that, and the moment the bomb explodes they just feel that someone besides them could be at fault. Maybe the kids were inspired by GTA, but who's to say they wouldn't have been inspired by something else? Everything is information, and to blame a violent crime on flashing bits is farcical. These kids are disturbed and they were long before GTA came along.
If I were one of his victims, I would sue his parents for leaving an unsecured gun around a mentally disabled child.
There are two types of parents; 1) they want to raise a healthy and productive kid or 2) they could care less, and do because they are suppose to/have to.
Someone who would raise a kid, and allow them to have access to guns (either by knowing where to get one, or by having theres accesible) are the ones who obviously dont care about raising them the right way. The loved ones of the victoms in these cases obviously want someone to pay (who would blame them, monetary or not), but suing someone into oblivion that has an attitude like that will get you know where - they could care less. When the victoms turn to someone else to make them pay for there loss - someone that has a consious, in a lot of ways it takes the blame off the carless parents that are responsible in the first place - the result? they keep being irresponsible and everyother dead beat parent out there follows in there foot steps...
For every action there is a reaction, if the reaction is pointless - the action will be deemed as pointless...
I've pissed someone off somewhere...
Guns don't kill people, kids who play violent videogames do.
If you haven't seen it already, please pick up a copy of Michael Moore's Bowling For Columbine where he addresses issues like these. He does tend to target the NRA more than other, potentially more responsible entities, but the movie calls to the light the bigger issue of the media turning everyone into fearful consumers who are way too impressionable.
There are a number of intitutions which propagate the idea of violence not only as a means to solve every problem, but now as entertainment. While I agree, these kids had shitty parents, you cannot ignore the fact that children these days are bombarded by violence. If you've been raised decently you obviously can distinguish between fantasy and reality, but that's still no excuse to promote dangerous and destructive themes for the sole purpose of perverse entertainment.
Yes, games like GTO have a right to exist, just like musicans should be able to sing about whatever un-PC topic might be on their mind.
If you want to blame this on crappy parenting, that's probably more responsible than anything else, but also call attention to the obvious crappy parents of the developers of GTO whose children thought this type of trash should be considered "entertainment" to "children" of any age.
The kids in question shot at 25 cars with a .22 calibre rifle. In the state they were in, it'd be a common thing for a kid to actually OWN a .22 rifle- which is legal. Now, having said this, it's STILL the parent's responsibility to ensure that the kids do not misuse the weapon (It's allowed for the purposes of HUNTING...) and to watch what in the hell they're consuming in the form of magazines, movies, videogames, etc.
Suing the game company for their negligence is a sad sign of the times.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
50+ years ago we had real wars. Where we actually defended our homeland against real enemies; where Congress actually declared real war as properly mandated in the Consitution.
Times have changed.
How is not liking firearms being a bigot? Didn't know that firearms were a race!
Also, what is this "truth" you hope he can learn from other parents about firearms?
The truth is that firearms are only for killing things. Name me something else they're used for?
I have great respect for firearms...doesn't mean I will own one ever again. My son hopefully will have respect for them also.
A person can be killed many different ways...a knife, by bare hands...yet other ways to kill a person have many different uses. A car can kill a person, but a car has many uses...as does a knife and bare hands. A gun was made for one purpose only...to kill.
Have a gun to defend and protect...a common argument. Yet if you defend with a gun, it's still killing something that's threatening you.
What are you so afraid of that you need a gun? Or is it because penis size is a factor?
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
This is another example of irrational attitudes. It's assumed that somebody labeled "kid" is innocent by definition. That's bullshit, one of these guys was 16, that's old enough to know right from wrong. The scumbag is just a danger to the rest of us. Lock him up for 20 years. Yes, parents could do a better job, yes, the world would be a better place without games of mindless violence, but when all's said and done, a 16-year-old is old enough to take some responsibility for his own actions. Some people are just psychopaths and the only thing to do with them, is to lock them away to protect the rest of us. There are hundreds of thousands of "kids" in the USA who have less-than-perfect parents, and who play video games featuring mindless violence, and who have access to guns. But they don't shoot people.
Video Games need more old farts to dislike. Us young impressionable whippersnappers get tired of our daddies gripping of SCOs and Microsofts. Anyone have this guys address, email or real. I know some companies with great offers that would love to get ahold of him. (Wink)
Open Source Sushi
They sure are trying to teach them to consume, consume, consume. The rest they teach they do without actually conciously trying to do so (or at least I hope they aren't).
Hell is not other people; it is yourself. - Ludwig Wittgenstein
Society MUST understand that subjecting kids to violence on T.V. and in Games LEADS to violence.
There was an island off Africa that just got T.V. and had no violence or crime rate to speak of. After t.v. crime rate goes up and even crops failed because farmers were watching the tube.
Oh yeah, violence in games and on t.v. has NO consquences. Right. What a fantasy world YOU live in.
give me a brake i play gta games all the time i dont go on killing sprees. if there kids cant tell the diffrence between realty and games they shouldent be playing them anyways. now i fell for those killed but its not take 2s responsabley couse somone is just plain stupid. i bet with some reserch those 2 kids probly have mentel problems. or a history of other crimes. gta is also the world top selling video game couse it is insane and no other game company has the balls to make such games. but if i rember my laws in order to buy a gta game you need to be 18+ and have id soo mommy bught that game in the first place and now blames the game company for her own perches. gta will never be pulled off the shelfs they tryed that befor and they where alot of pissed off people and it was quickly put back.
Okay, so, there's some pretty stupid kids out there. I agree that the parents should be liable, but sometimes the parent can't be around. How many of you know a single mom working two jobs to support her kids?
Here's the problem. Last I checked, 14 year old kids wern't getting into movie theatres to see rated R movies. That said, any 14 year old can walk into Walmart and grab a copy of Vice City.
The ratings are great for informing parents, but without enforcement.. what's the point? Legislate a $1500 fine for selling an adult game to underage people.
We have to stop pointing fingers and simply eliminate the problem at the source.. because regardless of the amount of parenting, there's gonna be stupid kids that get such notions into their heads.
This could be just like the Chewbacca defense, only different.
Karma? Karma? I don't need no stinkin' karma.
What his parents did (or didn't do) that allowed a simple video game to influence them to such a degree. Obviously the game played some role, but it is the job of his parents to prevent the game from doing so. I find it amazing that a game can do this, and I would like to know more about the conditions that allow this to happen.
I think the primary responsibility for any murder belongs the murderer. Since our society seem reluctant to hold children or young adults accountable for these offenses, we turn to the next available whipping boy, be it the parents who raised them, the game developers/film makers/rock stars who inspired them, or whoever else seems to be handy. And yet no one can yet agree on exactly what inspires this sort of senseless violence...we can only seem to agree that someone must endur our vengeance. But who? Is it the parents? Really? I am a parent of a 7 year old autistic child who is capable of extremely violent behaviour with little provocation. I spend many sleepless nights wondering if he will outgrow it, or if he is destined for an institution. If he kills someone, am I responsible? Is it the game makers? Really? I am a pilot, and have spent a lot of time using flight simulators to hone my skills, because they are much like the real thing, and very educational. How realistic does a third-person shooter have to be before it is considered training? Is it the media? Really? I have been paid good money to create art for advertisements. Every major company on the planet spends millions on advertising every year in the belief that it can influence consumer behavior. Isn't it interesting that the media giants are also quick to deny that their increasingly violent programming has any influence over our children? I have thought long and hard about these things, as I am parent, and want what is best for my children. But I have arrived at no easy answers. I am somewhat dismayed that so many posters here are so quick to point the finger...typically at parents. I suspect many of those same posters are not parents themselves. If they were, they may begin to understand just how difficult it is to steer your children clear of the psychic minefield we have built for ourselves. Think about it: As a parent, my job it to say no. No, don't stick your finger in the socket, you could die. No, don't hit your brother, it makes him cry. No, no,no. And slowly, he learns that their are limits to acceptable behaviour. Then he discovers the rest of the world, the one just outside our four walls, the one that creeps into the house on the television and the radio and the Playstation faster than I can possibly hope to stop it. Yes, you can buy our product and be happy. Yes, you can drink our beer, and cheerleaders will love you. Yes, you can eat our food, and look just like this smiling model. Yes, you can solve any difficult problem by blowing up the bad guy. You can even get points for it. Whose the bad parent? Me? Or could it be the society that gives us all what we want when we want it, and panders to our baser instincts to get us to beg for more? Compound this dilemma with the limitless variety and mysteries of the human brain, and I doubt anyone could say just whose fault it is when a tragedy of this nature occurs. Did the children know what they were doing? Did they understand right from wrong? If so, aren't they accountable? If not, why not? Was it their upbringing? Did they suffer from the latest fashionable syndrom? Were they mentally impaired in some way? And how do we cope with them? Can they be rehabilitated? Will jailing their parents and sticking them in a foster home straighten them out? Perhaps some state-appointed psychiatrist could pump them full of feelgood chemicals untilk they are all smiles, at least until their prescription runs out. Will that help? Or maybe we should just put them down, like any other sick animal. Cleanse the gene pool. Will that please the Darwinists? Here's a horrible thought...what if they were just ordinary kids, just like you and I once were, who fucked up? Really badly? Yes, they knew what they were doing, and they knew their parents would not approve, but they got caught up in the moment and did it anyway. Sounds just like a kid, doesn't it? After all, even adults sometimes lose their heads. The prisons are full of them. Ordinary people, who lost their mind...just for a moment. A moment is all
Claiming that GTA leads people to believe that random killing is normal is similar to claiming that watching Wheel of Fortune will lead people to expect that they can earn thousands of dollars as a result of doing crossword puzzles
I heard William and Joshua Buckner went bowling before they started shooting. It must be the damn bowling.
Well, at least not the idiot parents. Usually it's the lawyers! Here's the deal, sue the Big Fish and maybe make enough (through settlements) to pay off the people that will sue you in civil court after their family members were shot at/killed by your kids. It's all a big shell game. Where did the kids get the guns? I wonder what would happen if you created a video game that involved shooting parents???
"A part of me died that night that he died. It just died," said Rosemary Hamel, Aaron's mother. "You just don't know a mother's loss. We were so close, and now he's gone."
Not to sound insensitive or anything, I mean I am sorry innocent people die and all but this lady sounds like a moron. can you say "died" a few more times and make it sound any worse? As for them being "so close", well, apparently she wasn't as close to her children to know that they were fucked in the head and needed some help. Or maybe I'm wrong and they were very close in which case maybe SHE need's some fuckin' help. This is just another post pointing out how people can't take responsibility anymore but really the fact that it's REALLY like this is annoying in it's own. Guess it's just something we have to learn to live with. As for me, I own Grand Theft auto three, I like playing it very much and I'm a New York state certified EMT (meaning i help people, not hurt them). I've had my run ins with the law but I for one know the difference between right and wrong. BLAME THE PARENTS, NOT THE GAMES...
fact: microsoft > linux
1 - Bigotry doesn't have to be restricted to a race. Though I would assume you are bigoted against gun owners anyway, which would qualify under your narrow definition.
2 - The truth that its not the firearm that is in question, its how its used. If he was at my house, he would learn to respect the firearm, and its appropraite useage. ( and storage, getting back to the orginal topic of those kids )
3 - Ever hear of sport shooting that involves things such as clay targets, paper targets, even tin can? Not much death involved there.. and its recognized by the Olympics if you need someone to declare the sport legitimate.
4 - Respect doesn't mean fear and misunderstanding. You are teaching fear to your children. Even if you don't realize it. "guns are bad, we must avoid them" - That is not teaching respect.
5 - See #2.
6 - The point? Defense of ones family and property isn't part of the discussion here. I don't care if you use a baseball bat to protect your house. That would be your choice.
7 - No, I'm not afraid or have penile envy, I am simply exercising my constitutional rights. You know.. the foundation of this country we live in. I also defend and exercise the other rights guaranteed to us Americans via the bill of rights, such as free speech.. just as a side note..
- And I'm done beating this horse ( nothing personal towards you, just tired of doing it ). Read my journal if you care to have a better insight of where I'm coming from.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The truth is that firearms are only for killing things. Name me something else they're used for?
Target shooting. It's a skill, just like any other game or sport.
What are you so afraid of that you need a gun? Or is it because penis size is a factor?
Personal Attack, -10 points to your argument.
If I were to write a game that gorified chid rape, I'm certain the game would be banned and destroyed. If I wrote a research paper describing the thought processes of a chid rapist, and of necesisty, had some graphic descriptions, I don't think anyone would mind. If I produced a movie that had a chid rape as a central plot theme (without glorifying the act), I'm sure the consensus would be mixed.
I know this is about a game of violence (and I have never seen the game), but the same principles apply. It is a trade off between public decency and freedom of speech. Did this game cause these boys to do this act, not likely. Would a game glorifying child rape be a single cause for someone to rape a child, unikely (both possibly true, but not too damned likely). Would an onslaught of games, movies, books etc desensitize people to violence, and cause a general rise in the level of violence, probably, but difficut to prove. This topic touches on a very large issue. Much larger than a simple 'blame the parents' or 'blame the software company'.
As a parent of 2 teens, I know the best of parenting abilities do not always lead to the desired resuts. That does not mean that I can blame society for the wrongs my chidren may commit, I still need to take responsibility for their actions, as I am the gaurdian. At the same time ALL parents need to take responsibility for the actions and EVERYONE needs to be aware of the approtiatness of their behavior. At that point, parents and society would be working hand in hand to produce better children, and at that point silly content laws would not be required, but until then, perhaps they do.
I rambled, sorry.
Kids Kill, Victim Sues Game Maker isn't the most delicately worded title. I'm not trying to nit-pick about grammar, but I'm willing to bet I'm not the only one who did a double-take and wondering how a murder victim could sue.
In America, anybody can sue anybody, but I really think this is a misguided suit and, while I certainly have respect for the families of the victimes, I hope they lose this one. Who are they to determine what caused the murder? In other words, couldn't the kids have been in a deep state of depression? Couldn't their parents beat them and torture them? It seems like GTA could very easily just be a scapegoat here, covering up the real cause.
In addition, I really don't believe video games have any bearing on my behavior. I've grown up playing violent video games -- I used to rock at Doom, and am now a CounterStrike fanatic. I'm a pacifist, and the type of person that wouldn't even really fight back if someone tried to brutally maul me. Granted, there are bound to be some who can't separate games from reality, but in that case, they have a disease / mental illness. The game isn't at fault any more than the disease, and certainly less so than the parents who didn't do anything.
People seem to love to blame cultural problems on sex-obsessed TV, obscene music, Internet pornography, and violent video games. Perhaps people ought to not be so rash. Everyone I know 'consumes' some, if not all, of these, and yet I don't know anyone who's at all violent. I really do believe games are being used as a scapegoat here.
________________________________________________
suwain_2
If the kids didn't have guns they wouldn't have gone out shooting. Or better yet, why don't they sue the government over the 2nd Amendment? That allowed the parents, probably, to buy the guns in the first place. :rolleyes:
Here's a real idea for the parents: Why don't you act like adults and start parenting your kids! God, the kid plays a violent video game, big deal. The kid then goes out and shoots guns at cars. That's not the game's fault; it's the kid's fault for being stupid enough to think that's acceptable behavior. You're the parent, you're suppose to teach them what's right and wrong by the time they start school.
The parents are at fault here. The game industry can't control the fact that moronic little kids are going to buy the game and do stupid things. They were going to do stupid things pre-video game buying, so they're going to do them afterwards.
I used a firearm 300 times and noone died.
Please explain how I 'misused' this firearm because you're obviously insisting their only use is for killing things.
What is it with people who hate guns who are always so obsessed with RKBA advocates' penises?
Rule around our house is that there are no computers or consoles (or TVs for that matter) in bedrooms or other places where a passing parent can't see what's going on. And we've already returned a game that we felt wasn't appropriately marked -- hey, the store took it back opened, against policy, after they heard our case, but we think that they wanted another demo on the floor.
I'm just waiting for the time when kids routinely sue their parents for crummy upbringing. Save your game receipts for court!
DT
Is this thing on? Hello?
Just what we need. Gotta pass the buck here, don't we? By this right, I should be suing the people who make Redneck Rampage because they instill a craving for moon pies, thus making me fat.
This sig no verb.
Fire! Fire! Fire!
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
What is it with people who hate guns who are always so obsessed with RKBA advocates' penises?
I was lashing out, and I was childish about it. The crack the original poster to this thread said about people like me making him sick got to me a little. I lashed out with words.
But come on, guns were made for the sole purpose to kill. Don't give me that run-around saying "no no, I use it for target practice...or sports shooting". It's all related. Sure, you used it 300 times and didn't kill anything, but what were you doing in that 300 times? Practicing?
Sure, I could use my computer monitor here to hammer a nail into the wall, but it's purpose...it's invention...it to display data.
Now, don't sit there and pick apart what I said and get away from the gist of my message. You can pick it apart and say "you can use a monitor as a fishtank also though". You KNOW what I mean.
A guns main purpose is to kill...be it for hunting or defending or murder. Now, why not just admit that? Is there anything in and of itself owning a thing that's only purpose is to kill? No. I'm not saying you shouldn't have a right to own it. You do have a right to own it. I have a right to own it. But don't sugar coat it...don't try to hide or be fearful of people saying they're instruments of taking life. Say it loud, say it proud!
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
You know--that's what's sick about American society. Bloody, pre-mediated violence, including armed robbery and murder is analogous to naked breasts.
It is no wonder that America is so completely fucked up.
There's a whole literature making the argument that pornography is violent, dehumanizing and exploitative--and I tend to agree. Pornography may well give kids the wrong ideas about sex, gender, love, and so on. But, nudity isn't pornography--and pornography is so sought after in its current form probably due to the sexual hangups of average citizens due to this perverse equivalence that Americans draw between sexuality and violence.
By your example, the quick glimpse of a breast is going to send this child into what?
Backward masking in heavy metal music,
fat in food, gun makers instead of the
crimals who misuse the product, customers
who spill hot coffee on themselves blaming
McDonalds, and the list goes on and on.
Now we have parents blaming a video game
for their own failings in raising their
children and teaching them right from wrong.
I've got no answers. I just find it all stupid.
I hope you all love it when we release this sucker, but only time will tell what the dumbasses around the globe think about it. I'm guessing lynch mob... :)
More info about Doom for Columbine: http://bowling.moddb.com
http://executebusiness.com
The bullshit factor on this one is off the scale. At that age I knew damn good and well that you didn't point a weapon at ANYONE! It wasn't a law, it wasn't a rule, there was not "or else"....you just didn't do it, it was a way of life.
My boys are age 7 and 6. They play GTA. Yup, that's right. They play Quake and America's Army too. I let them blast things, kill things, tear apart things all day long on the TV. Neither boy has yet to fire an actual weapon although they have handled them.
Would they fire on cars like that?
Hell no.
I say that with total confidence.
The boys in this story knew EXACTLY what they were doing. Don't bullshit me and don't let them bullshit you. I didn't see any mention of retardation or mental issues in the story, they knew what they were doing.
Those boys need to get whacked and whacked hard. Yes, I'm talking murder charges. And don't give me the crap about their age and those being "adult" charges. If TN supports the death sentence they should make the trip to death row. I would hope for their sake that is the case because if not they should be made to face the torture of spending life in prison. Why? Because they knew what they were doing, and we all know it too.
For them to point the finger at a video game company is.....I just can't find words. For anyone else to go after a software business for this makes no sense to me at all.
Dammit, people tell me I don't make a lot of sense, that I'm not totally connected with the real world. I guess freakin not! In my mind nothing in this story makes any sense at all, it just doesn't mesh with my reality.
. Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
Where a bunch of kids would assasinate their bosses in an effort to make the Stork their King.
This is my sig.
Do you actually think these suits would get anywhere if lawyers just told the people wanting to bring the suit "Sorry thats life. You can't be indenimified from life."? What is pathetic is that the persons bring these suit are often approaced before their dearly departed were even in the ground. Whoring for law suits amoung greiving relatives. It's just sign of the sickness Lawyers have brought on the USA and the reason we are loosing it as a nation. A lower form of life you will not find than lawyers.
King Henry, VI part II act IV
"The first thing we do, lets kill all the lawyers."
It's a joke about lawyers sure it is. There are to many lawyers. Do your part.
As you can see I don't care about my karma.
What is the misfire that children are experiencing that we, as children, didn't experience.
Never during my youth did I ever attempt to faithfully mimic any of my forms of entertainment in a dangerous way. I have never known a friend, a friend of a friend or even a dumbass kid who ever pulled stupid emulation tricks that ridiculously ended in some "willful" violent act.
This does not include accidents that were painfully stupid, of course... I remember hearing about a kid screwing around with a shotgun... eeeew.... not a pretty scar.... even then I thought to myself "what a dumbass!"
WHY did I have such a stark sense of reality that kids today seem to be missing? After all, that is the REAL problem here. It's not games we/they play. It's not the crap we/they watch on TV. A majority of kids actually do understand the difference between reality and fantasy or else we'd have a plague of mutant kids shooting up schools, writing Microsoft worms and virii, teenagers getting pregnant, dogs and cats sleeping together, mass hysteria!
Now I have sons and I let them play Mortal Kombat when everyone else says "No! They'll become evil mutant killer kids! It'll warp their impressionable little minds!" Sure enough, they began to emulate the games they played. The difference between my kids and the "odd" kids who don't understand reality? My sons somehow KNEW they should "pull their punches." They somehow KNEW that you can't and shouldn't attempt to rip a person's head off by the spine dripping blood all over my freshly cleaned carpet.
Clearly it's not the games. It's the influence the parents have over their children. Somehow people got some WEIRD ideas about raising kids. Here's a few of them: (in no specific order of significance)
1. Parents own their kids and no one can or will take them away! It's a socialist crime against nature to even try.
Here's a reality: NO! You don't! They are your responsibility. They are not your thing. They are not your hobby. They are not for your convenience and they aren't "cheap household labor." They are little versions of you and they embody all of your dreams and hopes. They can avoid making all the mistakes in life you made and you can have a vicarious second chance not to screw your life up as you did before. Most importantly, your self-elected job is to teach these little PEOPLE. So teach them!
2. No rational person goes about causing distruction. The only reason it could happen is a sheer lack of respect for other people, property and ultimately themselves.
This goes back to TEACHING YOUR DAMNED KIDS!!! I was taught. My kids are taught. Most of the kids my brothers have are taught. The only "trouble" I have seen from any of them were the STEP-KIDS of one of my brothers... he clearly has problems with reality and problems with respecting other people and property. Strangely, he has a "very good mother." She's one of those over-reactive, sheltering soccer-moms who is "ultra careful" and censoring.
Teach your kids to respect and understand reality. Don't do what my mother did -- preventing me from using a fork to eat with for fear I might hurt myself. Give your kids a frikken KNIFE and teach them how to use it properly and maybe even show them that when used improperly, injury can occur. That's how to teach respect for your environment and how to deal with and live within the realm of reality. Teach them to shoot guns properly; How to clean and maintain them; to be good at hitting the target and to understand that they are dangerous and deadly in the wrong hands and that there are serious consequences to misusing these tools.
TEACH THE KIDS!!! You're not "too busy."
And for those who aren't taught... for those who raise defective kids... HOLD THEM 100% responsible. It's a frikken tragedy that their failure as a parent would actually have repercussions on themselves... but this is kind of like conventional corporate mentality... they can do bad things because they kn
firearms are used to blow open doors(i saw it in HEAT with DeNiro!)
firearms can be used to hurt things...i remember when i was playing Soldier of Fortune 2 the other day and i had to run around one level knocking guys out with the butt of a gun, no shooting allowed!
flare guns, similar in build to a firearm, is used in emergency situations where one needs to be rescued, or does not have a proper firearm and needs to kill someone...forget that last thing :)
By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth. -- George Carlin
Ah yes, he forgot the often unadvertised feature of guns, when they bake you a pie and bring you flowers on your birthday...
Guns are used for nothing but killing, whether you respect them or not...
I dunno who it is
but it prolly is fhqwhgads.
It's silly to make a point after so many replys but hey, this was a valid point brought up in the UK.
There was some objection by police in the UK regarding Doctor Who when ever aliens disguised them selves as police officers. The argument went something like this, "You can tell a kid there is no such things as monsters, you can't tell them there is no such thing as policemen".
While i'm not about censorship... I would submit that there is no replacement for good parenting. Part of a parent's job is to talk to there kids about such issues like going outside and blowing away people is bad.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
The real problem was not the game, but the rifle available to the children. How stupid must one be to blame the game!
Let's sue the game manufacturers, for making the game. Wait, let's sue the gun manufacturers, for making the gun. Or, we could sue the plastic manufacturers that make the materials for a cd. And, the wood pulp industry for making the booklet to the video game. Yeah! Oh, and we can sue all the metal plants for making the aluminum (on the cd) and the iron for the gun! That's the ticket. Let's see, we can sue all the magazines for running ads that caused the kids to buy the game. I've got it! Let's just sue GOD. I mean, after all, he created ALL of this stuff, right? No god = no guns, no violent games, no kids. And, who is the corporeal representation of GOD? The church! It's the churches who are to blame!!!
I mean, why haven't I heard of this kind of things happening anywhere else? I mean, what's wrong with you american people?
But how did 2 kids of 16 and 14 get hold of a shotgun.
OK? I live in a country (NZ) where it's pretty hard for and adult to get hold of a gun but surely there are some basic gun safety rules that have not been followed. Our gun control legislation requires that the gun, bolt and ammo are locked in 3 separate locations. Plus I'm pretty sure its illegal to give kids guns.
Maybe I just live in a country run by peace loving hippies. But no-one has been killed by GTA3 yet.
Why the fuck do people still feel the need to bring up 9/11 when it is completely offtopic.
Stop using it as a crutch.
And to further your personal beliefs.
Fuckers.
I'm signing this too. It's that important to me.
Chicago2600.net more than a lifestyle, its a survival trait.
You're remarkably articulate and well thought-out on these points. Your history lends a unique credibility to your points. I hope somebody mods your comments up.
I'm not just being sycophantic..I actually don't know that I completely agree with your choices. I think there's something to be said for owning a firearm for self-defense and the defense of your home. But, you're absolutely right that the primary function of a gun is the injury or taking of life. While other hunting/killing practices have been elevated to "sport"--archery, javelin-throw, all of martial arts--their primary purpose can't be denied.
I believe I have some of the best parents in the world. They brought me up with all the opportunities they could offer, taught me right and wrong, watched me grow up and graduate from a reputable university and get a good job, etc.
My little sister, OTOH, grew up to be a hellraiser, high-school dropout, pregnant at 18, etc.
So to all those who say the blame for these children shooting up highway vehicles should fall on the parents...I call bullshit. I have seen firsthand how the same set of parents can raise a "good" child, and a "bad" child, using the same parenting methods on both. Why not blame these kids themselves for their own actions? If these kids were 8 years old, and not 16, I might agree with you...
The expression is "I could NOT care less." Think about it.
The real problem is the lawyers who bring these suits. We have to many Lawyers and laws and not enough common sense. We could safely loose every 3 lawyer and not miss them.
King Henry, VI part II act IV
"The first thing we do, lets kill all the lawyers."
It's a joke about lawyers sure it is. There are to many lawyers. Do your part.
As you can see I don't care about my karma.
the makers of the Weapons .. oh no .. this would be completely absurd - let's sue the makers of a game :-)
WHEN ARE YOU PARENTS GOING TO START TAKING RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR KIDS INSTEAD OF BLAMING EVERYONE BUT YOURSELVES FOR THAT WHICH YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR.
...I cannot stop breaking all the jars and vases I see ! Strangely, in real life, very few contain jewels, hearts or arrows.
McCartney fans pay bus tickets. [...] Lennon fans too, with discretion.
Wrong. All the people I know who sport shoot are quite aware of gun safety. Nearly everyone who sport shoots (hunting included) has taken a jug of water to the range and shot it. Seeing how much damage is done to an object rather like the human body make it pretty clear how badly a bullet can damage someone.
The problem isn't the guns - it's the people not knowing right from wrong.
I also grew up in a rural area (my father is a cowboy, in fact :P). Like you, I learned to respect firearms through use and firsthand observation.
Simply handing your children firearms is, of course, incredibly irresponsible, but think back on how your father introduced you to firearms, and taught you how to respect them.
If you don't give your own kids a guided introduction to firearms, as you were given by your father, I guarantee you that they will not have the same respect for firearms as you. At "best", they will fear and misunderstand them.
If you do all this. Including even (god forbid) buying your teenage a firearm or 2 or 3 they might grow up and get masters in phyics, be honor students and be well adjusted non geeks with real lives and get married and stuff. Even if they are a girl.
Why after all this does she call me when her computer has a problem? (when windows has a problem heheh)
She still plays viedo games. Hasn't killed anyone yet. Wonder if her grip on reality has something to do with it?
What kind of horrible world would this be if people were to be held responcible for their own actions?!
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Hmm, call me crazy, but aren't the following just as responsible, if not more, for the incident as Take Two interactive?
-The store/individual that sold/gave the shotguns
-The store/individual that sold/gave the shells
-The freaking parents?!? that allowed their 14yr and 16yr children to have unsupervised access to guns
Oh yeah, that's right, I live in the good ole USA
kids KILL and the victims.. dead.. presumable since the kids KILL.. they sue?..
WHEN DID IT BECOME LEGAL FOR CORPSES TO SUE?..
The truth is that firearms are only for killing things. Name me something else they're used for?
Better still, stay with the topic here and name me one person who has really died from being shot in a video game.
Games aren't guns, the experience of shooting someone in a game is entirely different to real life.
In real life the guy you just railed doesn't say "good shot".
In real life you feel fear when facing an armed opponent, in a game you shrug, go for it, and respawn a few seconds later.
I think people need to get straight that game violence is the same level as violence in kids cartoons. It's joke violence, it doesn't even look real
Custom Rules For SpamAssassin
Only in America......yawn.
Good point, I agree, it is normal for most citizens of a capitalist republic to equate "loss of property" with "loss of life" as justice. This is why I said; "wrongs committed are life's little lottery games that you can collect on and should collect on to support the legal profession and win half the money." I do not agree with such a profit/greed justice system, but it appears to satisfy the sense of justice for many in the USA public fixated with "Reality TV" programs. The PA-103 terrorist attack was settled for money, because it appears it is not good international business to seek justice with imprisonment and/or death for murders. To some degree, post 9-11, it appears that one day the families of the victims will be forced to settle with the Saudi government and royal families/relatives.
... My weapons remain under two locks, unless they are being transported by me personally for appropriate purposes, to a range, or for sporting events. I never store ammo and weapons in the same location, ammo I keep under different locks and keys, except when my weapons are loaded for appropriate use/task/activities.
Also, improperly secured covered the point reasonably, but due to your comment
I do not consider this to be unreasonable/unrealistic for responsible adults.
OldHawk777
Reality is a self-induced hallucination.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
This is my opinion, so to put that into context, this is me. I hunt, i own guns, i played video games since i was little, violent ones since they existed, I was of medium popularity in highschool, although we wore metal band t-shirts and baggy pants. Did any of those things make me want to shoot at traffic? No. The fact is that even though i personally have no problems with guns, I feel that these children obviously should not have had access to them. The same goes for GTA, as great a game as it is for most, its now painfully clear that access should have been denied. If, while i was a teenager, I ran around mimicing video games, My parents probable would not have allowed me to use firearms. If I began to act out oddly because of video games, they probably would have taken them away. And if i showed signs of depression, They probably would have gotten me counsoling. Did any of that happen? No. The parents failed. The M rating on a game is desinged to preven people who might be negativly affected by a game from getting it. Did that happen? No. ESRB Failed. The legal age for purchasing guns, and the mandatory inclusion of gun locks with firearms is designed to prevent kids from shooting things. Did that happen? No. Gun control failed too. I dont believe that this happend because video games brain wash our kids. I dont believe this happend because we need stricter gun controll laws. And i dont think this is because the parents neglected they're kids 24/7. what happened is the parents DID neglect the game rateing when the game was purchased, they DID neglect to lock guns and amunition and make the keys inacceable to the children, and they did Neglect to see what their kids were doing at the time that this occured. Why doesnt this happen in other countries? I dont know maybe we have too much freedom here, but i doubt that. Why didnt the kids have enough common sense not to do this? i dont know, maybe they have a learning disability. The Bottom line is this, EVERY ONE FAILED. The system is full of precautions and gaurds agaist things like this, but they're all too often neglected. Had the parents or the store heeded the rating, had the parents locked the guns, had the parents been there, perhaps this all could have been prevented. WE FAILED, I FAILED, YOU FAILED, THE ESRB FAILED, THE PARENTS FAILED. Now everyone buck up and take some resposibility.
"I am the Flail of God!" -Genghis Kahn
So, erm. where did they get the guns and ammo? Presumably they weren't included with the game.
Cress, cress, lovely lovely cress
When kids, as they are being arrested, say they got the idea from Grand Theft Auto, and that they didn't think it'd hurt anyone because in GTA simply shooting a car doesn't always kill the occupants.. then I have to wonder why this game is marketed towards children.
Yes, we can blame the parents. The guns should not have been accessible. Yes, we can blame them for buying the game...
But who here really thinks that GTA 3 isn't marketed towards kids?
Jarrod
I think the problem here is not violence in games or movies or televison shows. It's the fact that most of the time the violence is unrealistic. This gives kids (who presumably don't know any better) a false impression about the consequences of their actions should they minic what they see.
So let's have more realistic violence.
--
"What do you want me to do? Whack a guy? Off a guy? Whack off a guy? Cause I'm married."
But yes, questions should be raised about the guns, not the video game.
People seem to think that sniper attacks are a new and American phenomenon. That just ain't so. It's just another kind of murder, and murder's been around for a while, now.
Only For killing? I have owned guns for several years.. and never, I repeat NEVER killed anything...
Ever hear of Olympic competition shooting?
Skeet?
Paper Target competition?
Or even a pellet gun?
I suppose not, its easier to ignore reality in order to push a flawed agenda of anti-freedom..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I know! Let's sue the gun manufacturers! Or maybe the gun retailer! Or someone ELSE would sue the parents for raising their kids wrong! Or they could sue the car manufacturers for building cars when they KNEW that games like GTA exsited! Or you could sue the people that parked the cars outside of these kids' home. Or you could sue the kids for playing the game and being STUPID enough to confuse a game with real life. Or... Or.. Or.
The power of Christ compiles you.
A Random Blog
Parental Licenses.
Think I'm joking? Maybe, just maybe if stupid people weren't (legally) allowed to breed, problems like this wouldn't happen in the first place.
But then again, who decides who is stupid, and who isn't, right?
I still think it's fucked up that in America, you have to be twenty-one to drink and sixteen to drive in most states, yet, people can have kids whenever they want.
Yeah, I said it.
Get hookers, run red lights, flip off people, and drive recklessly (just to name a few). Thats gonna be my new defense from now on...
My knife died just yesterday!
Current Karma Status: Roadkill
Somewhere in Europe 1/10/2003. Reuters
A deranged 29-year old man was arrested somewhere in Europe yesterday evening. He was driving a reconstructed German world war two -era Panther tank and shouting "achtung achtung" madly, shooting with the tanks powerful 75mm gun and driving over every vehicle he encountered. A special unit of the local police had to use tear gas to get the deranged man out of his panzerkampfwagen.
The man later pleaded insanity, telling that he had been playing so-called strategy games on his PC computer. He especially mentioned a game called "Combat Mission - Barbarossa to Berlin." The man said that he really believed it was 1943 and he actually was taking part in the Battle of Kursk. "There was something different, usually i'm leading whole battalions, this time i was on my own", the madman said. "It was not entirely realistic, i like the Combat Mission graphics more."
The European Commission is taking the necessary actions to prevent males aged 25-85 from playing computer strategy games based on the history of world war two.
"Actually we might also ban them from doing military service, since they get to play very realistic and very bad wargames like infantry, marines and artillery there too. Hell, ban even wars these games are based on", said an unnamed source from the EU bureaucracy. "And the makers of tanks and other armoured vehicles are to be held accountable too - this is serious! The simulations are based on real vehicles!"
"Obviously these 'strategy' games are really evil to the psyche of adult males", said a psychiatrist from the Arkham institute of mental health and cybernetics. "Most likely we should ban people from watching war news on the television too - they might get influenced and start a real war in their neighborhood!
"Actually we might also ban them from doing military service, since they get bad influence there too. Hell, ban even wars - these games are based on real history you know" said an unnamed source from some bureaucracy in Central Europe.
"The military is not to blame", said a NATO general, "when we drive around with tanks it's nice and in defence of democracy, never mind a few loonies!"
Guns do one thing: put holes in whatever they are pointed at when the trigger is pulled.
It is always just to put holes in targets.
It is often just to put holes in animals, which will lead to their death. It's certainly no more or less cruel than what beasts do to one another.
It is occasionally just to put a hole in your fellow human, when said human seeks to do harm to you and your kin, and has no just reason to do so.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Where my "What The Hell" Meeter goes off is the fact that the fatal shooting was first.
Oh, we're really sorry your honor, but when the first car went careening across the road with a dead-guy behind the wheel we figured that it was a million to one shot, but we had to find out for sure, so we couln't stop there. That would have been immoral.
Be serious people.
Those letters of appology are crap. These kids are dammaged goods if they didn't go "oh shit" (in the bad way, as opposed to the happy giggling way) at the first killing.
Sure, one video game did all that disassociating damage all at once, that makes *perfect* sense.
And the judge? "I wanted to just let them go but..." What is wrong with people?
Everyone has become blind to personal responsibility. When it is even the judges it is time for a nice mass extinction.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
"What happened to being a nice person? Why is everyone so cynical now adays?"
No, what I mean is that when you're a child, you think everybody is nice and not cynical. When you get older, you realize most people are that way.
Its always been that way; you've just gotten old enough to notice.
As to "What happened to being a nice person", people in general aren't "nice". Remember Dicken's serial "A Christmas Carol"? Scrooge isn't the exception, he's the rule. And the beauty is, when you get old enough, you realize scrooge isn't a bad guy; he's the only realist in the story.
"Do you have children? Would you let your kids watch porn? After all, they'll just want to watch it more..."
Yes, yes, I would, and yes I do.
Of course, they're both over 18, and I find porn healthy and normal.
My wife pretends not to care, but when she watches with me, she's like a bitch in heat...nothing like porn to spice up a 22 year old marriage.
"But the reason violence is part of everyday life is because parents are irresponsible in raising violent children. "
Baloney. Violence is inherent in nature, and therefore in man.
When a shark eats a smaller fish, is it because it wasn't raised properly? When baboons fight each other, is it poor parenting.
Oh, you're different, you're not an animal!
Right.
People fight over stuff. Watch 2 year olds bonk each other over the head with toys. The difference is at age 18, they can kill each other. The smart parent teaches their child to be able to have the skills to defend themselves.
Violence the product of poor parenting? You're so goofy.
For all I care, those kids are at fault. Theyre dumbasses and they should be shot. Taking a video game for real, these are Grade A Assholes. Seems like the [victims] family wants money, but money doesnt take the place of people. Making money off of a murder is even worse. The kids and their parents should be sued, and the kids should be shot. No more of this 'were protecting the kids' bullshit'. Kids are people, and they have responsibility. End of story.
Education in the U.S. is declining (over-populated class rooms, more drop-outs, little funding for more books, etc.). When I was in high-school, my focus was getting good grades, because my parents gave me benefits (money, less chores). I played shooter games from as far back as I can remember. I even played them with my father. It's a great way to release anger and stress in a non-harmful way. I've never had the urge to go shoot someone if they pissed me off. Why? Because I was educated to know better than that. Education is declining now, and with increasing violance and pressure in today's schools, kids just do not know better. They were not taught how to handle reality well. School isn't as important to more and more students these days.
Think about Japan. They are way more into video games than the U.S. They are very focused on getting an education and doing well in school, which causes a lot of stress. However, you don't see many statistics on students shooting things and blaming it on video games. They know better.. their society (schools, parents, peers) educate them.
U.S. society is becoming less civilized and more demoralized. If a student drops out of school, so what? They can still get a high-paying job and earn respect. Less education leads to more ignorance, which in turn breeds violence, hate, and all those unpleasant emotions. What is stopping them from killing people IRL instead of in an isolated-reality video game? Education.
Well, there is, but not for sale in the US.
People think that military-like decorations make it an assault rife.
Oooooh. Its semi-automatic. Sheehs.
"Assault Rifle" is a term popularized by kooky politicians looks to stir up stupid people. And it works.
"The truth is that firearms are only for killing things. Name me something else they're used for?"
No, firearms are used for sport, too. Target shooting.
But they're used for self-defense and hunting, too. You lead such a pampered life that you can't imagine that some people aren't afraid of what happens in life and own a firearm.
Don't project your sad-sack existance onto others and criticize. Go back down to your parent's crawl-space.
Will what we're trying to teach him stick? I don't know...but we're trying, we really really are. It's hard to do with the media overblowing violence and crime most of the time.
It may not seem like it now, but having parents who have an attitude that element x is bad, who adamantly stick to this presumption, and who explain it rationally to their kids really has a big effect on the kids. Especially if it's something that really makes sense, like non-violence. My parents always wanted me to respect authority, but I never did, and still don't because authority is stupid. However, I've always stayed away from drugs, including cigarettes, which my friends regularly indulged in, because I was always under the assumption they were evil. I was never exposed to the idea that smoking might be cool or fun until I was in high school, and by then I could figure it out for myself. Being in an environment where it's just assumed that violence is stupid is the kind of thing that will stick with a kid more or less automatically. It may seem like you need to try hard to avoid exposing your kids to violence, but merely having a household that carries the attitude that violence is implicitly stupid is more than likely enough. I wouldn't worry about it, as long as you're setting a good example for your kids and are talking to them about it, it will stick.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
Keep in mind that firearms are ancient technology, and bullets are basically a fraction of an ounce of shaped lead crimped onto the end of a brass cylinder containing a few grains of one of the simplest explosives ever discovered by humans (both smokeless and black powder each only require three simple ingredients).
The real problem with this comment is that the people who use the most rounds of ammunition are the hunters and competition shooters, the people least likely to be involved in a firearms death.
A mugger with a revolver might never fire any of the five rounds that were in it the day he bought it off some crackhead on the street, the estranged wife only needs one or two shots to off her husband, but the dedicated police officer or whitetail deer hunter goes through anywhere from twenty to two hundred rounds every time he visits the range (or his farmer buddies plinking quarry off the back forty).
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
How about inspiring fear in would-be rapists/murderers/tyrants? Take a look at the crime rates of an area that's enacted concealed-carry laws - notice that big drop in confrontational crimes?
Because, unfortunately for gun-haters such as yourself, it happens to be an argument that is valid and important.
Using a firearm to defend yourself doesn't always involve discharging said firearm. Provided the perp isn't high/crazy, pointing a shotgun at him and louding demanding that he cease his attack is often quite effective. But of course, you've convinced yourself that even using the *threat* of violence is unacceptable, so you can live with your decision to be an unarmed coward.
Even a man with a hideously large penis would find it difficult to fight off a bunch of home invaders on PCP. And even if he had a 50/50 a change of fighting them off, having a gun would improve his chances, and even odds just aren't good enough with it comes to defending my life and the lives of the people I love.
"That VIOLENCE is wrong"
Scotty, my kids are studying martial arts. Does this make me a bad parent?
After all, the messaging I'm sending them is that if they are threatened by someone, they should kick the "bad guy's" ass. And yes, I'm a practitioner too.
I mean, sure, MA teaches them respect, self-disipline, keeping cool under pressure, but at its heart, they are studying how to disable or potentially kill someone if they believe they are in a violent situation. They've been studying since they were 7, so since an early age, we've been kicking each other's collective asses in practice.
Am I a bad parent? I guess according to you I am.
The problem is there will always be some percentage of children who suffer some developmental problems or lack of restraint and are easily influenced. They become obsessed with Judas Priest Lyrics/MTV's Jackass/Violent Video Games/Dungeons and Dragons/Movies or whatever. They apparently can't differentiate between reality and fantasy. They act on their fantasy, do something incredibly stupid. Sometimes they only hurt themselves, sometimes innocent victims get killed.
When it happens people everyone looks for an easy culprit... guns... movies... music... parents... etc.
Is there really anything we should do to prevent these kinds of things? Is there anything we can do? There aren't easy answers to these questions.
A lot of games/movies/music, etc are too violent, too explicit. A lot of it has questionable social value, but how do we draw the line.
A successful lawsuit here might cause game publishers to tone down the violence, and that might not be a bad thing... at first, but how long until people sue claiming Pacman made them eat everything in sight, causing them to become obese?
I guess I'm just saying that we shouldn't just look for the easy answer that coincides with your own political viewpoint, we need to really investigate these kids, the Columbine killers, all the kids who imitate Jackass, and maybe we'll learn some things that might help is intervene before the next one happens.
By reading this sig, you agree to the terms of my sig license.
I have been into electronic gaming of all sorts for years, and still very much am. I love online gaming including those where the object is to 'kill' your openent - Enemy Territory is my latest favorite! Yet I can step back for a 'sec and think about it: what IF there actually are those people out there who - for whatever reason - cant diferentiate between what is and isnt real when it comes to gaming? Shouldnt developers stay within some sort of limits of good taste - as should ever other aspect of culture? Theres right and wrong but theres also class and taste - and GTA doesnt have either. Its one thing to blast away very obviously fictional characters in a very obviously fictional envrionment in such games like Wolfenstein or Neverwinter Nights or BattleField 1942 or whatever. These games that dont in any way relate to, or correspond to, real every day life here in 2003. But GTA is anothe thing - is it worth it people? Do we HAVE to have games where its possible to go up and kill an innocent bystander on the side of a typical city street? I dont see how that can even be considered 'entertainment'. This game is as distasteful as so many other areas of today's multimedia culture - with of an emphasis on exploiting shock value. There ARE people who are disturbed enough that playing a game like this day in and day out might set them off. And there are those that it might just make them a little more negative towards society - which makes society more negative. When you purchase a product, you condone what it stands for - a tiny little bit - but it all adds up. Our society is only as pleasant and civil as the personalities that inhabit it. Why purchase a game then, which portrays, and even reward, actions of violence against innocent civilians then?
Buy a real game - GTA is trash..
-- NeTMoNGeR
NT
Because if you have been following these "gun suits" you would see 99.9% losses on the part of the plantifs that brought the case Courts (Judges despite what the experts on /. say) aren't stupid. Guns don't kill people. People kill people. The ambluance chasing lawyers who bring these suits do it on spec. They don't win so they don't make money so they don't sue gun makers anymore. (Unless they are really stupid.)
King Henry, VI part II act IV
"The first thing we do, lets kill all the lawyers."
It's a joke about lawyers sure it is. There are to many lawyers. Do your part.
As you can see I don't care about my karma.
Why not modify the EULA with something to the effect of 'By clicking Yes you absolve The Company and the Programmers of all responsibility and liability concerning injury, damage and/or death to all inanimate and living objects
What ever happened to 'Let the Buyer beware'?
The GEEK shall inherit the earth...
Looking through all the replys I was glad to see the majority of society still seems to be sane. It is too easy to blame the problems in society on such simple influences as computer games.
To think a person's actions are so easily influeced should be insulting. Think about what you're saying: "I can't control my self; when I watch TV or play games I'm forced to abandon all common sense and mimic their actions in real life!" I mean come on...
I'm 18 now and like many people in my generation I've had my time playing the various violent games: Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Halflife, BF1942, Max Payne, GTA3,etc etc.
To me, as with most people they are an escape. I don't consider the violence to be perverted or disgusting. It's a fantasy that is all. (I believe there are enough comments on fantasy vs reality). As far as the benifits from games there aren't many. But I consider games to be just as bad as TV or any of the other entertainments in life. After a while it all blends into an infinite barage of superflous images. The first sit-com is fun but after 4 hours do you really have the right to say you are still gaining something from watching. It is the same with games, after 4 hours you have entered into an addiction not entertainment.
I believe the greatest threat games have is their addictiveness. During high school my grades hardly suffered due to games, but think of all the things I could have done instead. I might have written a program, built a robot, read a book. Any number of things would have been more useful. Now I'm not saying no one should watch TV and no one should play games. If you think that's what I'm about then you've missed the point. This is about will power and self control.
And this is what a great many in my generation lack. Nearly everyone I know procrastinates. It is easy to fall into an endless loop of doing the minimum at the last minute, pulling off that A cause you're a bright kid and can whip out that essay in 2 hours after midnight, but you've wasted your time. I realized now that I could have done much better. Some books try to give the answer, but it's ludicrous to believe people can change over night. "The Seven habits of the Highly Effective Teen" while saying what you should attain does not explain how to one can actually obtain it.
In our society will power is only learned from our parents. Unfortunatly no where in the education system is there a class on time management and balancing your life. Health is a load of crap. What the real "health" should include is a real course in FirstAid/CPR from the red cross, and a trip to the morgue. Society has a peverse ignorance of death. I have a good friend who works as a forensic entomologist. A group of us in the Venture Crew (co-ed Boy Scouts, yes such a thing exists) went to the morgue to view a body. How many people can say you've done that. Hardly 1% of the population I would expect. We are made of the same vulnerable biological matter as the rest of the planet, believe it or not. Our culture has such a fear of death that when it confronts us we can only think of what a chaotic and horrible thing it is. I am willing to bet that if these kids had visited a morgue, this would not have happened.
Life is about balance, people need to understand and embrace this. Now this will sound quite idealistic but it's true. One must learn to balance all things in life, School, Sports, Computer Games, TV, and self education. If we could only learn to be more productive through our self developement the world would be a much better place.
Depresion comes out of imbalances. If you play computer games all the time or watch TV day after day it will lead to depression. If all you do is read Fantasy/SciFi/Romance(pick your poison) novels all day, you are entering the same sort of tempting addiction. The temptations in life are infinite. Now I'm not particularly religious, but I find religous philosophys to be interesting and insightful. I think that in
TN does have weaker gun laws than California, and most Northern states. We don't tend to kill each other as often, so it's not a big problem. .22 rifle, which, if you'ld read the article, was the weapon used here.
Most of us are taught how to use and have respect for guns at an early age; It would never have occurred to me to shoot at cars with my
Now, to address the BS in your statement above:
Minors can own long guns, but you must be eighteen or over to buy them. And pass a background check.
No liscense is required to buy handguns, but minors are not allowed to possess them, and again, you must pass a background check, and there is a waiting period; interestingly enough, it WAS 21 days, until the Brady people got ahold of it, now its only five days. (Way to go!)
A gun owner is ALWAYS liable for the accidental killing of someone with their gun. If they had no reasonable means to prevent what happened, they are not held liable, which is the same burden of proof of any negligence case. And leaving a gun around for the kids to play with is forbidden by state law.
The really cool thing about our state is that we can get permits to carry concealed weapons. There have been a more than few cases of granny-types blowing away muggers that failed to take that into account.
So, to finish, I hope you stay wherever the hell you are, because TN is a nicer place without you!
Have a nice day!
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
>Even a man with a hideously large penis would find it difficult to fight off a bunch of home invaders on PCP. Not if he used his "hideiously big penis" as a sword! ;)
make GTA have a jail mode... where instead of respawning if you were busted by the cops then you goto jail and you cant play the game for 30 years to life... but that doesn't sale well i guess... *sigh*
[[ the only 15 letter word that is spelled without repeating a letter is uncopyrightable: it may soon be, however. ]]
Why not use a page from The Chewbacca Defense?
"We have imbeciles for kids, who can't distinguish reality from fiction. We have also failed utterly as parents to instill a sense of right and wrong in them, and have been so absent we didn't see this coming. We blame video games."
Nuisance suit, anyone?
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
Misguided attempts at political control, simple as that. Religion was an excuse, and in my oppinion, the particular supreme being involved did not approve.
Crimey
education should not involve the generous spreading of ignorance. Make sure your kid as armed with knowledge about the real world, or when (s)he's exposed to it, his behaviour will not be what you taught him because you prepared him for a world he never met.
There are waaaaayyyyy too many stories of catholic schoolgirls finding out what sex was and going totally overboard on it. Just like kids in the US get totally sloshed when they go to college where drinking is suddenly presented to them.
I discourage the use of gun toting games and violence in general, but I'm also an army vet and have a decade of martial arts experience. I don't ignore violence, and I don't hide it. I simply state that it's bad. It hurts people.
theed
The US government blames violence and aggressive behavior on the Koran, citing that it causes individuals to commit acts of terrorism. Congress is looking into a Bill to prevent the book from getting into the hands of minors, requiring strict enforcement over its sale as well as warning labels for parents.
Massive networking attempt for friends
Here is what I would presume to be Mr. Hamel's personal address found by the simple process of using AnyWho.com Hamel, Aaron 5615 Millertown Pke KNOXVILLE, TN 37924 865-546-6658
That's easy. Nobody.
If the perpetrator of a crime cannot make restitution, the victim does not have any further recourse. It sucks, but that's just the way it works. Life ain't fair.
I must admit that I completely fail to understand why a software developer should be held to legal responsibility for a couple of dumbshits shooting at cars. Hell, I've had a bad couple of years - if I go on a rampage and shoot a few people, I'm sure someone's responsible for that - Oh, not me, surely some television show, or Id software, or maybe those people who fired me, or those other people who didn't accept my proposal, of that guy who looked at me funny on the subway...
The fact is that looking for a source of compensation for a tragedy has turned in to sick game of extortion by lawyer. I'm very interested in law, and may actually go back to school to pick up more knowledge here, but this sort of thing is a gross abuse of what law is supposed to provide - a fair, level field for people to prosper or not, to the best of thier own abilites.
I forget what 8 was for.
I think if more people started taking him to task, me might at least be disbarred. Here's some guy who emailed newspapers who bought Jack's crock of shit and chewed them out for it.
Every game site in the world bags on this guy, but it doesn't do a damn thing if people aren't actually yelling at the people publishing his crap as if it were newsworthy.
I have this great idea for a business plan. I'll make videogames where the main character stays in school, studies hard, gets a good job and invest diligently and early in life. Then any kid who plays my game and gets rich I'll sue for their income!
If you think this is absurd then you have to think the case against Take2 is absurd. There's either a causal link or their isn't.
I think most "guns/games/fatty foods" are at fault type thinking is the result of the average joe simply not being to face the fact that "here there be monsters". Save for trouble with girls and failing out of art school what "horrible cause" was there in Hitler's life? Nothing. I really don't think a love of Wagner goes any lengths in explaining his later behavior. Looking for "causes" like that cheapens free will and people who choose to act in a moral and kind manner.
Stop fooling yourselves. Kids don't know the difference between what is right and what is wrong, that is why the parents are there to teach them. And if they are told it is ok in one form then they will think it is ok in another. Obviously these kids don't know the difference. Look at the kids that laid down in the middle of the road because they saw it in a movie. GTA is a very bad program. (I do not call it a game because a game is supposed to be fun; Killing innocent people should not be fun.)
Some asshats just like shooting at people, and they'll do it until we lock them up. But why should we tolerate them shooting at random people, when we have such a surfeit of lawyers?
If we can pass laws saying that law enforcement officers are more equal than anybody else, then we can pass laws that say that lawyers are less equal. Put them in a field and declare open season. The survivors can file suit.
This isn't meant to be funny. Let me analogise you an analogy:
Suppose that tomorrow, we had a coup by Trekkers. They declare that from now on, all laws will be written in Klingon. Only those that speak Klingon may write, interpret and argue the law.
Would we tolerate it? Then why do we tolerate laws written largely by lawyers that require other lawyers to interpret?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
So, on the next GTA game are we going to see a big WARNING message during load times and before the Rockstar Logo?
.....(blah blah don't sue us blah blah not our fault if you are a dumbass blah blah)
WARNING: This game is rated M for Mature. By playing this game you agree that
Maybe I should sue Polyphony Digital for my pain of being too poor to buy those nice cars in Gran Turismo 3? I'd sue them for my reckless driving too, but THEY have a warning that plays for 3 seconds.
I'm sorry, but if I hear another yank slag off Michael Moore for Bowling for Columbine I might just go an get a gun myself!
You should be thankful that you have this man who is willing to bring the issue of America's obsession with guns to the forefront of the media. Yes, he may exaggerate. Yes, K-Mart aren't the only ones who sold bullits. But the fact is - THEY DON'T SELL BULLITS NOW. And Michael Moore did that.
He made K-Mart recognise that selling bullits does not help society.
Please America. Listen to this man. There is a vast difference in statistics of gun death between US and UK and you are blind if you do not recognise this.
PHP
Considering they were step-brothers, I really hope the parents knew both kids.
Always are the games blamed, but seldom the guns...
Oh boo hoo hoo, the little kids went out and shot up some people. Gee, who can we blame.... Couldn't be the kids fault, after all they're just kids.... Someone must have brainwashed them.... Humans can't thing for themselves, at least thats what the good reverend says....
See how stupid that sounds. Maybe Take-two should make a game about killing your parents, then yoursleves. This should clean out the gene pool.
Can anyone here say that they would have gone and done this at 14 or 16. I played violent games back then. People like this should be locked away for life for stupidity. What the hell did they think was going to happen if they shot at cars. The people they should be sueing are the parents who let their kids get their hands on guns. First they blame tv, now games. Parents should need a license to raise children.
I don't know about the US but in Oz and the UK GTA is rated 18+ so they can't really blame the game as they shuldn't have been playing it in the first place.
-- Karma Karma Karma Karma, Karma Chameleon - Boy George
Last week we also had the case of several high school and college students in Ohio (where else? 8^) throwing tomatoes from a cornfield at passing vehicles. A driver threatened to shoot them if they hit his vehicle with another tomato. Then he drove back by several times, they kept throwing tomatoes, and he eventually fired several shotgun blasts into the field, killing one of the teenagers. (All as heard on the news, at that time the driver had not been found, so everything is "alleged".)
So, who should the dead kid's parents sue?
a) The shooter
b) the shooter's car's manufacturer
c) the shooter's weapon's manufacturer
d) whoever sold the weapon to the shooter
e) the surviving tomato chunkers
f) everyone in the tomato supply chain
g) the owner of the cornfield
h) everyone in the corn supply chain
i) the highway department
z) all of the above
The correct answer, of curse, is (z).
I'll start out by saying that if the WTC were still standing, I would be able to see it our of my window.
If you consider it restitution, then yes, I have a problem with it. If you consider it aid to needy people, and if it is indeed aid to needy people, then that's a somewhat nice, useful function of government.
Look at it this way - if your water heater explodes and burns your house down, do your neighbors owe you anything? This isn't rhetorical - this happened to my family. My answer is no, they don't. It is nice if they do help you out (and they did help us), but it is, and should be, voluntary behaviour.
I forget what 8 was for.
I think it's time that certain of our congregation stop slandering games and play NetHack for a few hours and then pay me for giving them such a great idea. Since all of you who hate games will be needing my mailing address it is...
I love NetHack.
In my humble opinion, the real victim in all of these "MacDonald" type suits are the judges that permit and encourage this. I once heard of some freeware that came with a six-word warranty: "Your gun, your bullet, your foot" Too bad the judiciary doesn't apply the same standards to other life decisions. By the way, just for the record, what the hell does it mean when a 16-year-old deliberately shoots a gun into a car and says he "didn't mean to hurt anyone!!???"
All i can say is that, that story is great. There's no way the parents of the victims will win unless the kids doing the shooting were 17+...Because the game was rated "mature" Take Two automatically is saying that this game isnt for kids under 17 so its basically a disclaimer...
It's not that the parents need to watch what the kids play. If a kid lacks the ability to tell the difference between reality and a video game, a) the kid is either too young to play or b) there's something more wrong with a kid than a video game. The parents might have been able to make the weapons less easily accessible to kids too.
I mean, it's not that I don't feel sorry for the people getting shot at, but I don't think GTA is soley to be blamed.
We can call it "How To Raise Kids" or "Don't Be an Idiot". Seeing as how games have such a huge influence on society, maybe we can use them to raise responsible adults? Who knows. Next we can have "How To Take Responsibility For Your Actions".
It STILL baffles my mind that these lawsuits can even be filed.
It baffles my mind that kids are running around with guns and don't have the common sense or insight to think "this may be a bad thing".
It would be nice to be able to let a little Social Darwinism to take over, but unfortunately we have 1) too many laws to protect the idiots of society and let them reproduce and 2) too many innocent people would get harmed.
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
It's scary to thing of the sense of reality that seems to be crumbling beneath kids. I mean, regardless of what your stance is on letting kids play violent video games, or even watching movies with guns or fistfighting, the fundamental idea of not being able to distinguish the *TV SCREEN* from real life is very disturbing. Just throwing this out there: How many parents actually nurture their children to be curious and to learn versus raising them to be as little inconvenience as possible to their own lives?? The results of such are kids that are desperate for attention and who have no foundation of being able to learn or ask questions. Detached human beings.
It'd probably work even better, cause then they'd get pity because they're orphans.
I was never trained by my father or grandfather about fire arms, nor anyone else for that matter.
However I did take archery at summer camp, and many of the rules are the same.
Dont load the weapon unless you will be using it. Dont fire unless oyu know what behind the target incase you miss. Dont point a loaded weapon at someone unless you intend to shoot them (and usually thats a crime). If it's loada keep it pointed at the ground in case of accidental discharge. it goes on and on. Lots of commom sense stuff(IMO) and good safety rules.
I respect the potential of a firearm without specific training from my father, I understand what they can and will do without having used one.
This probably makes me not the best equiped to pick one up and naul a bullseye at 300M but I do not even at worst fear or misunderstand them.
You are too hung up on this patriarchial gun training thing. Why cant a mother train a son or daughter to shoot?
Where the kids aren't alright.
and the parents treat every tragedy like the fuckin' lottery.
-- "Look what happened to little Johnny!"
-- "Wonder how much money we can get for that?"
I want to see the makers of GTA counter-sue the parents of these dumbass kids. Hold THEM responsible for not doing their job in raising their children. As a parent, it's THEIR responsibility to make sure the kids aren't out doing something stupid. That's what being a parent is about. If they can't handle the responsibility of teaching the kids the difference between right and wrong, throw them (and the kids) in jail.