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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.
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!
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
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? who?
I'd be more concerned with where they got the guns.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
So when are parents going to start being held responsible for their kids' actions?
They should be going to jail too.
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.
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!!
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.
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?
Just pay attention to your kids.
Psychotics aren't born in a day.
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!
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.
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.
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!
WTF is a "gun death"? How can a gun die? It's not even alive!
What's next? Pool Deaths? Ocean Deaths? Knife Deaths? Food Deaths?
Control the language, and you control the thoughts. Don't buy into their newspeak.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
What kind of society are we in that takes pleasure out of simulating murder?
said one of the kids.....you were shooting at them!!
Programming is simply the application of logic to creativity
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.
"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.
c) going to address the much wider issue of the availibility of guns to people?
Guns are used for recreation, just like video games. I see people here talking about personal responsibility, and how stupid it is to blame an inanimate thing for the actions of someone, and yet many of those people are sending their little "ban guns" agenda in the same breath.
Don't you all see the hypocrisy?
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Yeah, but we're talking about kids here. Who was supposed to be watching them when they grabbed the guns? And who was watching the guns?
The gun owner has a responsibility to keep them locked up. Right?
wbs.
Huh?
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.
As the parent said, if you really want to get guns, you will get them even if they're locked up. Experience shows that kids are quite clever if it comes to these matters (or haven't you ever opened a locked drawer you're told not to touch, just to see what's inside?).
Hell is not other people; it is yourself. - Ludwig Wittgenstein
So you are telling me that it is ok to make kids violent as long as you don't let them get hold of a gun?
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
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!
If they were black, they would have been tried as adults.
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?
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?
In that case, they shouldn't be fucking around with lawyers and courts until they are thinking rationally and objectively. The courts should not be used to satisfy the knee-jerk responses of the bereaved.
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.
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.
1. How did they get the guns?
2. Who didn't notice that these two kids needed to be in therapy or on medication before this?
3. Are some form of consequences going to be leveled at the adult who is responsible for the firearms used?
Someone somewhere fscked up very very badly in creating a situation where two deranged or mentally challenged (or both?) teenagers had access to firearms and ammo.
Should that person or persons be held responsible? Well, an innocent bystander died because of their actions, inactions, or dereliction.
It's entirely possible that the kids who are being charged should more properly be locked up in psychiatric care. The better question is what should be done about whomever created this situation... and it obviously wasn't the game company.
Quoth he
"It's all academic anyway..."
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.
What if instead of deciding to shooting at passing traffic, they were inspired to jump in a car and begin to run over pedestrians? Would you then be concerned with where they got the car? Guns do not kill, - people do.
The argument that GTA2, or any media, is to blame for one's actions is absurd. What should be explored is why these kids are feeble minded imbeciles. What is next - not allowing kids to read history (full of murder, rape, and violence) because we fear it might cause them kill? If you are simple minded enough to be persuaded by a video game to shoot someone in the head - you are either insane or a moron.
Maybe we could avoid a few of these cases if we included LOGIC somewhere in our public school's curriculum.
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
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.
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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.
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?
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...
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 ----
It wouldn't matter how perfectly they were parented. Kids pull dumb shit all the time, even knowing that it is wrong. They know, if they bothered to think it through, that they would be in a stupendous amount of trouble. Did you ever get in trouble as a kid? Were you surprised when you got caught?
It's one thing to let your five year old be responsible for feeding the goldfish. If he scews up the fish dies. It is another thing entirely to expect him to always be responsible with access to a gun. If he screws that up then a person might die.
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
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.
I mean, why haven't I heard of this kind of things happening anywhere else? I mean, what's wrong with you american people?
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.
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
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.