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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 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?
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.
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??
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.
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?
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.
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
Well, unless the person was killed with the CD, wouldn't banning guns make more sense?
Just pay attention to your kids.
Psychotics aren't born in a day.
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!!!
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.
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.'"
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!
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
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.
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."
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.
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!
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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...
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.
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 ----
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.
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
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!"
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.
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
"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?
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.