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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)
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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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.
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.
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.
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!!
Also, if they reach 1:4 loss:win, they should level up and win the game.
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!
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.
Some guy named Kazaa.
Mordor...a magical, mythical land where women are more rare than dragons--but where every man would rather find a dragon
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.
This isn't a criminal case, it's a civil one. I also agree with the poster on this. The first words that were spoken in my BUSINESS law course were "Who do you sue? Deep pockets". That's the mandate in law courses and until that changes we (as a society) will forever encounter POS laywers who will strive to blame Disney for weapons of mass destruction. Keep in mind, that's also why consumers pay much more now for products; they HAVE to defend themselves with a 10 million dollar lawyer against suits like this. Who ultimately pays? Us. That cost gets passed right along like a counterfeit 20. Whenever something goes wrong in America we consult an attorney as a matter of habit because we've been TRAINED to do so. Sometimes bad things happen to good people just because. Get over it already.
[SIG] Remember Mattel handheld games?
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.
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?
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