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GTA Blamed for Columbine-style Massacre Planning
bippy writes "A Miami attorney claims that a teen accused of plotting a massacre used GTA to prepare for the attack, RedAssedBaboon reports.
Attorney Jack Thompson is the same guy who is trying to link the murder of Stefan Pakeerah last year to Manhunt. Pakeerah was beaten to death with a claw hammer by a friend who, Thompson claims, was inspired by Manhunt. The uproar surrounding the case led to the game being pulled from many British store shelves and Prime Minister Tony Blair looking into a link between violence and video games. It looks like Thompson has found himself a niche." Update: 10/10 19:25 GMT by T : Peter Endean writes "It might be worth noting that in fact in the case of the murder linked to Manhunt, it was the victim who owned the game."
It was the victim who owned manhunt, not the murderer!
u rder_claim/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/08/04/manhunt_m
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
What's so special about cops and why only in videogames?
Eric Clapton sang about "I shot the sheriff".
Cops are killed in movies and television shows all the time and have been for some six or seven decades at the very least.
Cops are killed in books all the time.
All sorts of people are killed in all sorts of movies, music, books, television shows, plays and even VIDEO GAMES.
** Why is it okay to kill cops in any media EXCEPT videogames/interactive media?
** Why is it okay to kill everyone else BUT cops in interactive media?
It's not like police are some high and mighty upper class that rises above the rest of the world in importance simply becuase of the authority they wieild over citizens.
Pakeerah was beaten to death with a claw hammer by a friend who, Thompson claims, was inspired by Manhunt.
Yeah, and everybody seems to overlook one fact: the "damning evidence" that the police found the game in the kid's bedroom was, in fact, found in the victim's bedroom.
That wasn't the first time Thompson has been involved in cases like this; he's a well-known crank who foists himself on the families of victims and convinces them that the games are to blame. In one case, he tried to persue a case against the wishes of the victim's family. He's also harrassed people and had restraining orders taken out against him. He's a crank of the highest order. You want to know why you hear so many stories about "evil games"? It's him and people like him.
GTA 1 ,the original top down game that started it all, had a misssion to blow up a police staion with a car bomb. Also in GTA 1 when you went on a "KILL FRENZY!" you didn't have to kill specific folks any folks would do incuding cops. GTA 3 had a mission to kill an (oddly animated) undercover cop named Tanner, by lobbing grenades through his window. Vice city has a mission where you lure two cops into a garage to stealthier uniforms, presumably by killing them.
But you are right odds are the lawyers never played the game.
I used to have a cool sig, back when I cared
If I print out the Patriot Act and beat someone to death with it...
Hate me!
Sure there is--grab the cop uniform so you can sneak in, and then run the hell out. In fact I tried and failed at that mission many times before I realized that blasting your way through is nigh-impossible.
English is easier said than done.
Ok the kid's claim is bullshit anyway, and we all know that. He's trying to pawn off responsibility, and the claim probably came from his parents or some shit anyway.
Fact 1: The game has an MA rating, so any kid under 17 or 18 is not able to buy it (ideally). So how could he even get such a game? Well in all probability his parent's bought it for him, so even if this was some derranged world where his claim was true, it's the fault and responsibility of the parents for knowing what this kid is playing and making sure he isn't playing things he's not supposed to.
Fact 2: The average age of a video game player is 28. You cannot tell a 28 year old what they can or can't play, so they can't get rid of these games. It's not our fault that stores and parents don't enforce the rating system, it's their responsibility.
Pac-man Blamed for Obesity
All kinds of BS, and people tend to quote those studies that verify their existing beliefs. I have this same problem, of course, but I did see a study done on children that surprised me with its originality.
Basically what they did was monitor several classrooms of children (a variety of age groupings) and recorded all physical interactions (shoving, head-bonking, grabbing, etc). Then they showed movies to the class depicting violent activities. They continued recording the physical interactions and what they found was that only a few of the children were affected. Most kids experienced no change in behavior, but some kids had a large increase in attacks on others. The ones who increased their atacks were children who it later turned out were already diagnosed as disturbed children.
The study was somewhat more complex than as I describe it, but the conclusion they drew was not what they had expected to find. The conclusion was that viewing depictions of violent behaviors did not affect healthy children, but that it did affect disturbed children, and it affected them badly.
So what do we do? How can we regulate a product that causes no harm to healthy people?
We have the same problem with drugs: most people can do recreational drugs from time to time without harm; they can regulate their usage and have sense enough to not drive doing while doing LSD and meth. The same can be said for alcohol - some people become destructive when allowed to drink alcohol.
It appears that the percentage of people in our population who cannot drink is small enough that we can tolerate the side effects of those who cannot handle it. On the other hand, it may be that the number of people who can use heroin or cocaine responsibly without becoming lost to it (and there are those) is small enough that there is a significant danger to society from the side effects. Imagine what life would be like if every fifth person at work was coming off a 2-week meth run.
There are patchwork solutions in place. For example, it may surprise you to learn that convicted murderers in the United States are forbidden from owning guns - even after they've completed their prison sentence!
Another solution is that we don't allow children to purchase or operate dangerous products such as alcohol, guns, automobiles, and voting machines even though many children do have the skills and judgement to use these products.
So we ask ourselves are violent video games dangerous in that they may affect unhealthy people in such significant numbers that society is endangered? It seems unlikely to me to be a problem, but it has been shown that it's bad for some people such as the disturbed children above.
What bothers me about kill-games is what makes it different from watching killing on TV. You're actually practicing the very thing that we don't want you to do - going through the motions over and over. No prob with healthy people (I must not be one because although World of Warcraft has no effect on be besides exhaustion, Counterstrike leaves me with a very itchy trigger finger)
So, our compromise in these cases is to prevent the acquisition of these products until the children are of an age where their judgement has matured to dampen their urges (I want to kill the teacher, but then the police will then kill me if I do that).