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Australian Counter Strike Shooters
jaronc writes "News.com.au are reporting an Australian court has been told that two men dressed as characters from 'Counter Strike' shot and killed a man during a Sydney home invasion in 2002. Let the blaming begin......"
So this means they were wearing either army fatigues or a shirt with glasses. I fail to see how that's related specifically to CS, unless they went around screaming out "fire in the hole" and "it's gonna blow!".
Even assuming that they became unhinged from playing too much CS, doesn't mean that we should ban it. People did go crazy and kill people before computer games existed...
(This is still tragic, however, and I don't intend to lessen the tragedy.)
www.fearthecow.net
they think that violence can be blamed on videogames
as if before videogames, there were no violence
the concept also undermines personal accountability: "the devil made me do it"
if you pick up a gun and shoot someone in real life, you are 100% to blame, it doesn't matter if you have been playing fps games for 10 months straight, it just plain doesn't matter
if you believe in the concept of personal accountability, you can not blame the media for anything
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
How can you assume that they were dressed up as counterstrike terrorists/counter-terrorists? Dressing up as Goblez from Final Fantasy IV is one thing, but a terrorist/counter-terrorist is a common real-life/movies/video games thing, and it can't be narrowed down to just Counterstrike.
Ah, so you see guys like this only in computer games like CS?
I don't see where the game comes in. If one wants to play the blamegame, why not blame a movie or a book, for instance?
The owls are not what they seem
I wonder, who overplayed CS: two guys, dressed like freaks and shooting at people, or those who identified them as CS characters?
May Peace Prevail On Earth
Some posters are doubting whether the alleged perps were really dressed specifically as CS characters, and not as generic swat team members or terrorists. I'd give them the benefit of a doubt for the time being, but keep in mind that just because the linked article didn't say what the supporting evidence is doesn't mean there isn't any.
There is one small clue, however. Look at his name. Is Sophear Em really his birth name?
Rome wasn't bilked in a day.
Well because
tv makes people kill people.
video games make people kill people.
rap music makes people kill people.
the only thing that is safe for our children is books... on something completely unreleated: has anyone read that book by Tom Clancy were that one guy crashed that plane into the whitehouse? that so cool and impossible to emulate.
I just had an argument with an Australian over gun control, on another discussion site. (plug: it's a decent science discussion forum, based out of the UK, but people all over the world read it. check it out)
Just goes to prove my point that people who want guns will find them on the black market anyway, so restricting law-abiding citizens from owning them only serves to strengthen the positions of gun-wielding criminals.
This message brought to you by the Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People.
Yeah, but you're obviously biased.
Seriously though, are we supposed to be impressed by a freshman english paper that you can't find?
Actions influence thoughts. Thoughts influence actions. And you can add in speech, as well. This doesn't mean that X hours of CS will make you a murderer; it doesn't turn you into a zombie. But, IMO, violence begets violence, whether it is abstract or concrete, real or imaginary.
There is always the matter of degree, and because most of us can distinguish between a game and reality, the influence of the game is greatly lessened. Throw in other mitigating factors like the fact that playing these games often relieves stress and is fun, and the net effect may even be positive. (I stress the word 'may').
I make this argument mostly philosophically. And I don't necessarily practice what I preach, as I like to play such games when I get the chance. I just think that the position that there is _no_ influence or correlation is naive or ignorant. But most of all, it is self-serving.
Rome wasn't bilked in a day.
every day, theres hundreds of lethal incidents worldwide, caused by people under alcohol influence
shouldnt it be banned first then?
Once again you're being black and white. I don't believe a single violent movie will turn any normal guy into a killer, but I do believe that violent movies can be one of many factors that leads to violent actions.
I believe that both are true. Media can provide an outlet for some people. It can also encourage antisocial behaviour in others. I think for most people that both are true at the same time. Cogitate on that one!
I think I "got it" several decades before you even started thinking about it. This isn't a new argument. It predates my birth by at least a few 1000 years.
Yes.
That does not follow from what I believe. You are not thinking clearly.
"as if before videogames, there were no violence"
Certainly in the UK, before videogames it was "Video Nasties" that was corrupting the youth into violent deeds. Today, nobody seems to care that kids watch "Zombie Blood Massacre III". I'd imagine in a decade there will be some other piece of technology being blamed by some for the downfall of society.
...I better go play a mindless game of CS. Cya!
Cheers
Stor
"Yeah well there's a lot of stuff that should be, but isn't"
gun related crime has INCREASED in Australia since the "tough new gun laws" were introduced.
So? Do you think the gun laws are the only factor in gun crime? Of course not. Crime and gun crime is a complex issue, depending on all sorts of social and economic issues.
So the issue is, if there were not any strict gun laws, would the rate be rising faster or slower?
So what we obviously need is the next medium so we have something new to blame all violence on. I suggest iPods: All that music all the time, the glare of the white headphones, and now the thousands and thousands of pornographic images that teenagers carry around with them everywhere just have to have a bad influence. When will Australia finally live up to its moral responsibilty and ban them? And now that Bush has been reelected, shouldn't Ashcroft finally do something to save American's children from Apple's murderous grip?
I always thought Steve Jobs is smiling just a little to brightly when he holds up those things...
The problem with almost all of these tests is that they generally only catch sociopaths, not psychopaths owing to that most of them can be gamed fairly readily and the nature of psychopathology is such that they're well suited to fooling evaluators. But nevertheless, we always want to feel that there's some foolproof way to detect menaces to our life and health, so we'll always want to believe in such tests. Just witness the recent email forward that contained a quick psycho test.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
This crap happens because it's easier to blame video games than kids.
Take the legal drinking age for your locality, that's set in place because it's easy to test and find out if someone is of a certain age, just math. In an ideal world, a persons habits and character would determine if they should drink. If someone will drink responsibly at age 16, why make them wait till 18 or 21? Likewise, there are people that are over the legal drinking age that are still too immature and let alcohol run their lives but by law, they can still buy alcohol. All anyone can do is give them an AA flyer and ask them to take time out of their schedule to remember the next meeting, physically drive to the meeting and suffer through the awkwardness of admitting you're an alcoholic.
The legal system blames the video games because it's easy to convince parents video games are bad because parents aren't going to blame their own kids for violence they may create, they'd rather blame something or someone that cannot defend themselves. To make headway in hedging violent video games to kids, it's easy to slap a violence rating on a game and make every retailer ask for ID to anyone buying the game than it is to perform intense psychological tests to see if that person understands the difference between reality and fantasy, and if they will or will not take cues from videogames.
When I'm a parent, I know my kid is going to be exposed to things I wouldn't, but I'm going to make sure they can put the things into the right perspective and let them make good decisions for themselves.
I kind of break the stereotype for "geek".
.45 under their shirt.
I spend two or three hours a night at the gym and/or studying martial arts. I used to kickbox, and moved on to study tang soo do, aikijuijitsu, and tai chi chuan. One of the many realizations this has given me is that _anything_ becomes a weapon in the hand of the willfull. It's those unwilling to be violent who really need a weapon.
People were killing each other a long time before they figured out what they could do with gunpowder.
The US has much better statistics on other forms of violent crime, and the projected reason is because any half-witted criminal is gonna think twice before jacking with someone who may or may not have a
But, after all, there are lies, damned lies, and statistics. The rest of the world can argue the point and use the facts however they want.
From my perspective, every [wo]man has the right to defend themselves, and a gun is an effective way for a 100lb woman to gain an advantage on a 300lb rapist. I don't expect everyone to invest the years it can take to develop the skills to defend oneself unarmed. An unarmed law-abider should have the ability to stand against the serial killer who can do his job with any number of household items.
Also, in the US, most who participate in organized crime have access to enough money to buy a gun, whether they're in the states or Australia.
My feeling on gun control is that it's just another way for socialist (yes, the US is socialist too, we just have better marketing) governments to provide people with the illusion of security while making the people dependent on them. It's just another way to limit personal accountability for anything.
When the people of the world realize that they can't legislate utopia, perhaps then they'll start to educate for it instead.
In the meantime, a wolf is a wolf, whether or not it's laying with the sheep. Guns are just a good way to give the sheep fangs.
you have to kill somebody first.
Blame australia for stripping the citizens of their weapons (firearms).