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......"

Comments

'Dressed' as Counterstrike shooters

[chesapeake]

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.)

Re:'Dressed' as Counterstrike shooters

[BlackHawk-666]

That sounds really terrific. And if the government doesn't approve of our thinking and tests results they should be allowed to imprison and/or drug/lobotomise us. Fuck that. The government has no business mandating how people are allowed to think or behave until *after* they have committed a crime.

Re:'Dressed' as Counterstrike shooters

[JerkBoB]

What we do need is a complete overthrow of established Psychiatry and Psychology to allow some real science to be brought in and taught.

That you lump these two professions together shows that you don't truly understand the distinctions between them. That's OK, you're not alone by far. In my experience, most people just assume that they're synonyms.

Here's the key distinction between the two: a Psychiatrist is an M.D., meaning that they have gone through the same 4 years of medical school as any other doctor. They are a doctor first, and have spent time in the emergency room and the ob/gyn wing and on the inpatient units. They've done surgical procedures and have likely seen patients die in the OR or ER. In most training programs, they do a whole year of nothing but medicine after they graduate from medical school.

Psychologists go to university to study theory. They have the degree of PhD. They are no more a medical doctor than your history prof or your CS prof. If I were in a car accident and there happened to be a Psychiatrist and a Psychologist driving by, I'd sure as hell rather have the Psychiatrist getting out to take a look at me while the Psychologist called the EMTs.

I don't make this distinction to denigrate Psychologists, but calling for more science in the field of Psychiatry shows that you don't really understand the field.

I'm sorry but...

[Omniscientist]

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.

Dressed like what?

[October_30th]

dressed as characters from the computer game Counter Strike.

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?

Who overplayed CS?

[SolitaryMan]

I wonder, who overplayed CS: two guys, dressed like freaks and shooting at people, or those who identified them as CS characters?

Re:people are historically myopic

[Anonymous Coward]

Furthermore, maybe people are confusing cause and effect. Person A has violent tendencies to begin with, and so likes playing FPS games....

What's with his name?

[Shambhu]

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?

Re:Wait a second

[forkboy]

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.

ban alcohol then

[iezhy]

every day, theres hundreds of lethal incidents worldwide, caused by people under alcohol influence

shouldnt it be banned first then?

Legal Shortcuts

[LighthouseJ]

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.