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

Whew..

[LilGuy]

At least it wasn't a GTA re-enactment, that woulda been much uglier... unless of course the CTs didn't difuse the bomb.

'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

[PDA_Boy]

So this means they were wearing either army fatigues or a shirt with glasses.

If they'd been running around naked, the claim would have simply been changed to "dressed in the manner of a Counter Strike mod".

This looks like the kind of situation in which it would be ridiculous to allow common sense to prevail over sensationalism.

Re:'Dressed' as Counterstrike shooters

[rsilvergun]

People did go crazy and kill people before computer games existed...

Yes, but they did it in a fun, Gov't sanctioned manner (wars). One of the downsides to a civilized society is a lack of good outlets for sick, chemically imblanced people to kill and maim. But hey, it's cool, the current administration is taking care of that :D.

Jokes aside, any society is going to have a miniscule percentage of really, really sick people. In the past they got jobs as torturers and executioners. Now that we're civil, we've still got those people, and they're still sick bastards. We need better systems in place to catch them before they do any harm. But damned if I know how to do it.

Re:'Dressed' as Counterstrike shooters

[Anonymous Coward]

Call me crazy but I don't believe you can really be born a murder. Granted their are neuro-chemical imbalances and all that would increase the likely hood. But I have to say pointing a finger at even an implied reason is just as silly as blaming CS. Ridiculous.
I believe there always is a slow degradation of mental balance that accures that everyone just writes off as them having a a bad day or moods. Slowly the mind folds on yourself and you become retrospective with your mind focused on one thing. Logic goes, if you ever had it, then ethics and finally morals and you've draw in on yourself with a focus like work or t.v. or games.
Nope, it always comes down to his enviroment forcing stressors on them they make small innocent bad decisions, like withdrawing from conflicts, which build until they overwelm the person. It's very sad cause it's not that hard to spot if you just take time to look at someone else. A little help at the beginning can save lives.
Life is exponential... one factor multiplies and multiplies and multiplies......

Re:'Dressed' as Counterstrike shooters

[oakbox]

There IS a test for this, it's called the Hartman Value Profile. It's basically a test to see if you are evil. The Nixon administration was planning on implementing it to test kids to see who would end up going to jail later in life.

The test was accurate, and unchangeable. If you were a sick person at 8, you were going to be just as screwy at 18 or 28. It looked at your world view.

Anyway, telling someone, "You're values are screwy, you'll end up in jail or as a burden to society and there's nothing you can do about it" lacks a certain . . . niceness. So the idea was killed off.

Now the test is used to see if you would be a good salesperson :)

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

[xeyr]

I live in Australia and I'm not so sure about that...

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.

Re:'Dressed' as Counterstrike shooters

[Rude Turnip]

Over here in the states, we refer to your PM as "Governor Howard" :)

people are historically myopic

[circletimessquare]

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

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....

Re:people are historically myopic

[nathanh]

if you believe in the concept of personal accountability, you can not blame the media for anything

Too black and white. I do believe in the concept of personal accountability, but I also believe that the media is partially responsible for shaping our behaviour. They contribute to our personal knowledge (through both information and misinformation) and that affects how we react to events and other people.

Re:people are historically myopic

[DarkZero]

Too black and white. I do believe in the concept of personal accountability, but I also believe that the media is partially responsible for shaping our behaviour. They contribute to our personal knowledge (through both information and misinformation) and that affects how we react to events and other people.

If that were true, wouldn't there be many, many more crimes in developed nations than there currently are? Millions of people have seen the thousands of violent movies that have been available in the United States over the last fifty years, and violent video games regularly sell millions of copies there, and that's just in one country alone. If Counter-Strike made people crazy, wouldn't, at the very least, HUNDREDS (if not thousands or millions) of people be dressing up in military fatigues and "killing the hostages" in their neighborhoods all across the world, rather than just a couple of nutjobs in Australia?

There are a lot of crazy whackjobs out there who will kill people, regardless of whether you give them a Grand Theft Auto game, a copy of Mein Kampf, or just Curious George Goes To The Hospital. This is as true now as it was before the discovery of electricity and its subsequent gifts of TV, movies, and video games.

Re:people are historically myopic

[fwitness]

Yes, it's the problem of correlation verses causation . If you found in a survey that 90% of all serial killers chew gum, you may have found a correlation. However, this does not necessarily mean you can use causation to say that gum-chewers are more likely to become serial killers.

For the statistically inclined, the relationship is exellently explained by the wikipedia entry. Basically the theory goes that there may be some hidden or lurking variable that was not tested.

So in this case it could be that some violent criminals play CS, and many who play CS are violent. There may be some other factor involved though. I could even conjecture that perhaps crazy people do violent things a lot, and sometimes this includes video games.

Hmm. Nah, maybe it's the gum thing.

Next up

[eclectro]

Some guys dressed as the Mario Brothers come to fix the pipes.

Let the blaming begin.

Re:Next up

[metlin]

*sigh*

Why don't women from Duke Nukem come and offer me some sweet loving? :-(

Re:Next up

[lewp]

Maybe they're trying to perfect that feature before releasing Duke Nukem Forever. That'd be the only reasonable explanation for it taking so long.

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.

Here's a question for you...

[Undefined Parameter]

If the accused had dressed up as characters from the Clue(TM) boardgame, would boardgames be blamed, and why or why not?

~UP

Re:Here's a question for you...

[prockcore]

If the accused had dressed up as characters from the Clue(TM) boardgame, would boardgames be blamed, and why or why not?

An unidentified man in his mid to late 50's was charged Tuesday with the bludgeoning death of another man. The man possessed no identification, and gave his name as only "Professor Plum."

After several hours of investigation, the police determined that Plum brutally attacked Mr. Body with a candlestick. They haven't determined whether the attack took place in the Billiard room, or the Dining room.

Mrs. Scarlet was present during the attack, but as she was armed with a revolver, police have ruled her out as a suspect.

In other news, a thimble has just purchased an upscale stretch of real estate along Boardwalk Ave.

Definitive proof!

[jacksonj04]

Video games really are responsible for making the tiny majority of people without sufficient grip on reality to not go out and shoot people, go out and shoot people!

How the hell did they get weapons though? It's not like you can walk into a shop and press 'b', and i'm sure that l33t h4x0rz1ng the shopkeeper is gonna get you funny looks and nothing more.

Erm... which character?

[tod_miller]

Art imitating life imitating art...

Counterstrike 'characters' are just people dressed in common attire that you would most likely see someone on a killing spree wearing...

Now did these guys play counterstrike?

As for let the blaming begin It amazes me how quick people are to strike down something they have no comprehension of.

For one thing, you strike down all media blame of computer games prompting violent behaviour (and films etc) and you simply pass it off as 1+1=3 in thier minds because you play violent games and you don't murder people.

That doesn't mean to say there is or isn't a connection, and there are no conclusive studies that some people who are a little socially eclipsed that are affected by continuous and sporting presentation of killing.

Now I am not saying either way, but I am not sarcastically throwing down the gauntlet for possible ridicule either.

These people must have been capable of this murder prior, and the fact that somehow (I do not know how, unless they jumped aorund whilst firing saying "I pwn you b1tch3s!" like most server players - or used an aim bot) the relationship between clothing attire and a computer game (shakey to me) just muddies the fact that someone got shot, and what was the motive for these people.

One day people might start trying to use computer games as a defence... or worse, it may be the cause, we do not know yet, but the portrayal of real violence and death in italy (see Gladitor flick) is sickening, and we are on the verge of that popularisation of gore and death (see Bad Boys 2, which was a shit aweful film for gratuitous violence, to an almost comedic extent)

I actually had flinching urges to try car jacking after playing GTA2 for 48 hours solid (better than studying at the time). Maybe I am weak.

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?

Blame?

[BortQ]

I blame Satan. Granted I do blame him for most things. That guy's an asshat.

Re:Which gun?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sig SG-550 Sniper. god damn campers

uniforms

[stimpleton]

...two men dressed as characters from 'Counter Strike'

I didn't realise Counter Strike uniforms had those wide bimmed hats with the corks on strings.

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?

Mario may be more dangerous than you think....

[metroid composite]

Maybe it was just a rumor, but I do remember hearing reports of kids jumping on their cats and wondering why they didn't respawn after leaving and reentering the room....

Of course, these reports were back in the early 90s when there were fewer FPSs to blame everything on.

camper

[Maskirovka]

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

Rumor has it he was camping.

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?

That's Nothing

[johnnywheeze]

I heard that there's a bunch of people who after playing too much "America's Army", stormed through this country in the middle east, killing thousands of people for nothing more than oil!

Forget Video Games. The american military causes violence, let's ban that instead.

Re:Which gun?

[dbloodnok]

Well reports are coming in that the accused pressed B-4-1, followed by B-6 and B-8-2 immediately prior to the attack.

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.

Re:completely wrong

[Mycroft_VIII]

I'm digging up some old reading here so please be nice with the corrections, clarifications. But I believe you just outlined the 'contagion vs catharsis' philosophical debate from back when the ancient greek/roman philosphers had the same argument. The simple question is do fantasies/stories of unacceptable behaviours incourage them, or give safe outlet to them. I think the fact we've been arguing this since antiquity shows it's neighther clear cut nor easy to answer. Personally I think it can do eigther/both depending on the person and circumstance. Mycroft

ban alcohol then

[iezhy]

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

shouldnt it be banned first then?

Re:completely wrong

[nathanh]

does the violent movie turn a normal guy into a killer?

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.

so i take your "media influences" and throw it right back at you: if media does influence, then it takes our violent and antisocial sexual urges and provides a harmless outlet for them

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!

got it?

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.

if you honestly believe [media] plays ANY hands in making people violent or sexually depraved,

Yes.

then you are trying to tell me that before media: before videogames, movies, records, books... that we were somehow peaceful and loving

That does not follow from what I believe. You are not thinking clearly.

But before video games...

[lxt]

"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.

Re:Wait a second

[cryptor3]

If you want a black market handgun in Australia, you are looking at a price tag of several thousands of dollars. The same gun in the US would be, $50 perhaps. That price tag is the key - what down and out crim can afford that? ... Don't wait for a massacre like out Port Arthur tragedy.

$50 my ass. If you ever buy a gun for $50, you'd better have a good emergency room nearby, because that gun is going to explode in your hand.

Incidentally, in the aforementioned Port Arthur tragedy, the individual possessed an AR-15, and an FN FAL, guns that easily command a price tag over $1000 dollars each (even in the post-ban United States). So much for a thousands-of-dollars price tag deterring crime.

Re:Wait a second

[Canberra Bob]

Lets not let facts get in the way of feeling good about ourselves.

There is a slight problem - gun related crime has INCREASED in Australia since the "tough new gun laws" were introduced. Registered firearms have very rarely been used in crime in Australia - as far as I recall only ONE registered handgun has ever been used in a murder in Australia. Generally crime is committed using unregistered (illegal) firearms, fancy that.

Healthy, happier place?

[Lifewish]

Well, if you assume that a world in which I don't beat my sister round the head with heavy objects is healthier...

Computer games have saved me on two occasions when I was literally seeing red. It doesn't happen much but, when it does, shooting the proverbial out of a terrorist bot is about the best therapy I've come across. For comparison, the time I didn't manage to get to a computer resulted in a big hole in the plasterboard, which was certainly not healthy for my fist.

I have a very irritating sister. Thanks to computer games, this state of affairs continues.

Some Guys Dressed Up Like...

[marktaw.com]

Some guys dressed up like characters from America's Army flew halfway around the world and killed several thousand Iraqi's.

Oh wait...

Shooter was a member of a Lebanese gang

[edo-01]

These guys have been causing problems in Sydney for years. I am referring to the Lebanese gangs here, not the Lebanese community at large who are probably as concerned about this as the rest of the population.

The Flemington Markets (where the victim worked) have always attracted a criminal element, as silly as it sounds more than a few of the produce stall vendors there have a connection to organised crime (note that in this city "organised" crime is way down the ladder in severity from the American Mob.)

I live in out in the midst of all this, and have seen first hand the way these guys operate. Make eye contact and they will literally go berserker on you. I watched three carloads of these guys stomp the living shit out of a scrawny 19 or 20 year old guy because he told them to "fuck off" after they threw fireworks at his girlfriend. I've seen brawls outside my apartment that could be called small riots and I've been attacked myself after one of these macho dickheads sexually assaulted my girlfriend in front of me. One new years eve I was in a crowd at Darling Harbor counting down at midnight, right on the stroke of midnight a gang of these guys linked arms, charged the crowd and just started wailing on anyone they could catch. Minutes later they'd fled. It's not politically correct to identify a gang by it's ethnicity but a large degree of their behavior arises out of environmental factors, especially their treatment of women and their gang-culture of machismo-on-steroids violence. Drive by shootings are a new phenomenon in this country and nearly all of them in this city are internecine warfare between rival groups of Lebanese and Arab young men, typically over the drug trade. In 1998 a police station was shot up with a fully automatic weapon.

Which brings me to my point that if they were dressed in paramilitary gear it was probably more to do with that than any exposure to Counterstrike. This wasn't some random assault by kids "corrupted" by some computer game, it was more than likely a gang reprisal where the assailants were known to the victim.

The rise of Lebanese gangs in Sydney

Sydney police besieged in their own station by Lebanese gang

Serial gang rapes in Sydney

Bilal Skaf, the leader of the rapists converted to radical Islam in jail and has openly avowed his support of Al Qaeda and sent death threats to the judge and witnesses at his trial.

But....

[Jaysyn]

If they ban Counterstrike, then the terrorists have won, literally!!

Jaysyn

Re:Wait a second

[caveat]

Buh, the sporting goods store in town has a used AR-15 for $389.99, comes with a trigger lock, case, and two 30-round mags. Pretty good deal. Course, I decided I'd spend $349.99 on the HK G3 clone; 7.62 is much manlier than a wussy lil 5.56 :D

Dressed as what?

[Komarosu]

two men dressed as characters from 'Counter Strike'

They're called Special Forces in some countries and Terrorists in others, unless they're talking about the Chickens, then thats just bizzar.

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.

Online version

[TheOrquithVagrant]

There's an online Hartman Value Profile test/calculator at:
http://www.qis.net/~jschmitz/hvp/test1.html

of course you can't be born a murderer

[vena]

you have to kill somebody first.