Slashdot Mirror
'Columbine RPG' Creator Discusses the Dawson Shooting
Back in May, Brian Crecente of Kotaku and the Rocky Mountain News had a chat with the maker of the 'Columbine RPG'. Today, he talks again with game-maker Danny LeDonne about possible connections between his game and the Dawson shooting. From the article: "My very first reaction, frankly, was to head to my toilet bowl and throw up. I knew what was in the works and I knew the next week would be spent keeping my head above water while the press tried to bury me with guilt-laden questions and implications of complicity in murder. I also knew that this was no time to fold or get weak-kneed. I made a game. I believed in it. Now it was time to defend it. No one would do that except me."
I imagine this could happen to anybody who develops games based on historical events, than enact violence. I'm sure there's WWII games where you played on the German side. There's always video games where you play the bad guy. He shouldn't feel guilty because someone who enjoyed playing his game was also crazy. Maybe it's what pushed him over the edge, maybe it's not. I highly suspect that this kid was really messed up even before played the game.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Shouldn't they blame the music of GWAR for the shootings, too?
Happy Death-Day to Columbine!
Let's make the world an Oklahoma City, fine.
Wacky-Waco Happy Death Day, babies that were burned
The Wheel has turned!
Why can't society just accept that some (all?) humans are prone to violence, and that video games aren't murder simulators that teach you how to shoot a gun. Society as a whole is just teaching irresponsibility: let's just blame someone else, my son/daughter would never do that, it must've been the video games! Yeah!
Anyone else think the comments just weren't rendering right before they turned off ABP and saw ads?
I didn't even know there had been a shooting
This is by far the best interview I've seen on the subject, although I'm sure I missed some. He really represents himself well here. As a humorous aside, reading the interview made me glad I didn't play the game - specifically because it contains "maudlin smashing pumpkin midis" and if I had to sit there and listen to that I might really kill someone.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The guy didn't make these kids pick up the gun. However, you have to admit, that game was in very, VERY poor taste, and I question the integrity of the guy who made it. Hell, even I think so, and I love all kinds of horrid, tasteless humor. Like I said, he's not responsible for it, but geez, it's only a matter of time before Jack Thompson finds someone to sue him.
I doubt there's the slightest possibility that the shooting wouldn't have happened with or without this guy's game but -- ughh, what a self-absorbed, pompous, whiny creep he is. Somebody plays his game and then goes and shoots up his school, and all Danny LeDonne can do is cry about how hard this has made life for Danny LeDonne and spray about what a hero he is.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
The ad on slashdot for this article shows some incoming release from the Grand Theft Auto franchise for PSP. So we may not match violence to computer games and vice versa but google ads (or whatever broker Slashdot uses today) surely do. Quite entertaining actually.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Even though making games about this kind of thing may be unique, original, or heck even fun - it's plain bad taste. Making the game is glorifying the horrible real event whatever the authors or more so, the players say. There is something that seperates this from games like Resident Evil, or Grand Theft Auto. The 'real' element. Playing GTA:SA for example, it would be fine to be thinking "I'm gonna go cap some balla ass now!" because it's an ambiguous target in a ficticious enviroment.
Playing the Columbine RPG, any such sentiment would be creepy and morally wrong. "Yeah! That'll teach those innocent students!" I don't know the actual plot of the game, but I can't imagine it is as detached as playing a gangster, soldier or pilot etc. Saying that though, Postal II was quite fun. Damn, I contradicted myself after typing all that. Bah.
You don't see a WWII "extermination camp simulator" do you?
They made one for the NES. It's called Deadly Towers.
Well, if he never made this game then we would live in another universe that did not have this game and all of humanity would be different. The shooting may never have happened in that universe. But then again, maybe I caused it when I stepped on the beetle last year. Damn it, I'm a murderer!
Freedom is a state of mind. A mind is a state of being. Stay the fuck out of my mind and my being. - Corporate Avenger
Listen, when I created RapeHer v1, I think people misunderstood what I was going for. I didn't create this video game to give people the experience of what its like to rape a woman, to feel her panic beneath you as dominate and violate her in a customizable number of ways thanks to my own CreateAHole feature. I created the game to create an open discussion of rape in a civilized society. Anyone who takes anything away from it but that is missing my point entirely.
Look... I don't care that he created the game. I'm a fan of tasteless jokes, racist jokes, jokes about anything that is awkward, making fun of a situation is how i deal with those type of situations. BUT if so you have to be upfront about why he did it. I 100% think its a lie that he was trying to create "a sociological critique or a deconstruction of the form." Come out and say, look it was a horrible event but I thought it'd make for an interesting game to play with my friends and once it was online it blossomed from there. He doesn't have to excuse himself for what that kid did, any rational person (read slashdot reader) understands media won't make someone kill like that. At the same time to come out in an interview all high and mighty, acting that his game was misunderstood yada yada is just BS.
Over the years I've played many a WWII flight sim that's put me in the seat of planes from both sides of the conflict.
You don't see a WWII "extermination camp simulator" do you?
Whoa, good idea. I see that fitting right into the "Tycoon" style of gaming.
Having never played the game, I can't comment too much. However, from reading the article, I get the idea that there is a message in his game that isn't exactly supporting school shootings. I would guess (as he does) that most people miss his message. From what I can gather, the message is more something about "games don't cause violence" or maybe more generically, media doesn't. In any case, the point of the game was certainly not to glorify the events at columbine.
> Columbine game involves shooting unarmed children.
Carmageddon involves running over unarmed children, senior citizens and cheerleaders.
I mean, I know it's not exactly a historical simulation, I'm just sayin'.
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
My girlfriend was in that school shooting. What right did that guy have to make her think she was going to die and run for her life?
Just because some asshole picks on you, don't mean you go and put the fear of god in thousands of people. Maybe some people will mod you up, but you're a patheticly immoral person if you think it's okay to "fight back" against innocent people. Guns don't solve any problem when in the hands of the general public, they cause problems like these. If you have a problem with a bully at a COLLEGE you get the police involved and they fix it, you don't go and shoot 20 people while making the rest have a terrible memory for the rest of their life!
Side note : My girlfriends fine, she's getting over it and the college is giving a lot of support to all the students.
I like muppets.
Now, I don't think tastelessness is criminal. Otherwise, the creators of the HTML "Blink" tag would've been behind bars some time back. I also think that the author's cries of "Nobody understands why I made this game" necessarily makes him an artist.
Therefore, I can only say that if anyone is trying to blame him for the Dawson shooting, they are making a very long and very awkward reach for a suitable scapegoat.
Strike while the irony is hot! -- The Freethinker
*sigh* Look, calling someone patheticly immoral does you no good. People like to simplify stuff like this, but it isn't so. The type of mentality and situation that result in people loosing it and going on a killing spree are NOT simple, and often much of the rage they feel has some real source. It does not simply come from nowhere, and the victims of the shooting did have a hand in creating the situation. When things get bad enough that you start blaming the structure as a whole, people who support and benifit from the system that is generating the abuse feel like ligit targets. They do not appear innocent, they feel at worst bystandards that let things get that bad. This is esp true when it is popular, protected people doing the abusing, since it is the general student population who GIVE them that power and then refuse to take it away. Does that make going postal the right solution? No, it doesn't. Not even remotely. (though your 'bring in the police' example is worrying since often in bullying, esp at the high school level, authority figures will generally not help you, and often dump even more blame on the victim with 'well, if you were normal then everyone would like you' BS, which amplifies the problem. in college unless it is a physical threat, they will just ignore you or, if they are on-campus police, might act much like the HS level authorities) But I find it equaly disturbing that instead of addressing the structural problems that lead to this, people just pull out the 'it was just one sick person' card as if that explains everything away and absolves everyone who had a hand, however minor it was, in the events leading up to it. It lets us protect the image of our darling children and friends (or any ingroup) because they 'can do no wrong' and externalize our problems to 'others' and continue to blame whatever one can as long as it never circles back. If we want to talk relative girlfriends. Mine went through significant amounts of 'outsider' abuse in both highschool and college (ended up snapping in college) and has had terrible memories and nightmares about that ever since too. And for every person who will have to live through the terror of _ONE_ day and it's memories, there are probably dozens of people who have to remember thousands of days of abuse and fear, and no one cares. They don't get support from their college, or other students, they usually either collapse mentally, kill themselves, or try to kill others. But in general few really care what happens to them and all the stuff that caused it is not considered immoral at all. They are just 'weak' or 'sick' people.
Uh what? I'm pretty sure there were plenty of movies with guns in the 50s. WWII movies and Cowboys and Indians for sure. Maybe it was portrayed differently but they didn't use pointy sticks in those movies (well, maybe the Indians).
also, if I remember correctly, the crowd cheers when you do it.
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
There have been many people above me claiming that the game is in bad taste and that its creator is a dick. Please before you go shooting your mouth off please download and actually play the game through. It is not only a work of satire, its an obvious one at that.
It's not as blatent as Southpark's satire typically is, but it is there and anyone over the age of 13 should be able to see it.
I'd liken it to Gullivers Travels, you read that book when you are young and think, "hmm great story". A few years later you come away thinking "Perhaps that book was about England".
Art can influence and inspire, without removing control (and therefore responsibility) from a person over their own actions. At best one could say a person who intended to do violence to begin with was inspired to do it in a way that mimiced his favorite game, movie, song, or book, but that hardly is enough to condemn his entertainment for his actions. Just so, one could say someone who was on the path to rising up against an unjust society or government may have been inspired by and rallied behind a revolutionary song, story, or symbol. Clearly it was the social and political conditions that lead to the revolution, not the art.
Since these cases are so rare, that in itself should show that art is not the cause of violence, and whatever influence it does have (it seems at best only able to flavor the event, not to trigger it) is vastly overshadowed by some other serious social and mental factors on the part of the individual.
Did you RTFA? The game isn't a first person shooter, and is "from the title on, a satire. It is a satire of how the media came to view the shooting but ALSO a satire on the conventions of video gaming itself. I wanted to deconstruct what a video
game could be about while still using many of the conventions available in gaming. This is difficult for some to understand insomuch as the event itself was tragic and painful for so many people but I believe true satire can be aimed at even the most uncomfortable of topics (even nuclear war, per 'Dr. Strangelove.') In the case of SCMRPG, a GAME seemed to be the
appropriate response to so much vilification of gaming."
(from the article)
IIRC I remember seeing a couple screenshots of a concentration camp administrator game in an Amiga magazine once, years ago. It was supposedly made by some German nazi wannabe teens.
I'm sure that as more and more people have easier and easier game-making tools, other people of a similar bent have written similar games on newer platforms.
Obviously these things aren't going to be for-profit big-budget games. But they exist.
It sounds like this particular game is not really about glorifying the Columbine shootings. I dunno, I haven't played it.
egypt urnash minimal art.
Hey guy, did you even read the GP? He said that the actions were wrong, but people that should stand up for themselves. He's exactly right, and if they *had* stood up for themselves instead of bottling up their anger for years, it probably wouldn't have reached such a dramatic climax.
By the way, we don't care who you're dating or how she's doing, and when she dumps you in a few months, not only will you no longer care about Columbine, but if you're truely as sensitive as you appear, you'll probably be so crushed that you'll wish she hadn't been one of the survivors, so ease up on the soapbox speeches.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
haha with style points even!
------ hi mom
There is stupidity and the there is ignorance. I seriously doubt you have actually played the game or even tried to understand the basis behind its creation.
You mad
Not to nitpick, but your, and the GP's posts seem to presume that the shooter was a student at Dawson. The shooter was not, in fact, a student at this school, so the argument that he may have been a victim of bullying isn't all that valid. He was 25, and a graduate of a different school; he never attended the college where he opened fire.
The wii is the revolution, comrade!
"Guns don't solve any problem when in the hands of the general public, they cause problems like these." Correction: Guns don't cause problems, people do. Crazy-person-with-gun would've lashed out violently by other means if guns weren't available. Being a responsible, law-abiding gun owner, I'd like to let you know that I would never use my guns in an offensive manner. They are strictly for hunting, target shooting, and self-defense. Any upstanding citizen who owns a gun will echo this.
Coming next Christmas.
True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
I knew kids in high school with death lists, complete with reasons and methods of murder. One even got called in to talk about it and showed it to the officials. Punishment? "Hes an angry kid but harmless." True story. Even happened after Columbine. My friends and I used to joke about how much extra 'protection' was put into place after Columbine especially after this 'incident.'
Yes, the upstanding 2% of the population agrees with you. Now, what about the rest?
True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
In this particular case, the shooter was a sociopath - no, make that a misanthrope. He hated the world, so some people in the world hated him back. He deserved that; he asked for that.
Not only that, he was 25 years old and a dropout. He had been out of school for years. He had plenty of time to go into therapy and buy scented candles to make himself feel better.
Face it: everyone, and I mean everyone, has shitty days in school, and feels like they are an outsider. Everyone. Learning how to deal with the people around you, including those who want to harm you, is part of the (informal) education you recieve at school. The difference between people who are good and those who are evil is this: the good people get over it, turn over a new leaf, and get on with their lives. The evil people only focus on the percieved slights they received and wallow in self-pity.
If your girlfriend is still having nightmares about being teased in school, she needs to get over it. Life is a really great thing, if you only see it that way. Shit happens; get over it.
Posting AC for fear of the mean ol' mods.
I'll assume you're talking about Canadians. Gun owners account for a helluva lot more than 2% in the US. Logic would dictate that an inanimate object does not cause problems, unless it's something like a ticking bomb. A loaded gun with the safety off won't hurt anyone if nobody touches it. Anyone who thinks responsible gun owners are violent catastrophes waiting to happen are just ignorant. Violent catastrophes waiting to happen are unstable or desperate people. And they'll do plenty of damage whether they've got guns or not.
I don't assume he was a student. My comments were on the posters attitude to events, not the killers.
I like muppets.
Gun ownership doesn't translate to intelligence, upstandingness and moral fiber any more than having an internet connection does. And we all here know what kind of people have internet connections.
True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
You're right. But the majority of LEGAL gun owners are responsible. The ones you should worry about are criminals who have weapons that are not traceable. A legal pistol owner who's bought a new pistol in the last 10 years or so would be an idiot to commit a crime with his or her pistol. Why? All new pistols (and maybe rifles, I'm not sure) have one round fired and kept by the manufacturer for tracing purposes. So, if you DID shoot someone with your pistol and try to get away with it, law enforcement needs only to scan a database and the ballistics of your gun will match any slugs they find. Anyways, my point is, criminals will continue to be violent whether they've got guns or not. Knives, crowbars, or just metal piping can be used if you REALLY want to hurt someone with more than your bare hands. If you looked at a ratio of legal gun owners to gun-related crimes committed by legally owned guns, you'd see that the number of crimes committed is very low compared to the overall number of legal gun owners. So don't get too worried about your co-worker or friend who owns a rifle and a shotgun and likes to hunt, or owns a pistol and likes to go to the range.
I'm sorry, you must have misunderstood me. I wasn't saying you made the assumption that he was a student. I was refering to the comments in your parent post (by rubberbando), and the reply to your post (by jythie).
I had assumed that since your girlfriend attends Dawson, you knew a bit more about the situation than other posters, which seems to be true. (Sidenote; yes, I do live in Montreal, and a few of my good friends were there. None of them got hurt, but they were there. I know what happened, and I've been listening to/reading the news every day since)
The wii is the revolution, comrade!
Dunno if you all heard about it but in Green Bay, Wisconsin there were several HEAVILY armed kids that were going to pretty much destroy one of the high schools. They had high yield homemade bombs and a napalm-like substance to block off exits and a lot of serious firepower. Good thing they were stupid enough to tell their friends about their plans and stuff (and yet smart enough to build bombs? Yeah, now I feel safe)
Is it just me or is it not going to upgrade to Vista in here?
They were killers.
Harris and Klebold weren't part of the "trenchcoat mafia", nor were they singled out for harrasment by schoolmates.
Klebold, however was a depressive. And Harris was a bona fide psychopath with a superiority complex, as well as a desire to cause as much suffering as he possibly could.
Read THIS for more details.
Columnbine had nothing to do with revenge, and even if it did, no amount of wedgies or ridicule or stolen lunch money or even after-school beatdowns should garner any sympathy for someone who decides they're going to indiscriminatly kill as many people as possible in retribution.
No, I cannot relate to this. At all.
I went through the first half of the game (then, to be honest, it got a bit tedious), but I found that the (attempted, reasonably successfully) value in it was something like an in-depth report with a little more personal involvement. It's kind of like the 9/11 Commission Report graphic novel... it applied a different medium to a popularily underunderstood event to give insight that might not be normally taken.
Do I think it could have been done better-- sure, in quite a few ways, but this for being the first game of its type put out by some guy, it was a decent experimental volley.
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.
Considering the shooting took place less than 2 weeks ago and many of the victims are STILL in hospital, you'd think a slight grieving period would be warranted before claiming it's part of history that is fair game to be represented in game form.
I'm sure you'd be all for the game if you knew someone who had been shot. I happen to live 4 blocks from Dawson College, and having spent 4 years there, i can say it's really shitty that someone's going to get some kicks out of pretending to be someone who's killing students there.
MABASPLOOM!
"Guns don't solve any problem when in the hands of the general public, they cause problems like these."
Would you rather he ran around with a machete or a chainsaw? Or what if he simply drove a car through the doors and ran down people in the hallways?
Only a very, very small minority wake up in the morning and say to themselves "I'm going to go into a public environment and kill a bunch of people, just for the hell of it," and neither the Columbine duo or this new copycat were in that minority. Rather, they felt threatened, and likely were to some extent, and they reached for a weapon to try to equalize the situation between themselves and their attackers (be they real or imagined). Simply taking away their weapon of choice will not make their desire for one go away, nor will it make their situation better with whatever threats they perceive. If anything, removing the guns will simply drive these people to reach for something deadlier (would you have preferred a fertilizer bomb?).
Assuming for the moment that you really did know somebody involved (there's always people who like to play the celebrity victim), why didn't you show any concern for the fact that your girlfriend spends most of her days in such a caustic, hostile environment that produces such people? Ever stop to wonder why shootings like this happen more often in schools than, say, shopping malls, or anywhere else the same demographic likes to gather?
If only the psychiatric profession had as much insight as you! We could just tell people to "get over it" and everything would be fine. Suffered years of psychological and physical abuse? Get over it! Shot in the leg? Get ov... oh wait, sorry, you're a victim.
Search for "lidice" and "game" and you got your "realistic" ww2 game were you play the nazi's in a masacre. This is the internet. Everything you can imagine has already been done.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
No.
Unbalanced people with guns cause situations like these.
A gun is a tool. It has no motivation, and no intent. It does not whisper in its owner's ear, and make them scream "blood and souls for my lord, Arioch!" Taking firearms out of the hands of the general populace would simply leave the law-abiding citizens defenseless against the people who break the law and get ahold of guns anyway.
"But guns are illegal," you say.
These people are planning to break the law anyway. What's one more law going to do if they're planning to kill someone, or carjack them, or break into their house?
I don't own a firearm. But I am glad I have the option of buying one.
Shinma
"Taking firearms out of the hands of the general populace would simply leave the law-abiding citizens defenseless against the people who break the law and get ahold of guns anyway."
This is nothing but FUD designed to sell handguns, millions of people already live in countries with tight gun control and the overwhelming majority of them like it that way.
"A gun is a tool"
It is an extremely efficient tool with saftey features the depend entirely on the competence of the user. Regulation can effectively improve the "saftey features". Eg: In Australia, "self defense" is not a valid reason to own a gun of any description.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
In the middle, after certain events, it shows pictures of what really happened with a little narative on what was going on. It didn't glorify any of it but it didn't directly chastize it either. When they kill themselves, it shows the actual mutilated dead eric and dillon and the only thing i could think of was "ouch, hope that never happens to me". Then a sickening/saddening feeling came over me. Once the hell part started i was back to normal but loosing. Dunno if it is because of the death scene or because i suck at games and hell is well, hell to play.
All in all, if i had to say this game has a theme, it is look at these asstards doing something stupid for the wrong reasons and they ended up worse then they were. Someone else might have taken something else away from the game. I don't know. I would suggest playing it if your only reason not to play is the link to a hanus crime. It explains a lot about what happened, Removes a lot of the "billy the kid" or "the matric" style romance some people have spinned on it. Even for the crappyness of the gameplay and graphics, it is a good game.
When i was in school, sometimes I would day dream about doing simular stuff(wondering what would happen). It was common in that time for kids to have guns (in my area) and I was in the highschool skeet and trap shooting club so i had them in my locker part of the time. I would say that quite a few of us were armed at some point in time durrign school and we never had an incident like columbine. We did have an accidental discaege once. The shotgun was pointed in a safe direction and it didn't hit anything. It happened when someone steped into the box and found a bee's nest. He jumped, causing the gun to go off, got stung and droped the gun on hid toe (not neccisarly in that order)
I'm glad that thinking about what it would be like is about as far as it ever got with me. BTW, two years after my senior year, they took the "gun clubs" out of the school and then several years later they had some gun and drug free zone thing. "Gun clubs" Should be back in school if nothing else but to teach kids these things aren't toys and how to handle them responcibly. We had a trap and skeet club and a targeting club. Even if the schools hold onto the weapons untill needed.
It made the news all over europe. Can't remember the name though.
Sig (appended to the end of comments I post, 54 chars)
You don't see a WWII "extermination camp simulator" do you?
http://www.radio.cz/en/article/82899
almost the same thing
Sig (appended to the end of comments I post, 54 chars)
Yes, theres a "Prison Tycoon 2:Maximum.Security" or something. And seems is a good one. You can even download a free demo for it. Looks very popular too on the warez sites :(((((. Dawn gamers!!. Go and buy the games you love!. I do! :D
-Woof woof woof!
I think you have recent events (which doesn't have a game associated with it) mixed up with events that occured some time ago (which does have a game associated with it).
Why do I M2 everything negatively?
Like I give a flying FUCK about someone who shoots innocent people dead at a high school.
He had problems? Good, he doesn't have them any more. Shame he had to force his ineptitute on other people.
Oh, and by the way -- you think the police officer enjoyed shooting this guy dead? If you're looking for victims other than the people who were actually hurt by this maniac, try the police force.
Idiot.
-- Despair is an operating system that ANY human being can run, sort of a psychological JAVA --
You are incorrect. The game was modelled after events that took place a few years ago. Another shooting took place in the past couple of weeks which some are blaming on the game. The game came out some time ago as well. I think you have your stories crossed.
nothing
Oh you haven't seen this done 15 years ago. There was another one older than that - and I'm sure there's plenty of white-power mods for all kinds of games running RIGHT NOW.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KZ_manager
Old old incredibly old news. Where were you?
my bad :P
personally, after having read into the new shooting a lot, i feel if anything this guy watched the matrix too many times and felt he would be cool if he started shooting random people like in the movie.. that said, it isn't the movie's fault he can't tell fiction from reality.
MABASPLOOM!
Police officer didn't shoot him dead. Police officer wounded him, he grabbed another student and used her as a human shield as he shot back at cops and then shot himself in the head.
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
*nods* same here. I was more responding to the general concept rather then this specific shooting since, honestly, I have not been following this one all that much and know little to no details about it.
nicely put ^_^ if I could mod you up I would. Therapy has backfired several times for her (it is amazing just how much damage a therapist who does not have the patient's best interests in mind can do) but we have explored trying to find a good therapist to work on it. Though it is amazing how many therapsists (publicly funded ones in this case, or ones who's paycheck does not come from the patient) also use the 'just get over it' line and then don't really help beyond that. And I have to take some issue with the previous person's idea that not 'getting over it' make her evil. Whole scale of abuse out there, from normal shitty day stuff, to an enviroment that really damages someone. Surviving the former does not give one the perspective to say that the latter should be just as easy.
One night, when I was in German class, two men came into my apartment, tied and beat my fiancee, and stole most of our things.
One of them had a gun. My fiancee was completely defenseless. One man kept the gun trained on her while the other carried things out to their getaway car. Our apartment complex's maintenance man (Brett) scared them off with his personal firearm, before they had finished loading their car, and before they could do anything worse to my fiancee.
They were not intimidated by Brett until he brandished his firearm. I'm quite glad that he had one, and I am eternally grateful to him for risking his life to save my fiancee's.
Self defense and hunting are, IMO, the ONLY valid reasons to own a gun. It would be impossible to regulate firearms in the US, there are too many extant without licenses (my uncle has a collector's license, and he has over two hundred guns in his house alone. Each firearm is not individually licensed. They fall under the umbrella of his collector's license. I can guarantee that he, along with other collectors, would not turn over all of their pieces in the event of wholesale regulation.).
It is illegal to rob a bank, with or without firearms. It is illegal to kill someone. Yet it still happens. I cannot believe that if guns were made illegal, criminals would suddenly get queasy about carrying and using them. The only reduction it would cause is that it would raise the barrier of entry, and the gun-wielding criminals would simply be more likely hardened criminals with the capability of actually using that gun to inflict deadly harm.
Shinma
yes, in fdact, no one should ever be allowed to satire anything.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
OTOH if your girlfriend was armed, she may have been able to put a stop to it sooner.
Don't blame the firearm, and don't blame the game. It is that persons fault.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You are not a geek, you're a moronoid. Try reading the post, because it clearly says in there "he shouldn't be able to make the game" because it...oh wait, it doesn't.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
"Hell,even I think so, and I love all kinds of horrid, tasteless humor."
Well, obviously not all kinds.
Also, isn't it great when people that do like 'horrid, tasteless' stuff decide that they are now the judge of what is in poor taste and what isn't?
So when something come along that they finally find to be in bad taste, 'you have to admit' that he is right, because, you know, he knows because he likes that sort of shit, so he should know. Just think of the times that you've laughed at something that someone else regarded to be in poor taste but you laughed it off and said that it was actually funny or just messing around.
We are so lucky to have you people around to let us know when others have crossed the line. Phew.
For the record, I work in schools. One thing I can say is that the words "Columbine" are still quite in the head of administrators and teachers, etc, as well as the parents that would remember it.
The actual incident happened near my last years of high school. I remember that before I heard about Columbine itself, people who would usually have gone out of their way to break my balls were being unusually nice. I also found out later that most people somehow expected me to follow suite and copycat the shootings. It seemed strange to me, because though I had a lot of people with whom I had personal issues, and I was somewhat a fan of shooter games, etc, I just didn't have any compulsion to come to school and shoot people... both the innocent and the aggressors.
However, the impact of that day left a mark that did have people worried about pushing their targets "over that line." Furthermore, to this day I see that administration seems to take a much stronger notice of consistent bullying, and tends to educate against it more strongly as well. I don't know if that's an offshoot of Columbine or just happenstance, but I do believe that it was in many ways an eye opener for many people.
And to emphasize, I'm not the violent type, and I would neither commit such actions myself nor promote them from others, but I'm not overly surprised it happened. Though there is nothing that justifies the harming of innocents in the manner that this occured, I think what saddens me the most is the overspilling hatred in these individuals into racism and pure bile which brings about their willingness to harm true innocents (as in, not those who have done them harm) and to in the end make them something worse than those whom they railed against.
Armed "home invasions" are so rare in Australia that when it does happen it becomes national news.
I know that the US has a love affair with guns and I do not wish to tell you how to live or what your constitution should say. However, there are other ways to live that both work and have the support of the poulation, to suggest otherwise (as the GP did) is ignorance.
"The only reduction it would cause is that it would raise the barrier of entry"
Precisely! In Australia it is very difficult to get hold of an unregistered handgun. In the US you have porous borders and supply is already very high, it would be much more difficult to control without first reducing the availability. OTOH: The US exports a large number of small arms to (almost) anyone who wants one.
BTW: Handgun collectors are catered for in Australia, you need a police approved safe and you must allow inspection on demand. My brother-in-law had 30+ handguns including a magnum 44 when the laws were tightened 15-20yrs ago. The safe, the cops and my herion addicted nephew became a PITA, so he moved them to a gun club.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Do you think you can "make adequate social commentary" by sitting around and critiquing anyone who tries to make a point?
If you RTFA, the game's author mentions some specific goals he's achieved through this game -- such as causing people to think and talk about games in the context of social commentary, exactly as we're doing now. By definition, then, this goal has been fulfilled. The author additionally notes in TFA that through the game he has been able to open discussions with people who similarities between the history of Klebold and Harris (as presented by the game) and their own situations -- allowing an opportunity to discuss the ramifications of their actions and generally encourage them to go down a different path. Personally, I am reminded by the lesson presented by Nazi Germany -- that otherwise good people can become monsters should they allow themselves to be guided by surrounding circumstance.
As for making a real and substantial difference, that doesn't always happen as a bang. Sometimes little things start to change how people think, and those little things add up over time. If nobody does anything unless they can see the immediate effects of their actions, the many (who individually have opportunities to make small differences) will be overwhelmed by the few with the influence or ability to make big ones.
Grow up, and try to appreciate people's work before attacking it as childish.
All of my comments come from the PoV of the reality of the American situation. As large as our country is, and as easy as it is for Joe Schmoe to run down to Tijuana, I don't think restricting guns in America can happen.
;P People will always find a way to kill each other.
Firearms are too ingrained in our culture, and too widespread already, to simply remove them. As long as it is easy for thugs to get guns on the black market, I think it's necessary for us to be able to get them through legitimate means as well.
Of course, if guns weren't available, the number of hunting knife-induced deaths would skyrocket, as would home-made explosives.
Shinma
"I don't think restricting guns in America can happen."
Given time, any culture will change it's views on much more fundemental issues than gun control, it happens so often that it has a name: "generation gap".
"Of course, if guns weren't available, the number of hunting knife-induced deaths would skyrocket, as would home-made explosives"
Knife attacks may increase, but you have to stab someone an average of 5 times to kill them plus you need to get "up close" to the victim. Stabing and slashing is very different and much more difficult than shooting someone from a safe distance. Most deaths from guns come from accidents, suicides and "heat of the moment" attacks. All these would decrease if guns were less accessible because there is more time for the "killer" to defuse and accidents with knives are rarely fatal.
"People will always find a way to kill each other."
Yep.
BTW: I'm not arguing against hunters, we have plenty here in Australia using single shot rifles or shotguns without magazines. We also have a considerable "safari" industry where tourists can go and hunt water buffalo, pigs, donkeys, goats, camels, deer and all the other pest and game species wandering around the bush.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
No one really ever talked seriously about Columbine. If they had we would not be where we are today with videogame legislation and the so called anti-bullying laws.
No one wanted to talk about Columbine, they didn't look deeply at the root fo the problem. They responded with the zero-tolerance bullshit and completly fucked over ever kid like me. Hell the week after Columbine I was basically forced into anger management classes by the school administration or I would have had to have gone to the "independent" school.
The anger management classes were filled with the kids who spent much of the time drifting between school juvie and ISS. I was a student who was quiet and bullied, I had never gotten into serious trouble before they put into effect the anti-bullying laws and zero-tolerance. Suddenly I was in trouble because i didn't let 2 kids drag my textbook through the mud and stuff shit into my locker. Ya, the schools did alot of good for me. Hell running from security camera to security camera was fun as hell for 3 years. But no, i was the one they were afraid was going to shoot up the school, i was the time bomb, and it was all my fault because i wasn't ignoring them.
Highschool only improved because i beat the living hell outta one of my "Friends" from middle school, right in front of the schools resource officer who was more than happy to confirm that he tried to put me into a choke hold.
Also, the game is not anywhere near what a fun game would be. A loose analogy would be saving private Ryan. The movie is great because of the story it told and the way it was told. The violence was there to prove a point, that war is brutal. Then again I know people who go and watch it and laught when someone gets torn to shreads, they do the same thing in horror movies and gore fests. Does that mean we should ban saving private Ryan? The beaches were just as tragic an event as columbine. Just because one person misues something doesn't mean we go and ban it. We try to understand why they misued it.
This game will piss people off, just like it did when it came out, IT WILL FORCE PEOPLE TO REMEMBER WHAT HAPPEND AND FACE THE FUCKING PAINFUL TRUTH THAT WE HAVE NOT YET FIXED A PROBLEM. WHEN IT COMES TO BULLYING THE WEAK ARE PUNISHED AND THE STRONG ARE REWARDED, WHEN THE WEAK FIGHT BACK THEY ARE PUNISHED EVEN MORE, WHEN THE WEAK EXPLODE WE GO AND PUNISH THE OTHER PEOPLE WHO ARE WEAK AGAIN. THE CYCLE REPEATS UNTIL WE HAVE ANOTHER SCHOOL SHOOTING.
Someone will one day realized that telling a bullied kid to ignore the bully will not work. They either need to punish the bully or not punish the victim. However with people like you around we will never talk about the problem, we will just do what we always do, grope around in the dark for an answer to a problem we can't name, even though we can't find our own ass with both hands in braod daylight.
Also don't tell me to grow up, I did that way before i should have had to. As for educate myself, I got out of HS early and am doing a double major.
Also, why don't you post with an name instead of as a coward.
You mad