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Jack Thompson Served With Order to Show Cause
cli_rules! writes "DailyTech has reported that Jack Thompson has been ordered to explain himself. 'Therefore, it is ordered that you shall show cause on or before March 5, 2008, why this Court should not find that you have abused the legal system process and impose upon you a sanction for abusing the legal system, including, but not limited to directing the Clerk of this Court to reject for filing any future pleadings, petitions, motions, letters, documents, or other filings submitted to this Court by you unless signed by a member of The Florida Bar other than yourself.'"
GP's claim was one in a billion player is also a murderer, you claim is that it is only one in a million. Most recent US murder rate is around 59 victims per million people per year. So unless there is a strong negative correlation between games and murder (which is quite likely), you are still off by a couple of orders of magnitude.
It's probably more likely than us getting rid of this perennial problem. Long may the religious zealots burn.
Game Politics unearthed a filing that may well be what got him in trouble in the first place:
http://gamepolitics.com/2008/02/22/did-this-document-bring-florida-supreme-courts-wrath-down-upon-jack-thompson/
From the article:
"The court described one of Thompson's recent filings in detail. [Thompson] dubbed it a "children's picture book for adults," interspersing images with text in his motion due to "the court's inability to comprehend" his arguments.
Images included "swastikas, kangaroos in court, a reproduced dollar bill, cartoon squirrels, Paul Simon, Paul Newman, Ray Charles, a handprint with the word 'slap' written under it, Bar Governor Benedict P. Kuehne, a baby, Ed Bradley, Jack Nicholson, Justice Clarence Thomas, Julius Caesar, monkeys, a house of cards," the order said."
Therefore, it is ordered that you shall show cause on or before March 5, 2008, why this Court should not find that you have abused the legal system process and impose upon you a sanction for abusing the legal system
... of course, they aren't simply off the deep end like Mr. Thompson, they're just bloodsucking leeches.
... well, maybe there's not so much difference after all.
He's not the only one deserving of this treatment, he's not the only one abusing the legal process. The music and movie industries need to be taken down a notch too
Huh
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
He...Is...Bat shit insane.... I attempted to read that "picture book." I got halfway through and realized that I felt like I was climbing uphill wearing roller skates with hurricane force winds blowing me down. Thompsons stupidity and apparent insanity has never been so clear as in the above "picture book." Beyond that...who does that to a judge or court or lawyer. Insult their intelligence, are you crazy...oh wait, yes...
Hmm. Most of those images are copyrighted and I don't see how he could claim fair use, since the use is unrelated to his legal claims. It would be amusing to see him sued, but he'd probably just file for bankruptcy. He's a lawyer after all.
Except that in the case of NIU the individual was legally allowed to purchase firearms from a legally licensed gun shop who performed at least one background check. In the WV massacre last year, the lack of cooperation between agencies allowed him to purchase his weapons through a shop that was observing relevant legislation as well.
But yes, there is the need to clean up the illegal channels first before we seriously consider whether wider gun bans are necessary. The D.C. Sniper purchased his weapons from the Bull's Eye in Tacoma, a shop which was later closed for multiple violations of gun control legislation. The last thing we need is for the US to turn into the kind of unmitigated disaster that the UK has been since they banned firearms. They did an excellent job of demonstrating that firearm bans aren't really anywhere near enough, and that perhaps registries and gun locks would be more effective.
Where gun culture plays into it is that there is a ridiculous degree of resistance to legitimate regulation on people buying weapons that serve no purpose other than killing people. Gun nuts that support not just the use of pistols, rifles and shotguns for hunting, but also fully automatic weapons for hunting as well.
What we really need is better access to mental health coverage and screenings so that those people who do have that level of need can get the treatment they need. Around here Ms. Harps was stabbed to death on new years eve by a man with serious mental health problems, it turns out that he had himself tried to get committed a few days previously and been declined.
As for how video games may or may not play into this whole thing, it's minimal at best, the extent of it is more likely than not, just the fact that time gaming is time not going outside and having face to face interaction with other people.
I always thought the first step of dictators to exert more control over the populace (according to historical trends) was invoking a terrifying internal and external enemy, followed by creating a prison system outside the rule of law, developing a paramilitary group of scary young men to terrorize citizens, setting up an internal surveillance system, harass citizens' groups, engage in arbitrary detention and release, target civil servants, artists, and academics with job loss, control the press, cast dissent as treason, and suspend the rule of law.
Confiscating guns seems to me to be, if anything, purely optional, and is almost always done AFTER an armed resistance would have little to no effect anyway.
I used to work for NetQoS. I no longer do, but want to keep the excellent karma attached to this account.
And once he forces the courts to do so, he'll go right to Fox News and get constant air-time claiming how there's a conspiracy against him, orchestrated by gamers, the liberal agenda, courts, and more that he won't deign to name. The net effect is far more publicity than he would get otherwise.
Of course, this doesn't mean that he shouldn't be disbarred. What it means is that Fox should stop their pandering and stop putting him on air after each tragedy so he can blame a boogieman with no evidence whatsoever. But, sadly, they seem to be addicted to it.
Whatever helps the ratings, I guess.
We don't have a gun culture, what we have is a culture of media-ocrity. Kids spend more time watching television than going to school and the media exalts violence and commercialism. Lately it's been getting slutted up too. Anyone who says that watching eight hours of mass-media television a day won't rot your brain is obviously a dillhole, every system except for a few involving bacteria are garbage in, garbage out all the way. Any "gun culture" you may have believed existed is just an offshoot of our "media culture". It's part of the public paranoia promoted by a news media that shows us only the sensationalistic crap that will ensure their ratings because we as a people have shown that we react well to being shown bright and shiny things.
If we really had a "gun culture" problem then we'd have more firearm deaths than alcohol deaths or auto deaths. In 2001 (easy stats to find) we have around 75,000 alcohol deaths, ~40,000 auto accident deaths, and 29,573 firearms deaths, 57% of which were suicides - which means that they could as easily have been slit wrists or heads in the oven, assuming the statistic is correct. (ho ho)
As you can see from that last link, the total number of deaths is falling over time, and the percentage of suicide is rising... and of course the population is rising in this country. So uh... it looks like what gun problems we have - and there are problems, just as there are problems with knives, and there were problems with swords and bows before them, are being worked out.
So sorry, I don't see your gun culture bit. Guns are tools meant for killing, and we enshrine violence. Guns are just a symptom. They're the most convenient way to kill someone, so of course we're going to use them. Get rid of them and you'll just see more stabbings and stranglings.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"