6-Year-Old Says Grand Theft Auto Taught Him To Drive

nandemoari writes "A six-year-old who recently stole his parents' car and drove it into a utility pole has passed the buck onto a familiar scapegoat: the video game, Grand Theft Auto. Rockstar Games' controversial Grand Theft Auto video game has been criticized by parent groups and crusaders (or in the eyes of gamers, nincompoops) like former lawyer Jack Thompson for years (Thompson once tried to link the Virginia Tech slayings to late-night Counterstrike sessions. He's since been disbarred). However, not as of yet has anyone under the age of, oh, ten, blamed the game for a car theft."

Comments

the real story

[UncleWilly]

The real story is somewhat sadder. Dad went to work, kid missed school bus, Mom was asleep (and the boy didn't want to miss breakfast & P.E. at school) so he tried to drive himself in Mom's car. Police asked him how he did it and he told them he stood next to the wheel and steered with one hand. Then when asked how he knew how to drive, he answered, Grand Theft Auto. It sounds like this came mostly from being hungry. Both parents I understand have been charged with felonys related to this.

Re:Prosecute the parents

[Rick Bentley]

so guns are in fact more dangerous than hammers.

Hammers might be a bad example, but guns are a lot less dangerous than cars. In fact, we are all much more likely to be killed by a car than a gun.

Firearms are involved in 0.6% of accidental deaths nationally. Most accidental deaths involve, or are due to:
motor vehicles (39%),
poisoning (18%),
falls (16%),
suffocation (5%),
drowning (2.9%),
fires (2.8%),
medical mistakes (2.2%),
environmental factors (1.2%),
and bicycles and tricycles (0.7%).

Among children:
motor vehicles (45%),
suffocation (18%),
drowning (14%),
fires (9%),
bicycles and tricycles (2.4%),
falls (2%),
poisoning (1.6%),
environmental factors (1.5%),
and medical mistakes (0.8%).

Clearly guns don't kill people -- cars kill people. Unlike a car, however, only a gun can protect you from an assailant.

As an aside, I have an assault rifle (in California, bought it just because it was being banned) a .45 and a 9mm. I also have an SUV. Believe me, I could kill a lot more people with the SUV than I could with all three guns and a wheelbarrow full of ammo. Just hit a crowded parade area, with jam-packed sidewalks, one fine day and start mowing people down. You can keep that up a lot longer in an SUV than you can shooting on the street corner (before a cop shoots you or the crowd jumps you). I can go 400 miles on a tank of gas, I could mow down most of a parade route before the cops boxed me in and shot me.

You want to keep your kids safe? Hide the keys. You want to keep society safe? Take away the cars.