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Researcher Finds No Link Between Violent Games and School Shootings
GamePolitics writes "A researcher at Texas A&M International University has found no link between playing violent video games and school shootings. Prof. Christopher Ferguson cites 'moral panic' and criticizes politicians, the news media and some social scientists for playing up what he believes is a false connection between video games and school shooting incidents. Quoting: 'Actual causes of violent crime, such as family environment, genetics, poverty, and inequality, are oftentimes difficult, controversial, and intractable problems. By contrast, video games present something of a "straw man" by which politicians can create an appearance of taking action against crime.'"
that is, that violent videogames decrease violence in society
media is catharsis. what i mean by that is: what is seen in a movie, or read in a book, or played on a keyboard, is something that is released harmlessly there, and left there. something that would be expressed in the real world otherwise if there were no means for harmless escape
some people may consider me a ittle radical on the subject, but i am serious: more people should play more violent videogames. more people should consume more pornography. the result would be less violence and less trangressive sexual crimes in real life. i think violent offenders should be given access to violent videogames in prison, and given a copy on their release (if ever). i think sexual offenders should be given hardcore pornography. this would teach them how to cope with their urges and manage them without resorting to victimizing real people in the real world
and for those of us who can "self-medicate", and remove the baser urges we recognize in ourselves, and recognize as socially wrong, by releasing them harmlessly on a keyboard or a magazine, then please, by all means, allow us to do that
because the attraction to violent videogames, or sexual media, is really a HEALTHY instinct: its a recognition for the need to have catharsis on certain asocial urges, something the vast majority of us have. although, some people don't have any sexual or violent proclivities about themselves at all, and that's why they look at people who view pornography or violence as tainted somehow, and they see the media as a cause of this taint. this is a false line of reasoning on their part. the media is merely a symptom, not a cause. and much more than a symptom, it is a treatment. it is catharsis
violent or sexual media does not create monsters. we are already, or are already not, monsters to begin with. its just a question of whether we release in real life, in society, or in fantasy, in media-based pursuits
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
No, but it certainly means the crime is a lot less deadly.
Not really. Availability of guns in a society does not seem to correlate with the number of violent deaths and murders. Maybe this is because people don't fight back if the mugger has a gun or maybe more muggers actually attack a victim from behind injuring or killing them rather than just threatening with a gun. Or maybe more people are able to defend themselves and escape without injury because they have a gun themselves. In some places where guns are rare, drive by attacks use pipe bombs and molotov cocktails resulting in the injury and death of more bystanders than in places where guns are used for the same crimes.
In short, what you assume is obvious has not been supported by any factual information I've ever seen.
You win the "completely invalid comparison" award with that doozy. Shoes - Guns? Come on.
Actually it was an example of how logically flawed the idea of anything that reduces "gun violence" is a good thing regardless of the effects upon overall crime and violence rates. Drawing a correlation between the prevalance of one object and the prevalance of that object when crime occurs is pointless and misleading. The absurd idea being that in places where people have more hats or guns, a ban on hats or guns can reduce the rate of hat wearing or gun using criminals and that means anything useful.
You Southern gunslingers are all alike, I swear.
I live in the subarctic, genius.
Actually, you were making an assertion as much as the post you replied to did. You can't counter someone by saying you read a bunch of stuff that says something else but then not bother to back it up by linking them.
No, I said I've read a lot of papers and none have shown a strong correlation. You can't prove a negative. If someone says there is a correlation, the onus is on them to show it, not on me to go through every single study and show there isn't one shown in any of them.
Could bombs and poison be more effective? Sure. Have we had a big attack on college campuses using those? No. Most likely if they didn't have guns they would use the easily available tools like swords and knives which would mean many fewer losses.
And what are you basing this last assumption on? It's yet another assertion without any support. In general no one has shown that gun bans have reduced violence or murder rates. You can assume that does not hold true in schools, but that doesn't make it so either. You need real evidence or you need to admit you're just guessing and don't have any reason behind your belief.
. So many things can go wrong with bombs and poison which would would probably take out the attacker before he attacked. Or they would be duds.
Sure, and things can go wrong with guns too and they have a very limited number of people they can kill, especially in a short period of time. You may want gun bans to reduce the body count and you can come up with all sorts of speculation as to specific causation to explain it if that is the case, but in order for such an assertion to be reason, you need some evidence that it is true.
In any case, I can tell you are one of those people who get emotional and irrational when it comes to guns so this will be a bit pointless. But eh, I need a break.
If you need a break, you seem to be the emotional one. All I've done is call you on your unsupported assertions. I'm asking for reason and evidence instead of emotional assumptions and wishful thinking. You haven't presented anything.
Congratulations, you just repeated what I said.
Your reading comprehension could use some work.
Your problem is you are assuming I am completely anti-gun. I am not. I am saying using statistics and studies is a bullshit way of making your point when you can use some common sense instead.
Yeah, relying on evidence in order to form my opinions sure is irrational. What you call common sense is just another way of saying you base your opinions upon what you think without having looked into things or studied the facts. When your common sense conflicts with the best information provided using the scientific method, what then?
So studies are bull shit. Yes, I can use common sense to say if people didn't have access to guns then there would have been a lot less people killed in Columbine and Virginia.
Well, since there is no way to completely get rid of guns, it's hard to say if ay measure would completely have prevented them from having them, but assuming you could, what cost would be acceptable to you? If you could save a few hundred lives killed with guns in schools, but at the cost of thousands dying outside schools because they are physically weak and unable to defend themselves, would that be the right thing?
And even assuming those kids did not have access to guns, are you certain they would not have used bombs or poison and killed more people overall. And if you ignore the facts presented by statistical studies, how can you know? Did god tell you? Intuition?
Would you deny the fact that a person with a gun is potentially more deadly than a person without a gun?
Potentially more dangerous or realistically more dangerous? Only the latter is relevant. Is a scared mugger with a baseball bat behind you
Murders are about 3 times more common per capita in the US than the UK.
This is exactly what I was talking about. You take two countries that are very different in many ways and compare the rates of murder. Then you state that it doesn't prove gun control is the differentiating factor. Scientifically, how does one go about determining what the most likely causality is? You increase your sample size and look at many countries and look for traits that correlate across many of them.
But there's no need for us to do it. Several studies have already looked at this on a large scale. One quickly discovers that there are incredibly low rates of murder and violent crime in several countries with gun ownership and gun laws no different than the US, while there are very high rates of crime in many countries with low gun ownership and strict laws.
...but it does disprove the argument that the Brits kill people just as much as the Americans, only with different weapons.
Who said they did. I only asserted that there was no evidence that gun laws or ownership rates had anything to do with it. If you're trying to find out what is most likely to account for it, I'll save you some reading. The most strongly correlative factor is wealth disparity (not just poverty mind you). In fact, if you were to predict the UK's violence rate from that of other countries using that factor alone, you'd come pretty darn close.