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German Police Union Chief Wants Violent Game Ban After Shooting
A recent shooting in Germany has raised the ire of many politicians and officials, and they're turning to video games as a scapegoat after it was revealed that the shooter was a fan of Counterstrike and played Far Cry 2 the night before the rampage. First, a major retailer decided to drop mature-rated games altogether, and then the Minister for Social Affairs suggested restricting "addictive games," such as World of Warcraft, to adults only. Despite an unfavorable reaction from gamers and game developers alike, the chief of Germany's national police union has now spoken out against violent games as well, saying, "The world would be no poorer if there were no more killergames."
I can go to Germany, kill a bunch of people, tell everybody I am modeling myself after the chief of the German National Police and then they'll call for a ban on German National Police Chiefs. Sounds like a plan!
Seriously? This is completely ridiculous. There is no way that just video games alone made this person go on a shooting rampage. Several studies by groups such as Harvard Medical, The Journal of Adolescent Health, and the British Medical Journal have shown that there is no conclusive link between video games and violent activities (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_controversy). These people don't think that uhm...the media for instance has anything to do with it? Let's get real here people. There is no way playing some Far Cry 2 or any game like it alone contributes to the initiative to do violent things.
For me, video games are a great way to relax after a long day. It's an unwinding period and I don't feel violent at all when playing. I'm not alone saying this, there are many others who feel exactly the same way. The German police chief should look at the facts and statistics before he jumps the gun.
Just my two cents.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has it's limits" - Albert Einstein
Blame the games. Because we know how many people are killed each year by mice and Dual Shock controllers.
This is in the same vein as people who blame pornography for rape.
I am scientifically inaccurate.
It was also found he was breathing the night before he killed those people. We should ban that too.
You'll find that the vast majority of school-shooters play first-person shooters.
The vast majority of young males also player first-person shooters.
You'll even find that the vast majority of young males eat bread.
What exactly does this tell us?
This wouldn't have happened
1) if the guy hadn't had access to inordinate amounts of bullets (you can't kill 15 people with less than 15 bullets)
2) if the guy hadn't had access to a gun that was stored outside the legally required locked safe
3) if the guy hadn't been given weapons training even though his diagnosed mental condition (again, this was against the law)
Once you've addressed these issues, we may want to talk about banning violent games.
It seems that most responses to this sort of article are of the form "violent video games have nothing to do with what he did!" And then when something about a black shooter in a ghetto comes up, most people say "It's his society and location, if we could just get rid of the ghettos/black gangs/whatever, we'd have less violence/shooting/murders."
So it seems that in general, people do think that the environment one lives in affects one's decisions. Well, video games are part of my environment.
So instead of simply dismissing video games as having anything to do with decisions (which, IMO, is a ridiculous proposition, the idea you could spend 20+ hours a week playing video games and not have it affect you, whether that's morally, ethically, intellectually, ... grammatically ... what about, oh, say, myspace? no affect?)... I'd propose that we start posting how video games (especially violent ones, since that's this article's topic) DO affect you. How does virtual violence affect someone.
And preferably more than the curt "Duh, it lets you cool off virtually making you less likely to kill someone in real life." I'm not sure that is any more or less proven than video games causing real life shootings. If it does... then [citation needed]
Crappy journalistic research.
It's "just" the chief of the Hessian section of the DPolG, not the Chief on the federal level.
And there's several police unions as well, with the DPolG only being second largest (about half as big as the GdP with a few micro unions not worth mentioning).
Apart from that, it was pretty clear that everyone's gonna scream BANZOR KILLARGAMES after the little fuckwit ganked his old school, so no big surprise there.
What is imo most surprising is how careful and diplomatic Christian Pfeiffer is with his statements. He usually was pretty rabid anti-"Killergame" the last couple years and I expected him to gloat and go "TOLD YA" to his critics, but he actually says stuff like games are not the deciding factor, not the original cause for stuff like that, just a small piece of a big puzzle with social issues being the real problem, etc.
I'm confused. It's like if Jack Thompson would go ahead and offer to become BFF with John Carmack.
When ever you see a tragedy such as a school or public shooting or anything for that matter the first thing you do is say why, the second thing you do is find the easiest answer. The truth is that if someone does something that people don't understand they tend to blame the thing that person did that they didn't understand. I would agree that violence can breed more violence but it's pretty hard to blame video games when you see it played out in movies, TV, on the streets, and anywhere. The question is, is that when every one I know plays violent video games and not one of them has been convicted of a violent crime what does that prove? Counter-strike has 4.2 million users(just the original not source as there would be some cross over between the users number comes from Wikipedia) world wide. If this game(which is 10 years old give or take a few months) truly breed the kind of violence that made this kid kill people that's 0.0000238% of all people that play are made violent enough to commit a crime, I'm pretty sure that's an anomaly.
I would hope that things would settle down people would look at it a little more logically and decide that this kind of thing is silly. I would hope parents would be aware of the mental state of their children and be trying to get help if they can, and be aware of what content they can handle. I have heard of kids calming down once fighting games were removed but as a parent you should be watching them instead of letting them socialize on video games alone. If you let them play video games watch or play with them, of course as they get older it's harder to do that besides not giving them money to buy games, and then if they are still violent it's tragic but at least you shouldn't be blaming video games at that point.
Understandable point of view - I'd be against eugenics if I was at the fucking stupid end of the 'tard spectrum.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
You might want to look further back than the `80's. Last House on the Left is a remake of Last House on the Left from 1972. Hell, the original was directed by Wes "Nightmare on Elm Street" and "Scream" Craven. Don't forget that Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th had their heydays in the `80's as well.
You mention that playing shooters signals something "deeply wrong." Could it be that such forms of entertainment appeal to our baser instincts and have for millennia? The Romans sure seemed to enjoy watching gladiators fighting to the death. Violence and violent entertainment are nothing new. Also, as has been said before, perhaps those with violent tendencies are more drawn to violent entertainment because they are already predisposed to enjoy that type of imagery. Does that mean that everyone who enjoys such forms of entertainment is drawn to violence in the real world? I highly doubt it, and for every study that one can find to say there is a correlation between violent entertainment and actual violence, there are several others that say there is no causal link, not even on an "if there's smoke, there's fire," level. Violence is more often borne from desperation of one form or another, I'd be willing to bet.
Mess not in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup.
Football: a violent contact sport, frequently resulting in personal injury. Chess: A game in which you are encouraged to send blindly loyal soldiers of varying specialties to their untimely deaths all in the name of protecting a single political figure. Horse races: Involves brutally pitting horses against one another, some choose to include whipping. The horses get nothing but a fresh feed bag, while the trainers get millions in prize money, and book keepers rake in billions from the gambling. I'm sure there's something bad about golf, but all I could think of is "known to cause heart attacks in managers who should be behind their desks", but that's no loss for the world.
Anything can be portrayed in a bad light by phrasing it correctly.
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
And what are you doing by making a general statement about 60 million people based on what some of their grandparents did hmmm?
External locus of control. The shooter had it. Why do you think 14 out of 15 victims were female? He was gunning for females, because he was blaming all females for his condition. He blamed them for so much that he thought they collectively deserved to die.
Now the interesting part: pretty much everybody who wants to ban videogames because of events like these believes just as much in an external locus of control as the shooter. Except instead of believing that a group of people is directly harming them, they believe that a group of people is influencing "their" people through violent games. And instead of wanting to shoot the people they accuse, they want to ban their product.
Granted, it's better to ban a product than to shoot someone. But the fundamental drive is the same. It's also the drive that's behind book burnings and conspiracy theories like the protocols of the elders of zion. It's bullshit that makes people feel better and in control - it's not them that's the problem, and there's an easy solution at hand.
I despise both the shooter and the idiots who clamor for video gaming bannings equally. One's more harmful than the other, but that's just because the other is a bigger pansy. I'm convinced that under the right circumstances, the head of the state's police union would be just as willing a shooter as the 17 year old kid.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
to reduce warfare! Ban Monopoly to reduce greed! Ban Poker to reduce deception! Games don't cause the darker side of human nature...they allow a safe acceptable way to explore it in symbolic simulacrum.
While we're at it, lets also ban drugs, that way, we'll never see them on our streets again! ... Oh wait, we do. The only thing this will accomplish is an advocacy of piracy. Do you really think passionate gamers aren't going to turn to the torrents to get their fix? Keep dreaming you simple-minded jackasses.
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You mentioned *fiction* works. What about a Book that a significant percentage of people not only claim is NOT fiction, but a work full of moral and ethical teachings? What if that Book has scenes of drunkenness, incest, genocide, murder, prostitution, debauchery? How much worse would be the effect of that?
Admit it, you're just an apologist for the necromancy lobby that's trying to push its sick message on our children.
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As an engineer I am here to hell you that pawns never get promoted.
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