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School Shooting Prompts Legislation To Study Violent Video Games
New submitter seepho writes "Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) has introduced a bill directing the National Academy of Sciences to lead an investigation to determine what impact violent video games have on children. Senator Rockefeller commented, 'Recent court decisions demonstrate that some people still do not get it. They believe that violent video games are no more dangerous to young minds than classic literature or Saturday morning cartoons. Parents, pediatricians, and psychologists know better. These court decisions show we need to do more and explore ways Congress can lay additional groundwork on this issue. This report will be a critical resource in this process.'"
This legislation was prompted by reports that Sandy Hook shooter Adam Lanza was a gamer. A draft of the bill is available online.
When you have an anti-religious, secular bureaucracy and secular judiciary seeking to drive God out of public life, something fills the vacuum. And that something, you know, I don’t know that going from communion to playing war games in which you practice killing people is necessarily an improvement.
Huckabee:
We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we’ve systematically removed God from our schools. Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage because we’ve made it a place where we don’t want to talk about eternity, life, what responsibility means, accountability?
My work here is dung.
And watches the same movies, and listens to the same music. Yet we're the only ones with a mass murder fetish, and the shittiest mental healthcare. Media isn't the problem.
...right along with gun owners, we are at the twilight of those two industries unless we put this to a stop. Logical people know video games and guns don't cause violence - crazy assholes do. But as long as we're willing to be vilified, we will be picked to pieces in the chaos.
Endless war, militarized police, drone strikes, torture, gangster lifestyles, and overall general violence, it is all a contributing factor to devaluing life.
But let's ignore the real problem: mental illness. Lets blame guns and video games.
Adam Lanza's mother received nearly $25,000 a month in alimony, maybe the should study the connection between receiving ludicrous amounts of money for no reason and violence in children as well.
The shooter played Star Craft. Not a FPS, not some blood and gore style of game, but a strategy game. Its about as violent as chess (ok, it has a bit more blood then most chess games).
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
This looks more like a case of "shit happened, we need to blame somebody" than actually trying to solve anything. If a violent video game is going to turn someone violent it's more likely as a result of a preexisting condition.
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
is how nobody understands that in roman times, medieval times, heck, even just 100 years ago, mankind was peaceful and loving
ever since these video games came out, murder has gone through the roof /sarcasm, for the sarcasm impaired
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Why aren't we looking at keeping the crazy people themselves off the streets? As someone who has known someone that was mentally unstable and worked with their doctors to have them committed it's next to impossible to have an unstable person committed involuntarily. Typically the best you can do is 3 days, and beyond that nothing can be done unless they are an /immediate/ risk to themselves or others.
The standard needs to be changed to indeterminable risk to themselves or others, as this would make all the difference in the world in keeping unstable people off the streets and the rest of society safe. The standards are simply too stringent and by closing the institutions we have gotten rid of all of the economies of scale that allowed unstable people to have access to the physical and mental health care that they need. The result now is that the mentally unfit are homeless and society isn't protected from the unstable. The idea that this is somehow more 'humane' is ludicrous.
Yes, the religious right does that -- and the extreme left does it too. You don't have to look at only one extreme to see all the hate being generated. Your post is an example of yet another one-sided hate spewing viewpoint.
... or both.
Our recent politics on all sides have generated the idea that anyone who disagrees with the One True Viewpoint is either Evil or Stupid
A pox on all your houses.
The way to combat such stupid, ignorant hate is to stop doing it!
But there is one big difference between us and the rest of the world. We have the mostest, biggest, baddest guns. (Baddestest?)
Switzerland issues fully automatic assault rifles (real assault rifles, not just "scary looking semi-autos") to every mentally competent male of military-eligible age. The type of weapons that are incredibly difficult to acquire in the US (for those of us not obscenely wealthy, anyway)
By your reasoning, Switzerland should be a madhouse of old-west style gunfights; I'll leave it to you to discover whether or not that is the case.
But there is one big difference between us and the rest of the world.
Indeed, and you already pointed it out:
the rest of the world may actually take care of their mentally ill.
There's the real issue at hand.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
As a philosopher, I would assert that some pieces of classic literature can be very dangerous: children may learn how to think.
If you want to have a reasoned debate you cannot selectively use facts.
Wikipedia tells me that for the past five years, Switzerland has only permitted 2,000 of those with military issue weapons to store ammunition at home. Prior to that the ammunition was strictly audited. It's hard to kill using a gun with no bullets. Prior to 2007, the auditing requirement would make use of the weapon rare.
You also neglect to mention that the weapons are issued to civilians who have undergone military training. This is not like turning up at Walmart and buying a semi-automatic.
Comparing gun use in Switzerland to that in the US is like comparing chalk and cheese. Unless you're suggesting as a solution to gun crime that everyone of age should be conscripted to receive military training and the government should be allowed in private homes to audit your weapons?
If you want to have a reasoned debate you cannot selectively use facts.
Agreed, and that's a two way street:
Wikipedia tells me that for the past five years, Switzerland has only permitted 2,000 of those with military issue weapons to store ammunition at home.
From the article:
Re: selective use of facts - the article refers to government issued ammunition. Waffentragschein (gun permit) holders can still purchase (and, therefore, possess) non-government issue ammunition.
Pot, meet kettle.
You also neglect to mention that the weapons are issued to civilians who have undergone military training. This is not like turning up at Walmart and buying a semi-automatic.
I neglected to mention a lot of things, as they were non sequitur to the point I was making, and I'm not in the habit of needless pontification.
Regarding this point of yours, I personally believe proper training should be mandatory prior to allowing an individual to purchase any firearm.
Unless you're suggesting as a solution to gun crime that everyone of age should be conscripted to receive military training and the government should be allowed in private homes to audit your weapons?
I suggested no such thing - I will, however, recommend for future reference that you fully read and understand the premise of a post before you respond to it, thus assuring that your statements are at least relevant to the topic at hand.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
While you're waiting, interesting fact about the infamous "Assault Weapons Ban" that cost the Democrats the 1994 election: it was passed with almost unanimous support in the Senate. Republicans and Democrats alike supporting it in overwhelming numbers.
Because it was a good bill? Hell no, it's a terrible piece of legislation, but that's not the point: back when it was passed, there wasn't this "Left = gun control, Right = guns for all" crap. Even before the AWB, Saint Reagan himself, as governor of California, had signed into law some of the worst gun control legislation ever seen.
From what I can discern, the NRA decided that the best way to protect its members was to (relatively arbitrarily) pick a party, and throw its weight behind it knowing that if that party knew that was going on, it would avoid crossing the NRA to avoid losing its support. This policy started in the late seventies, but really took hold in 1994 when they went all out to elect a party that was equally to blame for the hated AWB as their opponents. As long as the supported party stayed in power, and was sufficiently scared of losing support to not waver from pro-NRA positions, the NRA's policies would be bolstered.
And that action drove the usually civil-liberty-loving liberals into the hands of the NRA's opponents. Take a step back a moment: does it really make much sense that liberals, who detest restrictions on speech, on what you can do with your own bodies, on people being jailed, would actually, normally, be in favor - in principle - of someone owning a device as long as they used it responsibly?
And that leads to an obvious conclusion: we can safely assume that it's highly improbable that gun control will pass in the next two years, even token gun control. But let's fast forward to 2014. Congress finally is switched to blue in both houses, as the trends suggest (there was a popular vote victory for the Democrats in the House this year and it was only because of the way district boundaries are drawn that Republicans won the House.) The Democrats celebrate by passing sweeping laws outlawing most semi-automatic weapons with a gun buyback program to get the weapons finally out of circulation.
Who has created the political climate where the Democrats would be so anti-gun it would do such a thing? Where the party of the ACLU would delight in stepping on the rights of millions of peaceful, non-threatening, gun owners?
Maybe, just maybe, the NRA should change its strategy.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I had a friend that lost his mind about 20yrs ago and killed a dude with a hammer. He spent years with psychological issues but there was really no recourse for him. We tried to help him, but mental health issues are shunned. Try walking into a hospital and telling them you're losing your mind. They lock you in a county psyc ward for 3days and then let you out. I've seen it happen. To that guy... and he still killed some one. It was a tragedy for everyone involved including him. Given the correct treatment he could have lead a normal life and the dude that he killed would still be alive today.
You can make guns totally illegal and it still wont solve the problem. Keep in mind what's going on here. More children died that day in car accidents than in the shooting. 9 kids died in this country from malnutrition (taken from the US yearly average of 1 in 100,000 deaths per year) that day. While this shooting is a tragedy, it's just media glamorizing it that's making headlines. There are far more dangerous and devistating problems facing the children of this country and you are being distracted by decades old intractable issues... you are being played.
Do you really think any meaningful gun control or video game standards will come out of this? At most, they'll re-instate the assault weapons ban... which was completely worthless and ineffectual. So what if my clip can only hold 10 rounds if clips cost $5 and I can carry 5 clips on me? So what if the gun manufacturer can't call my gun an "Assault rifle"? If that guy had taken the 12gauge into that school instead of the gun he thought looked "Cool" he'd have done a hell of a lot more damage. Any laws in regards to video games will be struck down by the supreme court almost immediately.
Just like abortion or any other of the non-sensical, unsolvable issues they bring up constantly, these are issues that CANNOT be solved by our government. They are using this tragedy to distract YOU from the real problems they could solve but are not.
They could easily garner by-partisan support for funding to help support the mentally ill.
They could pass laws governing the security of schools. Glass doors should be out... windows higher off the ground... Panic buttons in classrooms with deadbolts on the doors. Cheap fixes. When I was a kid in the rural south all the doors and windows at our school had bars to keep thieves out.
They could change the laws governing how we get the mentally ill committed. It is a VERY difficult thing to do now. In most cases the person in question just has to avoid all the appointments and court appearances and there's nothing you can do about it.
Personally I think they are using this tragedy to distract us from all the crap they are not addressing in the upcoming fiscal bill. It's disgusting, but that's what our leaders do.
Google is your friend.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/potential_connecticut_school_shooting_8HMOSbP38TXwSYYsVGkYLO
"Lanza used two handguns — a Glock and a Sig Sauer — and a .223-caliber assault rifle, an official said."
Mostly, they don't...
Bullshit. Mostly, they do. The NRA, and their paid lackeys in the House and Senate, have a long history of opposing any and all legislation that would tighten up the availability of guns. Selling guns is the reason for the NRA's existence. Anything that makes it harder to buy guns is bad for business. That the occasional loser who shouldn't be trusted with anything more dangerous than a pointed stick is able to buy as much as he wants is ample proof that we have a problem. Jezuz H. Christ, folks. You need a license and insurance to drive a car. Is it asking so much to demand that gun owners demonstrate similar proficiency and responsibility? Oh, and before you label me as someone from "the far left", keep in mind that I own multiple firearms and have been an active shooter since I was five years old. I oppose most forms of "gun control". I embrace those forms that ensure that fewer people who should not have guns don't get guns. The NRA and their Republican lackeys do not.