Slashdot Mirror
Video Game Industry Starting To Feel Heat On Gun Massacres
An anonymous reader writes "While much of the scrutiny following the lone gunman-perpetrated massacres at Aurora, CO and Newtown, CT has fallen on the National Rifle Association and its lobbying efforts against gun control, the shooters in both of the aforementioned incidents seemed to have been encouraged by violence in movies and video games. The New York Daily News' Mike Lupica reported last week that investigators of the Newtown case found a huge spreadsheet in the Lanza home where 20-year old Adam Lanza had methodically charted hundreds of past gun massacres, including the number of people killed and the make and model of weapons used. A Connecticut policeman told Lupica 'it sounded like a doctoral thesis, that was the quality of the research', and added, '[Mass killers such as Lanza] don't believe this was just a spreadsheet. They believe it was a score sheet. This was the work of a video gamer'. In response, the Entertainment Software Association and other lobbyists representing the video game industry have ramped up their Washington lobbying efforts. While still tiny in dollar terms next to the NRA's warchest, this effort seemed to help derail a proposal to fund a Justice Department study of the effects of video games on gun violence, offered as an amendment on the gun control bill by a Republican senator. A spokesman summarized the ESA's position: 'Extensive research has already been conducted and found no connection between media and real-life violence.'"
The New York Daily News' Mike Lupica reported last week that investigators of the Newtown case found a huge spreadsheet in the Lanza home where 20-year old Adam Lanza had methodically charted hundreds of past gun massacres, including the number of people killed and the make and model of weapons used.
Okay, so far none of this has anything to do with video games -- does it? Anyone with their mind set and with extreme determination to accomplish the goal would do the above. Hell, this sounds more like the fantasy football people at my office than the gamers.
A Connecticut policeman told Lupica 'it sounded like a doctoral thesis, that was the quality of the research'
So we should ban doctoral theses? We should halt all research? Yeah, if someone is incredibly determined to do something, they're going to make a science out of it and conduct super extensive research. This is true of anything from baseball card collecting to weightlifting to money management to drug dealing. Name a thing. Anything. Now imagine what someone would do if they took it to an extreme level. Yeah, that's what's going on here.
'[Mass killers such as Lanza] don't believe this was just a spreadsheet. They believe it was a score sheet. This was the work of a video gamer'.
You lost me. This is absolute bullshit. Statements that have more to do with a single person's determination suddenly linked to video games in what should be viewed as illogical stupidity. Oddly this statement can work for anything, weightlifters view their personal records and recorded journals as score sheets. Baseball card collectors view their completed sets and insert sets as score sheets. Farmers that are trying to get the most out of their fields look at their yields like score sheets. I mean, what about sports where you have actual score sheets and stats? Why are we not saying this was the work of an NFL running back or a second degree Taekwondo black-belt?
He did outside research to carry out an incredibly difficult task? Sounds more like your average software documentation than your average video gamer -- time to protect people from research and documentation.
Christ if you want to talk about restricting and banning things, look at the actual tools that he actually used to succeed in carrying out this horrible crime. Where is the logic that violent video games were instrumental in this horrible attack? Where is the link between his research and video games? Because it's a score sheet? Ridiculous!
My work here is dung.
... spreadsheets kill people.
Ban Excel!
Microsoft Excel?
0 = 1 + e^(Alt something)
Because the only ones to blame is our collective self. Violent media--TV shows, movies, video games, death metal, etc.--are an expression of our society's extreme unfocused anger, not the cause. Silly politicians and your simple solutions to complex problems.
Yeah, What gamer seriously puts down the controller long enough to A) do research and B) create a detailed excel file? This is obviously the work of a grad student or scientist. We should burn them all at the stak.... hold on someone's at the door.
...but at least I can keep them from being virtually killed by virtual guns.
YES!!! Microsoft Excel is CLEARLY the problem here. Excel is the clear problem! If we ban Excel and more exactly Microsoft out problems will go away...
If we're going to blame some form of popular media, it should be the news media, in my opinion. Sure, you can argue that maybe video games desensitize people to violence and (apparently) allow people to keep score (ban Parcheesi too, or cribbage), but I would say that the constant coverage of killers and whatnot on the news is what makes it worse. I have no evidence to back this up, but it certainly gives people ideas about what to do or how to do it, as well as showing them that if they do this sort of thing they're going to live on in news coverage long after they're dead. If these are, as often portrayed, lost souls reaching out for something (in a very inappropriate way), what better way to go than to emblazon your name across all news outlets?
This is another knee jerk reaction to these recent mass shootings.
NONE of these shooting would have been prevented with ANY of the legislation that is being proposed by lawmakers. Assault weapons ban, large magazine capacity, even extending background checks to cover the mentally ill. Take a look at every mass shooting we've had recently, and then take a look at all the proposed legislation. Ask yourself: What in these bills would have prevented any of these from happening?
Assault weapons ban: Wouldn't have stopped any of them as all the proposed legislation would grandfather in existing owners.
Large magazine ban: Would also grandfather them in.
Mental health checks: These weapons were stolen from legitimate users or bought legally. You MIGHT have gotten Aurora stopped. But even then, there's a whole lot of "what if's" in that scenario.
No gun control advocate wants to face the harsh reality: In a free and open society, sometimes bad people do bad things, and there's nothing you can do to stop them until it's too late.
How many laws did Lanza break before even firing a shot in Sandyhook?
he murdered his mother, stole her guns, used guns in the commission of a crime, premeditated the murder, had guns on school property, and broke into school property, yet he was not apprehended for any of those crimes.
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
I propose a 7 macro limit.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
I'm not a big fan of guns or gun rights, but I'm pretty sure that games are not the first scapegoat, guns were. And while I haven't been paying attention to NRA press releases, I haven't heard much noise about the gun industry trying to shift the blame onto videogames either. So I don't see how videogames will be left holding the bag, unless we let pro-censorship groups (I think they call themselves concerned parents organizations or something like that) run wild with it.
"if you want to talk about restricting and banning things, look at the actual tools that he actually used to succeed in carrying out this horrible crime."
Ah yes, you don't like your inanimate object blamed, so you want to push the blame off on some other inanimate object.
How about we just blame the person?
Wrong. It's about banning speech. If you could show me that the game disc it was printed on had cadmium on it and that it flaked off and was dangerous to human health, I would advocate banning that particular game disc. If you can prove an inanimate object is the reason people are dying, I'll go along with your ideas on restricting it. What I will not agree to is banning books, movies, music, software or anything that represents an "idea" just because you're afraid of those ideas. If I buy a game and download it online, there is no inanimate object. It's information.
Yeah if all game discs could explode and send a piece of metal or lead into someone's chest, I would be interested in heavily restricting the sale of it. Your apples to oranges comparison of "inanimate objects" could also apply to nuclear weapons, C4, ricin, etc. Have fun living in that society! Comparing guns to information just shows that people don't understand the first amendment's importance as being a civil right and are all for only the second amendment that was written when guns were muskets. You can have all the muskets you want at the level of technology that was present when the second amendment came into effect.
My work here is dung.
People don't know the cause of school shootings, so they're trying to chip away at the methods used to achieve them. Banning guns, video games, heavy metal, etc. all fit into this in that people perceive these as being contributing factors to why people shoot up schools.
But what makes them want to shoot up schools? I'd say there are two issues here:
1. Mental health, especially undiagnosed mental health issues. In this society, all you can do if someone has issues is either pay for them to get treatment, or start a process that's going to get them confined in mental institutions.
2. Media coverage, because if you shoot up a school and get a high enough kill count, you're going to be on the front page of CNN etc. for weeks.
In this society we have an ugly tendency to assume that methods and not inner motivations, including ability and mental health, are important. We think that memorizing facts is more important than having mental ability; we look at whether people are obedient to social norms rather than whether what they're doing is right.
These types of situations suggest our society has some pathological need to avoid looking at our motivations. Perhaps we're afraid we'll find nothing but making money, watching TV, and eating Taco Bell.
I hope not.
This was the work of a video gamer
Fuck you. Your detective work is the work of an imbecile.
I think I have a problem with a cop's ability to judge the quality of research as "PhD quality."
. . . and somehow, they didn't go around tearing hair out, gouging eyes or putting someone's head in a vice.
Because they knew that was TV, and it wasn't a grand idea to try it out on your kid sister.
If video games cause a kid to go postal, there is something else wrong with the kid.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
we blame the lack of mental health services? I don't particularly care about gun control one way or another, but I am tired of people ignoring root causes. In every one of these shootings there have been signs of schizophrenia. Schizophrenia has been shown to be a brain chemistry problem. Fixing it is very, very, very expensive. Even the guy from Aurora (who's dad had lots of money) would be pressed. You need a lot of very specific treatment. So we waste time talking about violent games and guns and anything else but actually paying to identify and treat these people because that would take tax money, and as we all know we're perpetually Taxed To The Max (TM).
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Lanza killed a lot of young children. It's the sort of thing the news media eats up because 1) it involves children which immediately gets the attention of every parent int he country and 2) Lanza had serious emotional issues (and psychological ones too).
It's the type of story no one can ignore and let's face a sad reality. Most people are fucking drama queens. That's why Oprah is successful, why Jerry Springer and Maury Povitch have TV shows. That's why The Young and the Restless has been on TV for 40 friggin years and produced over 10,000 episodes. People or nosey pricks that need to get involved in everything.
Kids see this and realize "Hey, I can get tons of attention by doing the same thing!" Video games aren't directly to blame. Bad, no, piss poor parenting is to blame. Video games have just made kids a hell of a lot better at it. They now know how to frag large groups of people because they do it on CoD and Halo. It's like free training for emotional disturbed people.
The solution isn't easy. You have to first make sure that these kids are being found and helped before they become killers. In almost every case people describe the killers as sweet kids pushed too far by home, school and life stresses. If you know a kid like this fucking help them! In addition to this, start cracking down hard on the little fuckers that are bullying in school. I knew plenty of these assholes growing up. Most of them are now rich and successful because they learned bullying pays off. They climbed the corporate ladder being the pricks their parents raised them to be.
The problems are societal. It's not the guns killing people. It's society eating itself. People blaming it on any one thing need to go fuck themselves. They are part of the problem.
To all outward appearances this guy seemed 'normal', but he did have his own weird point scoring game inside his head that he plays on people. (And I thank God that the 'points' he plays for are really just pennies.)
Do you watch the news in America? All economic discussion regardless of who does it is from a corporate/conservative standpoint of low taxes, few regulations and minimal government intervention (except for bailouts). Yeah, there's some liberal bias in social issues. But what the hell does that matter in the real world. In economics there is no dissenting opinion. What in Gods name do they need to censor? They already have control over everything that matters. If I control your economy I control you. You're not free unless your economically secure.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
We don't want to do anything that may jeopardize our political career by limiting access to firearms, so let's start blaming video games and violent movies. Never mind the fact that this media is available globally and the US seems the be the only country having a sizable problem with firearm related violence or that the firearms flowed freely for so long that we will never be able to "put the toothpaste back into the tube".
Nothing like pretending we are going to solve all our problems legislatively to keep us in office.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
For anyone old enough to remember. D&D was maligned in its glory days as an sinister force that warped its players into becoming suicidal/homicidal recluses unable to distinguish reality from fantasy. There were even "true crime" novels written about people who played the game, and it turned them into murderous psychopaths. This was all total bullshit, of course. Having played numerous RPGs with pen and paper and then later going on to study acting, the very thing these games were maligned for was a grossly simplified (and more rule-based) version of what any theater major would do on a daily basis in a university actor training program. I can't recall an abundance of actors that went on mass killing sprees, even when performing in shows like "Annie Get Your Gun".
It blows my mind that anyone (especially American lawmakers) would seriously consider banning video games before banning guns.
Certainly you aren't going to change much by banning the weapons that are the least likely to be used in the bulk of actual murders. Although the dirty little secret there is that nobody cares about poor minorities killing each other. That's where most of the gun crime is. It's tied up in criminal turf wars far away from view. This particular incident is notable in how visible it was and how it involved the children of rich people who have the means to flee the places where most gun crimes occur.
As soon as people go back to associating gun crime with poverty, the righteous indignation will cease.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I don't *blame* the gaming industry any more than the gun industry or the entertainment industry for these shootings.
If it wasn't an AR-15 it would have been a rifle or shotgun or something else. If there were no guns, obviously shootings wouldn't happen but violence would still exist. But that isn't the world we live in, and we make violence "easy". And before that little switch in your brain flips and you think for a second that I am saying we should ban or take away ANYTHING (guns, video games, movies) then you are 100% wrong. More laws are not the answer and are far from it.
What I think needs to change is our attitudes towards violence. OUR attitude. EVERYONE has a part to play in this, and it has to be voluntary. The NRA needs to get their heads out of their asses and realize that providing access to any type of firearm with no restrictions or checks will make it much easier for everyone to have guns - and that includes people who really shouldn't have them. (and yes, I know that determining WHO that is would be nearly impossible). But we have to try. Movies/TV/Entertainment companies (including video gaming industry) needs to understand that they DO glorify violence. We are inundated with violence, from FPS games to movies to TV shows. I don't watch any of them, but there are entire series of TV shows around horribly violent acts (CSI, etc). If you can step back for a second and look at it all holistically - it is very saddening.
I think that Jon Stewart and the Daily Show said it well when they said we have to change our attitude and culture around guns. They likened it to smoking. The message has to change, the overall general attitude towards things. Think about these trials that occur, like the Jodi Arias trial. It was a horrible murder, but let's be honest - in this country and world it happens a lot. But there are shows that are dedicated to follow the trial, to examine it, to discuss it in such desensitizing detail that it is sickening. I really don't get the whole obsession that people have with violence. It's why I quit watching the local news. Over time, I think that it really starts to alter your way of thinking about the world. If any of you have kids, especially boys, then there are nerf guns and foam swords and killing this and that, good guys vs bad guys... again, nothing new. But that can't be our only message that they see, and it is harder and harder to shield them from that. My own kids had to go through a "shooter" drill at school, and that is how they learned about the Newtown shootings. They are in K and 2nd grade!
What I would really like to see is the video gaming industry to take some kind of responsibility for this - not because they are at fault, but because it is the right thing to do. And not by slapping ratings on games, or limiting sales to minors, or anything like that. But by really taking an internal look at what they are producing and self-regulate it. They have the power to influence through what they do, and I think the message being sent is a very harmful one.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Cars are dangerous objects in the hands of the incompetent. This is why anybody who drives a car has to demonstrate a level of competence before they are allowed to use one on the public road. Is it too much to ask the same for gun owners (where use = carry)? Also, do gun owners in the US need to carry insurance? Because I think they should be required to.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
"ow to go from a spreadsheet to gamer?"
EVE Online.
I have, one of the first things I saw the NRA do after the last school shooting was to blame video games, and mental health.
Between blaming video games, and lobbying to block laws that impose greater background checks on gun sales (what? didn't they just blame people with mental health problems for these massacres?) it seems obvious the NRA has one interest - ensuring the gun lobby can sell more guns, even to crazy people.
Whatever the reason for people getting to the point where they carry out these massacres whether it's guns, games, mental health, alien mind implants or whatever other theory you have, one things is clear and that's that the NRA is an evil and hypocritical organisation who on one hand blames mental health, and on the other tries to block laws that would go some way to blocking sales of guns to people with a history of mental health problems whilst also trying to deflect attention onto the video games industry.
The first thing tells me they don't really care what the real cause is, they just want to sell more guns.
The second thing tells me that they've got something to hide.
Neither of these things paints a picture of an organisation that has anything of value to say on the subject, yet if US politicians continue to listen to them, video game players will be the next victim of their extensive lobbying - in this respect, the NRA is a pro-censorship group, whatever they might scream about the constitution when it suits them.
>They now know how to frag large groups of people because they do it on CoD and Halo. It's like free training for emotional disturbed people.
You can't rocket jump in real life. Video games are not realistic. Firing a gun in a video game is nothing like firing a gun in real life. Guns are crude, noisy, horrible, low-tech devices. No matter how much you play a video game, it isn't going to do much for your real-life accuracy. At most, video games can be a form of mental preparation, desensitization or even glorification, but very rarely an actual teaching tool.
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
"They believe it was a score sheet. This was the work of a video gamer."
What? No; gamers use unlockable achievements. You know who uses spreadsheets? Accountants. This was the work of an accountant.
Some people partake in gamification, in which they turn everything into contests. They look to score points in any ways they can. Inspiration for gamification can come from sports, gambling, video games, board games, or whatever. Some people just have really competitive personalities.
When someone is so mentally ill that they're willing to kill random children, that is a problem. Combine that with gamification, and you're got a really big problem. But both of these are problems that should be addressed on the mental health front.
In this particular case, he may have actually been inspired by a video game. But that doesn't mean video games are bad. Several killers have cited "Catcher in the Rye" as an influence. That doesn't make books inherently evil.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
A US based militia in a conflict against the government could last as long as Afghanistan or Iraq wars. These wars were/are wars of attrition. They last until the aggressor decides to leave.
How long would an individual last? Hard to say, not very long in direct combat. But our wars are no longer direct with large armies meeting on the field.
How long would such a war last? Until the government decides to stop it.
The key question: Have we killed all of the insurgents and terrorists? No. It's a war of attrition, it goes on forever until one side decides to give up (people who live in the war zone will never give up, something the US has a problem understanding in my opinion).
Winning isn't possible, other than "The only winning move is not to play" (Wargames).
BlameBillCosby.com
I strongly agree. If you read the linked article (I saw it last week), one of the cops even said that we should stop referring to these people as "Mass Murderers" and start calling them "Glory Killers". Too bad that the media companies wouldn't agree to limit their coverage. Maybe use the name and the picture once or twice. Then, a policy of no more pictures and referring to him only as "the killer" or "the (child) murderer".
No. Instead, the name gets used hundreds of times on national TV, the picture is shown on every TV station, news web site and major print publication, giving these scum EXACTLY the infamy they are trying to achieve. I'd put MUCH more blame on the MainStream Media than I would on video games or guns or music.
That reminds me of this essay:
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/sorry-but-your-soul-just-died-1276509.html
However, I'd say there's a few counter-arguments.
1. We can become less trivial. Our culture encourages triviality through consumerism, or individualism, or egoism or something like that. Narcissism? It's an -ism, and it means we're basically "amusing ourselves to death" as Neil Postman says. We could fix that.
2. Compassion. I imagine most people think dogs are trivial. I love dogs. They are pure-hearted. Compassion encourages us to not worry so much about triviality.
3. Discover new worlds. There are other planets, new challenges, possibly other dimensions to explore. Maybe we're just bored and underchallenged, like students at public high schools?
Maybe not as impressive as I hoped it would be when I first thought of this message, but there it is.
Its always about video games. Video games this, video games that. But what about TV?
I have kids, and honestly, the content of most young programs are just shocking, when you think twice about it. They have removed all sexual innuendo because that would make fundamentalist Christians choke on their breakfast, but the thing is full of ninjas slicing one another with blades of all sort, beating up, etc. Violence is always the solution to pretty much every problem thrown at the characters.
And if we just consider Hollywood production and its love affair with gun and explosions...
But then, it must be the video games fault. Mmmkay.