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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)
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?
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.
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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.
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.
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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).
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you don't have he right to protect yourself?
who's going to protect your precious 1st amendment rights?
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It blows my mind that anyone (especially American lawmakers) would seriously consider banning video games before banning guns.
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.
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