I was thinking more along the lines of 'learning to shoot properly' rather than 'breaking your mental inhibition to hurting other humans'
As in, every time i have shot on non-army bases, both archery and rifles, the targets were always round. The goal being to get as close to the centre as possible, it makes sense to have concentric circles around the ideal target, to measure exactly how far away from it you are, leading to a round target.
It takes paper and paste to fix up the man-shaped targets at the buisness end of a rifle range, and now that i think about it, those who are not firing are generally sitting in a little trench with their buckets of paint and books of paper slips to paste over the holes left by their counterparts in the targets, which one could hypothesise is training them to get used to bullets whizzing over their heads, which some people might not feel totally comfortable with.
I suppose it's all just conditioning for war, which happens to involve shooting at human shaped targets amongst other things.
But i agree with you that you can read too much into it all, someone on the rampage with a gun, shooting at people, has already overcome any reluctance to hurting people.
I have done quite a bit of shooting on army bases in the past (cadets and OTC), and it never occured to me that there was any hidden motive behind the shape of the targets being human, but now that you mention it, it seems so obvious.
From what you say, we need to do a side by side comparison of two people on a rampage, with guns, one with many years of FPS's under their belt, and the other being someone who has never played a violent game, then see who gets the best score at the end of it?
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I was thinking more along the lines of 'learning to shoot properly' rather than 'breaking your mental inhibition to hurting other humans' As in, every time i have shot on non-army bases, both archery and rifles, the targets were always round. The goal being to get as close to the centre as possible, it makes sense to have concentric circles around the ideal target, to measure exactly how far away from it you are, leading to a round target. It takes paper and paste to fix up the man-shaped targets at the buisness end of a rifle range, and now that i think about it, those who are not firing are generally sitting in a little trench with their buckets of paint and books of paper slips to paste over the holes left by their counterparts in the targets, which one could hypothesise is training them to get used to bullets whizzing over their heads, which some people might not feel totally comfortable with. I suppose it's all just conditioning for war, which happens to involve shooting at human shaped targets amongst other things. But i agree with you that you can read too much into it all, someone on the rampage with a gun, shooting at people, has already overcome any reluctance to hurting people.
I have done quite a bit of shooting on army bases in the past (cadets and OTC), and it never occured to me that there was any hidden motive behind the shape of the targets being human, but now that you mention it, it seems so obvious. From what you say, we need to do a side by side comparison of two people on a rampage, with guns, one with many years of FPS's under their belt, and the other being someone who has never played a violent game, then see who gets the best score at the end of it?