School Shootings Linked to Video Games

What's this? TotalBiscuit has made a political video? Well for good reason. Recently, some school here in America got shot up by a nut-job and the media takes everything out of hand. Many of the blames are being put on the video game culture and its violent indications. This video discusses quite a few issues with the arguments and why the modern media is dumb. It also brings up a question, and that is if video games do spring violent uprisings in individuals.

Well it's true no murders occured before Asteroids. Seems conclusive.

I generally agree with him. Media certainly could help cause this but certainly not video games by themselves at all. Also if they mention someone locking themselves in a darkened room playing games, well the first part that sentence is surely a bigger indication that he was depressed, potentially hated himself and therefore the world. Perhaps if the newspapers didn't cover these infamous individuals he would have just off'd himself rather than take out a dozen people along with him. Clearly he was just desperate for the world to know of his existence, now we do.

Yeah I'm of the opinion that media really shouldn't earn cash on reporting these sort of copy-cat or media-motivated horrors. Terrorism is designed to spread fear, and media multiplies its efficiency.

But I guess its better to have a free press that encourages lunacy at times than to have a controlled press. Still wouldn't hurt if the big news-corporations kept this off the front-pages and made it as academic and anonymous as possible.

Something I saw the other day:

I'd say turning off the news, donating, and pointing to gun control would be a better solution.

Saying gun control is a good solution is like calling Prohibition a successful act in American history. If people want to kill a bunch of kiddies or just get a bottle of booze, they will. Guns are things people want, and black listing them would only increase the criminal market. You MAY prevent acts of violence, but at the cost of loading up prisons even more. Thousands of people will go to prison for not surrendering their contraband weaponry, and most of these people are college students who hunt in their free time or good country people who hunt for either sport or survival. Lots of people don't realize it, but many western states rely on hunting for support, and the western frontier is a bit to dangerous for bows and knives. I got a big rant on why gun control is absolutely terrible, but that's not what this is really about.

Alrighty then.

Norway got just as many weapons as America, but most are rifles and shotguns and other single-shot things, and we kill less than 10 people per year in gun-related crimes(on average). Pistol clubs are also popular but a whiff of madness/registered crime and your gun right gets taken away.

You don't need assault weapons for hunting and you don't need 100+ magazines for those shotguns for hunting. People have a right to practical weapons but killing people is not something you need a practical weapon for these days. A fox shotgun with one shell would have been enough in most situations, but I guess once you've saturated the market with semi-automatics you will never feel safe with anything less ever again.

But the best way would be to force media to either pay huge sums to victims if they want to be sensationalist about it, or they have to be dull and obtrusive in giving the facts so that people don't get inspired to "try and beat the high-score".

Edited by duke_Qa, 20 December 2012 - 11:28 PM.

Case in point - how many Norwegian massacres have you heard about? One - Anders Breivik. That's probably because that was the only one that's happened in a while.

I can think of four American ones off the top of my head.

What are everyday folks doing with assault rifles anyway? Do you people really think the Redcoats are coming back to burn your homesteads and rape your women?

I think that Amurrca is just too resistant to change. "Oh no, we can't hike taxes on the super-rich!" "God forbid we make do with one less Nimitz-class supercarrier plus screen", "Nope. We don't need gun control. Hundreds of children getting cold-bloodedly gunned down every year are a small price to pay for my right to own my very own AR15..."

Politics (n). A euphemism for the moneyed end empowered few to say "I'm all right, Jack" while simultaneously fucking up the lives, livelihoods and futures of dozens of millions of people.

The US has a very self entitled attitude very obsessed with idea of freedom but not really knowing what it means.

There is no need for Assault rifles to be in civilian hands, there's not even a need for half of American houses to have guns despite the stories such as this there is a minute chance you'd ever need the gun unless you live in a very rough neighbourhood but this last shooting happened in Connecticut which is hardly a ghetto.

Schools for some reason do seem to be targets for these things perhaps there should be someone authorised to carry a firearm with proper training.
If one of the teachers had a gun a lot of lives could have been saved.

The media shouldn't draw as much attention to the issue essentially publicising it to those who would be inclined to do this.

The link between gun violence and shootings has been ruled out years ago and many times over.

Why not blame the assholes who do this?
Why put the blame elsewhere, is it to do with absolving humanity or trying to avoid the idea of the latent killer in all of us?
Is it because it's hard to believe that a person could do abhorrent things on their own and that they need to corrupted to be evil?

"Freedom to" is more important for many Americans than "Freedom from". As long as that is the case, pain and suffering will be allowed to thrive because to remove them would be a risk to their "Freedom to".

Case in point - how many Norwegian massacres have you heard about? One - Anders Breivik. That's probably because that was the only one that's happened in a while.

Yeah, the media making it a "World's got talent - AT KILLING" circus, then and now.

Yes, I often wonder why I never hear Americans standing up for their freedom to live in an assault rifle, open-a-loan-get-a-shotgun free world.

Also Ash, nice definition of politics. Ever heard of the Devil's Dictionary? You'd like it.

Edited by Mathijs, 21 December 2012 - 04:13 PM.

Thought this was a sane comparison. Also having a yearly fee on your gun to be used for reimbursing victims of gun-crime would have helped a bit. I'm all for taxing troublesome things that people insist on using.

Nothing troublesome about cars, except the expense of using them...

Haha, anti-gun people. You'ze some silly, silly people.

Har. Regardless, I see why most anti-gun people are anti-gun. They are what we down in Indiana like to call 'City'. Or urban... what'ev. If you live in a city, you have a good chance on missing out on amazing things, like skinning animals or throwing dead birds at Asians. My terrible point being it's a completely different culture. If you are raised in a culture that teaches people to respect guns, anti-gun jargon seems stup'tacular, On the opposite side, people who are raised in cities and only see guns as anti-people deterrents, so from this perspective, why have guns? They're useless. You can't toast bread with them or file your taxes with tracer ammo. In this case, pro-gun nonsense just seems stoopid. So from my perspective, being a gun toaster, I have very little intentions to be using my weapons on people since the people around me don't intend to use them on me. Every time I go to my college down in Evansville, I feel obnoxiously cautious since there's a gun crime about every week and I'm not even allowed to have one in city limits since they have gun laws so strict in town, it's sinister.

Well enough about that for ze' moment. I have the same perspective on video games in real violence. Take my previous argument and apply it to VG violence. People who have been raised in an environment without video games, they can rationally believe video games encourage violence, just as they believe guns permit violence. And I actually believe games can, in a sense. Games like COD BlOps are just dully shooting people without intellectual challenge. It doesn't necessarily tag people as bad guys, or people who deserve to be shot... it's just fun rampages. And it's rewarding people for participating in these rampages. I can imagine a very unstable mind playing these games and getting funny ideas. I would be fibbing if I didn't see it happening.

But here's the silly part... video games didn't make them mentally unstable. That's not quite possible, unless there's some hypnotic bull spit going on. And games that do that aren't legal, actually. Regardless, they say people who carry around guns and play violent games are destined to be violent! Dastardly. Well I own guns and play obnoxiously brutal games and even watch terribly violent and graphic TV shows. I haven't even considered going into a school and killing kiddies. I defeat children using my intellectual superiority. Or something like that. But do these anti-everything people have a chance to snuff out video games? Phh.... no. They don't have enough reason. Or evidence. Or support. The generation that doesn't understand gaming is slowly dying due to old age, caner or understanding.

But seriously, if games and guns were both ban, I would literary have nothing to do. Sheer boredom is the catalyst to why violent things happen... you don't see rich people with unlimited things to do shooting out schools. Just think about that... yea... sha'zam...

For once, Pasidon, I actually agree with you entirely.