Shooting at Connecticut elementary school

[Justin]

People in Canada and Europe are subjected to the exact same video game violence as in America. The point is a non-starter.

 

[Nik]

From:
http://www.apa.org/science/about/psa/2003/10/anderson.aspx

Separating myths and facts...

Facts: High levels of violent video game exposure have been linked to delinquency, fighting at school and during free play periods, and violent criminal behavior (e.g., self-reported assault, robbery).

Myth 11. If violent video games cause increases in aggression, violent crime rates in the U.S. would be increasing instead of decreasing.
Facts: Three assumptions must all be true for this myth to be valid: (a) exposure to violent media (including video games) is increasing; (b) youth violent crime rates are decreasing; (c) video game violence is the only (or the primary) factor contributing to societal violence. The first assumption is probably true. The second is not true, as reported by the 2001 Report of the Surgeon General on Youth Violence (Figure 2-7, p. 25). The third is clearly untrue. Media violence is only one of many factors that contribute to societal violence and is certainly not the most important one. Media violence researchers have repeatedly noted this.

Note this study is from 2003.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/crime/2012/12/21/wayne_lapierre_don_t_listen_to_the_nra_the_research_saying_video_games_cause.html

 

[TheMightyOdin]

Super Mario influenced me to eat mushrooms.

 

[Bender]

Super Mario influenced me to eat mushrooms.

Donkey Kong taught me hit monkeys with hammers.

 

[hockeyfan1]

Super Mario influenced me to eat mushrooms.

Donkey Kong taught me hit monkeys with hammers.

Those are the most innocuous video games one can play. 

Not so for the more militaristically violent ones, which as I recall it, a Canadian military officer  once remarked that they were very similar to training a soldier, within that context.

There is simply way too much gore and senseless violence on our tv screens (none that I haven't seen myself -- "Criminal Minds", "NCIS", etc) -- that many people who have children (acquaintances, friends, relatives) told me that they want their kids engaged in activities rather than watching tv because in their own words, "tv is bad for the mind".  Even to sit at a computer and play all these highly violent mow 'em down type of games constitutes the exact same reaction to many of these parents with families.

No research will ever truly prove a link between enhanced aggressive behaviour and tv/video violence, except perhaps, in those individuals who are psychologically and emotionally disturbed.  Couple that up with guns of any shape or firepower and the potential for catastrophic consequences increase.

As long as there are organizations such as the NRA and their proponents espousing the virtue of 'every citizen armed' attitude, the gun problem will never be solved.  There are so many factors involved but the most contentious issue remains the availability of guns that so the most damage, such as the Bushmaster military-style assault rifle that Adam Lanza chose to use.

 

[Bender]

Super Mario influenced me to eat mushrooms.

Donkey Kong taught me hit monkeys with hammers.

Those are the most innocuous video games one can play. 

Not so for the more militaristically violent ones, which as I recall it, a Canadian military officer  once remarked that they were very similar to training a soldier, within that context.

There is simply way too much gore and senseless violence on our tv screens (none that I haven't seen myself -- "Criminal Minds", "NCIS", etc) -- that many people who have children (acquaintances, friends, relatives) told me that they want their kids engaged in activities rather than watching tv because in their own words, "tv is bad for the mind".  Even to sit at a computer and play all these highly violent mow 'em down type of games constitutes the exact same reaction to many of these parents with families.

No research will ever truly prove a link between enhanced aggressive behaviour and tv/video violence, except perhaps, in those individuals who are psychologically and emotionally disturbed.  Couple that up with guns of any shape or firepower and the potential for catastrophic consequences increase.

As long as there are organizations such as the NRA and their proponents espousing the virtue of 'every citizen armed' attitude, the gun problem will never be solved.  There are so many factors involved but the most contentious issue remains the availability of guns that so the most damage, such as the Bushmaster military-style assault rifle that Adam Lanza chose to use.

There's many factors involved but why is it that America has the only problem with entertainment comsumption and hurting people? I view this as simplistic and as a slap to the intelligence of Americans, who I think can discern reality from entertainment. I know a lot of people who play Battlefield 3 and Call of Duty. I don't see any issues with these people. I actually had more issues with other players playing the NHL series online!!

Besides, the rest of the world consumes these forms of entertainment without issue. I think the issues aren't entertainment because what's out there is out there, and there are far worse things in the world than video games, like American gun culture, fear culture, culture of me vs. everyone, culture of killing foreigners, culture of xenophobia, ostracizing those that are different, aggrandizing people who commit massive shootings and downplaying how violent Americans are against each other, lack of support for the mentally ill. I can go on and on but this rests on the general culture of the country, not on individual scapegoats that the rest of the world consumes with no ill effects.

Besides, there's so much entertainment access out there. How do you enforce it? How do you judge what affects aggressive behaviour? Or better yet not just aggression, an actual murder? I would argue someone doesn't shoot someone just because they saw it in a video game. People like this are very disturbed and have one or several traumatizing events that lead to it, with generally lots of planning in advance in order to achieve some kind of fimal retribution. But it doesn't necessarily explain WHY it happens so frequently in America vs. the rest of the world.

But I wonder if this would happen if the guys mom didn't have an assault rifle with an unstable kid.

 

[hockeyfan1]

Super Mario influenced me to eat mushrooms.

Donkey Kong taught me hit monkeys with hammers.

Those are the most innocuous video games one can play. 

Not so for the more militaristically violent ones, which as I recall it, a Canadian military officer  once remarked that they were very similar to training a soldier, within that context.

There is simply way too much gore and senseless violence on our tv screens (none that I haven't seen myself -- "Criminal Minds", "NCIS", etc) -- that many people who have children (acquaintances, friends, relatives) told me that they want their kids engaged in activities rather than watching tv because in their own words, "tv is bad for the mind".  Even to sit at a computer and play all these highly violent mow 'em down type of games constitutes the exact same reaction to many of these parents with families.

No research will ever truly prove a link between enhanced aggressive behaviour and tv/video violence, except perhaps, in those individuals who are psychologically and emotionally disturbed.  Couple that up with guns of any shape or firepower and the potential for catastrophic consequences increase.

As long as there are organizations such as the NRA and their proponents espousing the virtue of 'every citizen armed' attitude, the gun problem will never be solved.  There are so many factors involved but the most contentious issue remains the availability of guns that so the most damage, such as the Bushmaster military-style assault rifle that Adam Lanza chose to use.

There's many factors involved but why is it that America has the only problem with entertainment comsumption and hurting people? I view this as simplistic and as a slap to the intelligence of Americans, who I think can discern reality from entertainment. I know a lot of people who play Battlefield 3 and Call of Duty. I don't see any issues with these people. I actually had more issues with other players playing the NHL series online!!

Besides, the rest of the world consumes these forms of entertainment without issue. I think the issues aren't entertainment because what's out there is out there, and there are far worse things in the world than video games, like American gun culture, fear culture, culture of me vs. everyone, culture of killing foreigners, culture of xenophobia, ostracizing those that are different, aggrandizing people who commit massive shootings and downplaying how violent Americans are against each other, lack of support for the mentally ill. I can go on and on but this rests on the general culture of the country, not on individual scapegoats that the rest of the world consumes with no ill effects.

Besides, there's so much entertainment access out there. How do you enforce it? How do you judge what affects aggressive behaviour? Or better yet not just aggression, an actual murder? I would argue someone doesn't shoot someone just because they saw it in a video game. People like this are very disturbed and have one or several traumatizing events that lead to it, with generally lots of planning in advance in order to achieve some kind of fimal retribution. But it doesn't necessarily explain WHY it happens so frequently in America vs. the rest of the world.

But I wonder if this would happen if the guys mom didn't have an assault rifle with an unstable kid.

That's a question that I was asking myself, too.

The phrase "guns don't kill people, people do" rings true.  If a gun (of any variety) were to be left on top on a table let's say, it would just stay there and never move, until someone picks it up.

Shifting the scenario, suppose Adam Lanza had gone into that school armed with a knife instead of the semi-automatic assault rifle.  Would he have been able to have killed all those people en masse?  Not at all.

Which leads us to the phrase once again. Guns don't kill people, people do, but, it is the type of weapon the person used that inflicted the most damage. How could someone using a rifle churning out a hundred rounds per minute be stopped when the weapon in question would have given others absolutely no chance at escaping the carnage?

Guns kill people just as much as people do, because as I stated, it was the enormous firepower used that killed, just as much as the person who pulled the trigger.

 

[bustaheims]