If Obama really cared so much about kids and shootings…

If Obama really cared so much about kids and shootings… “Now, a riddle for you. What did our three most famous recent mass murderers, Adam Lanza, James Holmes, and Jared Lee Loughner, all have in common? Like half of all Americans, they had access to a gun. But like a very small but growing percentage of the population, they were young people who played endless, obsessive hours of violent video games.” All problems are the fault of people who aren’t big donors to Obama and the Democrats.

Bonfire of the Absurdities: After 35 year career writing software for IBM mainframes, am now self-employed contractor thinking of joining a union and striking for higher wages. Cured morbid fear of heights when I learned to look at them as lengths standing on end. Uncompromising in refusal to accept browser cookies. Amateur investor who has accumulated a small fortune in the market after starting out years ago with a large one. For recreation, I run, hike, kayak and play tennis but will not consider synchronized swimming under any circumstances.

View Comments (34)

  • I've played violent video games since the days of the original Doom, Wolfenstein 3D, Duke Nukem, etc. Currently I play Battlefield 3 actively. Never once have I had the desire to go out and blow up a building, shoot an innocent person, or anything. It's a stress reliever. Then again, I grew up with discipline. I did something bad, my father busted my ass with a belt. I was raised with morals, values, and understanding and respect for authority. It's not the games, it's the people, the parents who fail their children. It's the liberal mindset that any sort of discipline amounts to abuse.

    Oh yes, and I know how to fire, reload, and service an M4 carbine. You press X.

  • Did they ban Jodi Foster after Reagan was shot? Of course, they banned my childhood cartoons, too. Oh, could you imagine if they hadn't? I'm sure there would be rampant senseless violence happening everywhere. Morons.

  • As I see it, the real problem in all of this is our society today being totally unwilling and unable to attach responsibility to one single individual for their own actions. It is quite simple to do this - perhaps that is why it is impossible to do this in today's world?

  • Was that a spoof? Video games now, really? I bet a lot more people have access to "violent" video games than have access to high magazine clip assault bullets or whatever they're miscalling them this week. Hell, I couldn't tell you how many hours of my life I've wasted playing the Half-Life games, blowing the guts out of all kinds of aliens, Marines who have infiltrated to make sure there are no survivors (HECU -- Hazardous Environment Combat Unit -- and elite Black Ops. They're the ones with The Bomb), Combine goons (they're the Occupational Government of Earth), torching zombies with road flares, etc. etc. Your more conventional weaponry includes a Glock 17 (17 round mag), a Colt Python .357 (with speed loader), an M4, full-auto only, with a grenade launcher and I think it's 45 round mags, and a Franchi double-barrel 12 gauge. As the game progresses, you get regular grenades, RPGs and launcher (for taking down the helicopters), a crossbow (in the HL2 games the crossbow shoots what seems to be a red-hot length of rebar), satchel charges, '50-cal autos, trip - mines of a sort, and a number of purely fictional beam-type and/or alien weapons. The body effects can be quite graphic. One of the "Achievements" is to kill one of the Combine goons with the crossbow, pinning him to the elevated billboard he is standing in front of. When you've done this, the platforming collapses, leaving him dangling there and twitching spasmodically.

    Now, after said countless hours, I don't think I'm any closer to a Lanza moment than I ever have been, in other words, as close to zero as is mathematically possible: human frailty being what it is, I don't think anyone should count such a chance as zero in anyone.

    I will admit that part of my interest in real firearms was sparked by this, but I have yet to shoot at anything more threatening or substantial than a balloon printed on a piece of paper, and don't even feel a great urge to shoot anything like a deer or a duck (although the neighborhood stray cat who gets in the window sometimes -- never mind). In other words, I am very fond of my hardware and enjoy putting holes in targets, but I just don't have the mental connections between shooting a gun and actually doing violence or harm to anything or anyone. (Which isn't to say I would not defend myself and family if I had to.) But I just don't connect the dots there, any more than having a car makes me want to go to the racetrack and play Formula One or Nascar -- or try it on the highway.

    Wow. That was quite a rant, huh? Anyway, bottom line, this is just another angle away from personal and/or parental responsibility. A game is a game, a movie is a movie, a book is a book. Ban a game because you think it might have provoked a violent incident, and next thing you're banning the Bible because someone thinks it inspired the Spanish Inquisition.

    Oh, I'll bet you weren't expecting the Spanish Inquisition.

    I said: I'LL BET YOU WEREN'T EXPECTING THE SPANISH INQUISITION!

  • It's not the games that are the root cause. It is mental illness. Both the illness and the treatment (anti-depressants and SSRIs) contribute to the behaviors including overplaying violent video games. IMO, blaming video games is no different than blaming guns. The culprits are the crazies themselves, the elimination of institutionalization, and Big Pharma. The three men cited above should never have been on the streets.

    • I agree. Violent video games are not going to make a normal healthy kid go berserk in a mall or school. I believe that the mentally ill kids are drawn to video games because of the mental illness - the games don't make them nuts. It's kind of like saying that every single person who has ever shot anyone has drunk water, so water must be the culprit. It is the common thread between all of the shooters.

      I will admit that I am a bit biased since I personally play semi-violent MMORPG video games, but every single person I have ever met in game or in real life knows it' not real. For some people it's a way to take out frustrations, for some it's a way to kill some time, others like to lose themselves in the fantasy, but they ALL know it's a game.

      • I agree as well. I don't play the games but my son does, he clearly knows the difference between reality and the fantasy world of video games.

    • I would not include "Big Pharma" in the list. I would say drugs are tools as much as firearms, and just as subject to misuse, especially when doctors and responsible adults get together for the sake of a child or legally incompetent adult and decide that upping the dosage is a much preferable alternative to expensive professional care or institutions.

      • Fair enough but even used properly they often have a psychotic effect. The list of side effects of drugs like Prozac read like a Stephen King novel.

  • But restricting violent games would reduce the cash flow to some of "Dear Leader's" largest supporters. That would be unacceptable, they need more cash to buy politicians that support Pedophilia. Who cares if some kid flips out and shoots up a school.

  • Obama doesn't care about kids or old people or gay people or sick people or poor people or our troops in Afghanistan; Obama cares about Obama; he's a pathological narcissist...and he's in the White House.

    • Obama is a puppet of Corporate Greed and Corporate Greed only cares about the gold they stole from us.

      • Seriously. You cannot be real. You are either the most disgusting person or you are seriously trolling and having fun saying things that you do not believe in. You sick or you just a little freak that likes the attention, which is it?

  • The answer is clear: Ban video games

    OR tax video games makers without mercy and create an atmosphere where people can sue them and get big bucks. Essentially destroying small and medium size companies and putting the bigger ones on their toes.

    Take their money and put it into obama care or the illegal immigrants bills.

    Done. Socialist Utopia.

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