There's also a pretty nice video about this similar topic explained via Totalhalibut (Well known for the WTF Is... first impression vids.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=5uwAo8lcAC4

Honestly, I believe people just wish to use the game card to direct some people away from blaming them. It's mysterious for people who don't engage in the activity to understand their point and agree while it just irritates the rest of us. Even a judge on fox news who made a nice speech about Journal News' gun map had to add in a tiny remark about gaming affecting kids minds to commit shootings.

Well the right to bare arms is not so much a fascination as it is a deterent to complete government rule, as well as a proven effective means of self defense and proven effective way to lower violent crimes.

No offense but I'm sure your well aware that while firearms are completely illegal to own in Brittain that your country has some of the lowest numbers of shootings per capita of most developed countries, but adversely it has one of the top five highest violent crime rates of any country of any kind.

America is higher up the scale on shootings but they don't bother to mention roughly a third are either accidental or in self defense, and we also have one of the lowest violent crime rates per capita of any developed country, it's been shown that removing firearms raises crime rates...take Detroit or DC where guns are completely illegal, highest crime rates in the country, where a county in Georga made it manditory for each home to have at least one registered firearm "not-enforced" but it lowered the already low crime rate that consisted of mostly breakins and home invasions by 80%.

As for Pokket's post it's 100% spot on, nobody takes accountability anymore, especially parents, seems most of them today expect the school systems to teach their children right and wrong when they can barely teach them to read, write and other basic practical skills.

My parents are basically nuts, as am I, but they made sure I learned right from wrong, how to respect my elders, and every gesture that can be considered manners, often I learned these things by the way of the belt...really made the lessons stick.

More American were murdered in Chicago in 2012 than NATO forces (incl. U.S.) were killed in Afghanistan. This isn't because Chicago has a high concentration of rampaging gamers, and it isn't because Chicago doesn't have enough gun laws.

Many people have voiced the same thing I am going to say.  The problem is that our politicians, and many of our citizens, don't have the courage say to some of their fellow citizens, "What you're doing is wrong! You need to change what you're doing and the way you're doing it."

That would be judgemental. We'd rather have it be "nobody's fault" and instead blame some faceless industry or object. However, that approach runs afowl of one of the "fundamental truths" of life, as long as you can blame someone or something else for your problem; nothing will ever change.

Good read Pokket.

Somehow Hollywood was overlooked in this fake outrage over video game violence by politicians who think they need to be our parents.

What's with all these idiotic and stupid comments on this thread saying "americans believe this and americans think that not". Not all americans think this way. Not all americans think nudity is the devil and not all americans are fat gangster cowboy nascar drivers or whatever other stupid things you other people think. It's mainly just the older generation who have no idea what they're talking about and convincing/forcing their kids to start up those stupid "cease fire" things with some games. Anyone in this country with half a brain knows that theres other problems going on with people and not the video games.

We're not all sitting on our scooters at walmart waving a tiny flag. Get a grip europe.

*Goes to wiki*

*Check the voilent crime stats page in US http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States*

*Noticed a heavy decline of voilent crimes since video games became mainstream (just before the release of PS1*

*Won discussion*

Really...do these senators in the US not have internet? I mean...really? Homocide rating has only been lower twice in the last 50 years and that was early 1960s! Since then it started to raise...I guess the Mafia where playing to much games as well. Actually the crime rates are pretty comparible with the rise and fall of the Mafia in the US. Anyhow how could voilent crime families have anything to do with that stuff. They do not murder! Games do! 

Once again, politicians & the mass media take advantage of a terrible situation to push whatever their agenda happens to be at the time. Sigh...

Anyway good article, and I agree 100%. Blaming game makers (or gun manufacturers, for that matter) for violence is like blaming the makers of matches for arson, swimming pool companies for drownings, or Alexander Graham Bell for the Jerky Boys. It just doesn't make any sort of logical sense.

This topic has brought this longtime lurker out of hiding...

For the people who love to put the blame on video games for all of the violence in the USA (in different times the "great satan" would have been comic books, or maybe the dreaded rock and roll music), I like to remind them that these games do exist and are played around the world. They are played in England. They are played in Japan, etc. Ours is not the only first-world nation where violent video games (and movies) exist. But guess what; we still somehow manage to have a disproportionately greater number of mass shootings on American soil than in any other first-world country. So, I don't know, perhaps common sense might suggest that the problem lies someplace other than just at the feet of video games and Hollywood?

I remember when I was in high school and the whole PMRC was going on and Congress wasted it's time dragging Dee Snider, Frank Zappa amongst others to explain themselves because heavy metal was corrupting the youth.  D&D was blamed for people getting kids into Satanism and of course all the horror movies were subjected to the same BS. 

How about some responsible parenting and personal accountability.  That's what they should be looking at.  It's all a function of the government being a bunch of useless, out of touch, corrupt fearmongers who will do just about anything to get re-elected so they grab onto a knee-jerk reaction that might help them win at the polls rather than taking a look at the real issues.

Americans have legalized firearms, Europeans don't. Americans get random shootings every 6 months, Europeans every 20 years. Both play the same video games.

Where's Spock when you need him???

Having lost a good friend years ago and getting to see the entire cycle of investigation and accusation close up, I've spent many a long night pondering all sides of this arguement.

I agree that far too often people dissect the life of a disturbed person and focus on the hobbies that make them distinct from from the person doing the dissection.  In my grandparents' childhood, it was playing cards and novels.  In my parents' youth it was rock and roll.  In my youth it was dungeons and dragons.  Now it's video games.

But, to play devil's advocate for a moment: although violent games don't change the character of the player, what they may do is help an already-disturbed person train themselves into being a more effective weapon and, within a gaming subculture, may be less likely to be detected as disturbed or be as connected to influences that can help them.

Originally posted by maplestone

Having lost a good friend years ago and getting to see the entire cycle of investigation and accusation close up, I've spent many a long night pondering all sides of this arguement.

I agree that far too often people dissect the life of a disturbed person and focus on the hobbies that make them distinct from from the person doing the dissection.  In my grandparents' childhood, it was playing cards and novels.  In my parents' youth it was rock and roll.  In my youth it was dungeons and dragons.  Now it's video games.

But, to play devil's advocate for a moment: although violent games don't change the character of the player, what they may do is help an already-disturbed person train themselves into being a more effective weapon and, within a gaming subculture, may be less likely to be detected as disturbed or be as connected to influences that can help them.

The problem with this link is there are far more real world arena's where one could receive even better training in using a weapon, some free to the public and many that are tax-payer funded. From boy's camps to the community firing range.

If video games trained you to be a better killer. How come I am not a ninja?

Anyway lets blame video games and remove them, but lets also blame everything that has an equal or stronger influence. That would include:

Sports (this includes playing a viewing)

Guns of course.

News (they love violence, so covering violent news stories has to go)

Moives

Novels

Comics

Music (it can stir your emotions so it must be bad)

Parents who own or are interested in any of the above must have their childern taken from them (because they are exposing their kids to such things)

If we did all that we would have a perfect world...\

Oh crap the Amish still have violence.

Yes, I think these games glorify violence too much.  But the violence we do in the games is far less troublesome than the violence that we do to each other because of the games.

"Violence" is nothing more and nothing less than a violation.  At its extreme, it's physical battery or lethal force.  But we violate each other, and the industry violates us, every day.  The publishers sell you the illusion of ownership, power and prestige, only to rip it away from you the moment the games can't deliver enough bodies and wallets to them.  We post grief videos and rage quit videos on YouTube.  We are indifferent to, or even take pleasure in, the misery of others in the course of playing these things.  And in the course of all this, we have the publishers who are laughing their way to the bank.

But, of course, none of us are going to admit that our past time is less than squeaky clean.  Then again, I wouldn't expect anything else from addicts like us.