Originally posted by Torkaz
Better stop making violent movies too, lets make everything have rainbows and cuddly stuff cause thats what real lifes all about. yeah

Well I am not a violent person, but when that happens I am going to have to vent my anger at something.

But seriously why don’t people who say those stupid things about games/movies look at other countries and there lack off mass shootings while having the same games and movies available.

But there is 1 thing which most off the other countries without mass shooting don’t have and that is guns available for everyone.

So maybe they should look at that, just an idea.

They could ban every gun in the USA and some guy would make a blow gun and start shooting people with cynanide tipped darts. the point is nutters will find a way, it matters not if it's a gun or broadsword.

This seems to be a waste of time and money. plus blaming the gaming indusrty when we got guys flying remote controlled drones in other countrys killing both friend and foe seems allot like a video game to me.

Oh this old chestnut again.  Sick things in the real world have been blamed on things like rock music and video games for as long as I can remember.  One of these days people will take responsibility for their actions instead of constantly trying to look for something else to blame.

From my own point of view, I've never been involved in a fight or any kind of violent behaviour in my life, and yet I love beat-em-ups; I've never fired a real gun, swung a real sword driven overtly recklessly or any of those things in real life despite my choice of games and for the record, have no wish to do so either.  For me, the fact that I CAN do this in a video game provides a channel to vent those daily frustrations should I feel the need.  Stuck in a traffic jam?  Go home and play Forza Motorsport, GTA or Saints Row.  Someone annoyed me at work?  Go home and play Street Fighter.

I wonder if someone somewhere should do a study just to see how stark raving bananas someone would go if they didn't have that kind of outlet.

They are using video games as an excuse for bad parenting and as a scape goat because its an easy thing to target. In the 80's we had the video nasty along with Dungeons and Dragons. This caused church leaders and the media to try and ban them. In the UK we had bishops on TV saying that if we let children play D&D they would all grow up as Satanist and murders.  In the 50's they tried to ban rock and roll because it would corrupt the youth of the day.

If an individual is unbalanced in their life playing a violent video game or watching a film will not be the cause of them going on a killing rampage. There have been many mass killings throughout history to prove this. I think parents use video games as an excuse for their own failings at raising their children.

I have played video games since the ZX Spectrum was sold on the shelves and the graphics and game play have come a long way, but never in my time from a young boy to now being an adult have I ever felt like picking up a gun or sword to go out and kill people because I can in a video game. I find violence to be a sad part of life and can never understand why people would resort to it.

I think video games are a wonderful way to let off steam at the end of a stressful day and without them there could be more violence as people will not be able to release that stress within a controlled enviroment.

Video games are the modern day scapegoat. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scapegoat

People must think that murder never happened before video games, music, movies, etc etc.

Have boxcutters been banned yet?

Originally posted by Pie_Rat

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???

You mean like the Norway shooting? Or the one in France not too long ago?

Per capita, U.K. is #4 in most violent countries, U.S. is #23.

There are more deaths from baseball bats than rifles, in the U.S. And that's from the FBI website. Official crime statistics contradict everything being told to you on the TV.

I guess they'll add a tab on the chart that reads "video games" from here on out. Sounds stupid? Well so is banning salt and soda, but that happened too.

Originally posted by redcap036

 

Yes of course, it's violent video games that are the problem, not the fact that you can buy semi automatic weapons from local gun stores and bullets from local supermarkets or that you can buy hand guns, rifles or shotguns from most sporting goods store or even pawn shops in the U.S. and let's not even mention the black market where the sale of unregistered weapons is rife, no it must be video games that cause these murders and robberies, remember guns don't kill people, people kill people except where video games are concerned then it's video games kill people, because that's much more a convenient answer to the problem than standing up to U.S. gun manufactures and lobbyists, far easier to put the blame on an industy that is far more popular and successful.

 

America, ...how not surprising of you.

The shooter at the school had his background checks denied 5 times while trying to buy weapons. He stole them from his mom, who he killed, and by the way knew he was crazy and on medication, yet leaves out an arsenal.

Blaming guns is just as stupid as blaming video games. So is blaming a spoon for making you fat and a pencil for spelling errors.

The gun, video game, spoon, and pencil are nothing without an operator. The operator is to blame. Go after them, not me.

Besides, did we ban boxcutters or did we go after terrorists?

Originally posted by Loktofeit

Originally posted by mythran7

 

Conservative Reasoning 101:  Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.
 

True, but does that mean we should allow average citizens to make Nuclear weapons? How about Chemical weapons? There is always going to be human beings that want to harm others, SHOULD WE MAKE IT IT EASY FOR THEM TO DO??? Or hard...hmmm

Personal responsibility doesn’t take away from collective responsibility. We protect people from all sorts of stuff in civilized society, this conservative argument is not only weak, but infantile.

Wake up, and use your brain.

And the purpose of gun ownership is to allow people to protect themselves, whether that attacker is a random thug or government. From your profile, it appears you are Canadian, so I don't expect you to understand the reasons for gun ownership in America or America's gun culture. However, to say that quote above is attributed to conservatives only is false, especially in a thread where most people agree the solution is identifying and fixing the problems in society that cause people to commit violent crimes, and I seriously doubt this is a heavily conservative crowd. :)

The collective responsibility is to get help for the people that need it. The collective responsibility is to make sure that a person doesn't reach the point of committing such atrocities. Don't blame the thermometer for the temperature.

 

 

A gun is not a thermometer. False anology. The purpose of a gun is to kill people. It has no other purpose except for hunting.  

Where I am from, and who I am, makes 0 diffrence to my argument. Ad hom's are the tactic of someone who knows their argument has lost, or they are simply ignorant of basic logic. Two options, which is it?

So the question remains: Do you want to make it easier or harder for people to kill others?

Originally posted by mythran7

Originally posted by Loktofeit

Originally posted by mythran7

 

Conservative Reasoning 101:  Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.
 

True, but does that mean we should allow average citizens to make Nuclear weapons? How about Chemical weapons? There is always going to be human beings that want to harm others, SHOULD WE MAKE IT IT EASY FOR THEM TO DO??? Or hard...hmmm

Personal responsibility doesn’t take away from collective responsibility. We protect people from all sorts of stuff in civilized society, this conservative argument is not only weak, but infantile.

Wake up, and use your brain.

And the purpose of gun ownership is to allow people to protect themselves, whether that attacker is a random thug or government. From your profile, it appears you are Canadian, so I don't expect you to understand the reasons for gun ownership in America or America's gun culture. However, to say that quote above is attributed to conservatives only is false, especially in a thread where most people agree the solution is identifying and fixing the problems in society that cause people to commit violent crimes, and I seriously doubt this is a heavily conservative crowd. :)

The collective responsibility is to get help for the people that need it. The collective responsibility is to make sure that a person doesn't reach the point of committing such atrocities. Don't blame the thermometer for the temperature.

 

 

A gun is not a thermometer. False anology. The purpose of a gun is to kill people. It has no other purpose except for hunting.  

Where I am from, and who I am, makes 0 diffrence to my argument. Ad hom's are the tactic of someone who knows their argument has lost, or they are simply ignorant of basic logic. Two options, which is it?

So the question remains: Do you want to make it easier or harder for people to kill others?

So which is it?

A firearm is a tool, like a spoon. Leave it on a table, it does nothing until someone picks it up.

Should boxcutters be banned or did they do the right thing by going after the bad guys?

Firearms are what, a multi-billion dollar industry? Duh.. of course the NRA and other groups (including the government - tax) are diverting blame.

Stuff doesn't change while people are getting rich.

Take smoking, for example. We all know it kills, and racks up huge costs to the healthy care systems around the world, but they keep on selling and taxing them, while introducing periodical 'band aid' measures, such as hiding them away behind shutters.

It is impossible to say that any one thing perpetrates the crime rates or these mass shootings in the US. Anything is drastic over simplification. In the case of one shooting, it might be someone with a mental issue whose intake of medicines might help promote paranoia and violence in the individual. In an other, it could be a crime of passion. Who knows ? Just blaming it on one or two factors is not going to help.

I agree with Pockett that parents should be sure what their kids are playing, but I doubt that it would have had much effect on avoiding some of the mass shootings that have occurred in schools. They are not related to "normal crime", which is usually when someone breaks the law in order to further their own goals at the expense of others. These mass killings are more about a suicide that takes out others and are designed to do the maximum harm, so I think that we need to look at the message that these individuals are obviously trying to send us as a key on how to solve them.

There are also video games and then there are video games. Some games are so violent, realistic, and anti-social that they do turn my stomach even though I am a long-time gamer, like GTA 3 and the Hitman series. Others have violence that really can't be taken seriously like the old classic Duke Nukem 3D, and yet others have cartoon violence like WoW that could never be confused for anything real.

To me games are overall beneficial because they provide an outlet for expression, emotion, and socializing. This is what critics and anti-video game advocates do not understand. Repression breeds even more (real) violence, so they should be careful.

I checked the movie line-up last night for something to watch.  I have lots of channels, all the HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, Stars etc etc.  Nearly every movie was about killing.  Being killed, doing the killing, investigating the killing, revenge by killing those who killed, kill kill  kill kill.  

Also, if you check the t.v. ratings for the last .. oh, say ten years.. you'll find that most of the top shows have killing as their central theme.  CSI.. etc.  Or, just open any history book.  Or for that matter, take a gander at the true history of any religion.  

As humans, we are totally enthrawled and mesmerized by death.  It has always been that way and it always will be.  It consumes us and pervades nearly everything we watch.  Do you see any channels reporting on good news?  No, it's death and violence.  It's a true cop-out to blame video games, since they are the natural offshoot of other media -- media and entertainment btw that is in extremely high demand.   

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Originally posted by cheyane
Why isn't the easy ability to buy semi automatic assault weapons the issue instead of video games.

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