Virginia Tech School Shooting

locherbread · Post by **locherbread** » Mon Apr 16, 2007 5:03 pm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6560685.stm

Well heres another tragic school shooting..

so sad

Post by **Lieva** » Mon Apr 16, 2007 5:33 pm

give it a week and it will come out he used to play halo non-stop...

Satyn · Post by **Satyn** » Mon Apr 16, 2007 6:15 pm

yup they always find something to blame

Post by **Xest** » Mon Apr 16, 2007 7:00 pm

Games exist in the rest of the world yet it's not anywhere near as much of a problem in the rest of the world.

To be fair whilst I don't think games make people violent, I'd accept they can potentially give violent people ideas but no more so than tv, films, books, music. Also, if the person is already violent then banning games isn't going to resolve anything anyway, so it's idiotic for anyone to attack games in this respect.

I find it so utterly sad that this happens year on year in the US, yet the US goverment refuses to even consider doing anything to resolve it. As I said already, seriously, how many kids have to die before America realises it has a severe gun problem?

<ankh> · Post by **<ankh>** » Mon Apr 16, 2007 7:35 pm

Feel sorry for the americans...but they could start by doing something about their gunlaws. It's not really helping that they make kids join the army to sponsor their studies.. then again, I guess they prefer studens who can handle an assault rifle before "normal" people.

/Ankh

Post by **Lieva** » Mon Apr 16, 2007 8:56 pm

Xest wrote:I'd accept they can potentially give violent people ideas but no more so than tv, films, books, music.

ooh freaky.
I was thinking this earlier today actually

My idea was that games do not make people kill others. They would do that anyway. They just give them a verity of different ways to do so.

So when they say 'This violent video game made me kill someone' they miss out the ending phrase 'in that way. He was toast anyway..'

Scarey to think like this I know but in this day and age, I do not think it is far from the truth.

Post by **Xest** » Mon Apr 16, 2007 9:48 pm

Lieva wrote:ooh freaky.
I was thinking this earlier today actually
My idea was that games do not make people kill others. They would do that anyway. They just give them a verity of different ways to do so.

So when they say 'This violent video game made me kill someone' they miss out the ending phrase 'in that way. He was toast anyway..'

Scarey to think like this I know but in this day and age, I do not think it is far from the truth.

The other thing is, such a big proportion of the the western world plays computer games now it's easy to say "Well he played games" when they do something wrong and hence infer that there is some kind of link. Of course however, said person that did something wrong probably also has read books, donated to charity, baked cakes - do those things also make people murder then?

Funnily enough, it's the same attitude that's plaguing people in the middle east right now. If an Iraqi shoots at US/British troops he's a terrorist, an insurgent - has anyone stopped to think he might actually just be an ordinary Iraqi who wants us to get the fuck out of his country? Were us Brits insurgents when we shot Nazi paratroopers attempting to enter our country in World War II?

Basically, it comes down to the fact there's too many people willing to accept the real cause, be it bad parenting or social isolation as in cases like this and columbine or a will to defend one's country against perceived aggressors as per Iraq and so forth - it's the same world wide, I'm sure you can find many other reasons people find for killings when the truthful reason for the killing is somewhat different.

Satyn · Post by **Satyn** » Mon Apr 16, 2007 11:19 pm

Thing is, when something like this happens, they start fishing for a reason. They will go search in the guy's personal life and they will find a reason for his behaviour. Be it action films or video games or whatever. They do that so they wouldnt have to admit to the fact that its partly their own fault that things like that can happen.

I do agree that some kids shouldnt play some type of games, but then they should ban books and tv aswell. Just have to realise that some kids are very very vonerable to things like that and maybe not 'bright' enough to understand its just a game, or just a book and that its not really ment to be used in real life.

Post by **Lieva** » Tue Apr 17, 2007 5:59 am

In the olden days they blamed rock n' roll
then it was violent movies (anyone remember the 'chucky' crusade?)
now its video games.
Wonder what it will be next

<ankh> · Post by **<ankh>** » Tue Apr 17, 2007 7:01 am

Imo this is a subject you can discuss into eternity - but in the end its all very individual why they go postal. I don't think that tv or video games have actually increased the voilence, these kind of things could have happened pre-television too - but we got more people on the planet now and schools work abit different than before too.
I don't think people had time to do things like this before either...you had so much other things in life to think about (and another reason why so many get killed when these things happen is proberbly cos its easy to get hold of effective killing tools - especially in the glorious US of A)

/Ankh