Games blamed for another murder

Big Casino

Big Casino

Money for Nothing
Veteran
Joined
Mar 4, 2007
Messages
7,422
Location
Scotland
Gil
0
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/washington-navy-yard-gunman-aaron-2280976

Yeah wev all heard this a million times. Some loony goes on a rampage and it turns out he played video games and that means they caused the murder.

I was reading this in the paper today and i was kinda outraged because in the whole 3 page article they had all they blamed was video games. He played up to 18 hours a day ( and then went on to say that he sometimes worked up to 10 hours a day...what? )
But not ONCE did they question how a man being treated for schizophrenia, paranoia and insomnia who had a HISTORY of gun crimes was able to go out and buy a firearm. It was a shotgun he bought the same week. They completely ignore that and instead go for the easier option of blaming games like call of duty. If he did have a reason then wer never gunna know because hes dead but ones things for sure games didnt cause this. I think it was the fact that he had some pretty deep mental problems going on in his head and he either didnt get the help he needed or it was already too late.
His friend said there were so many ''warning signs'' and that it was not normal for someone to play games that much and they ''must have had some effect on him'' He then expressed his disappointment that the warning sigs wernt acted upon....your his friend arent you? Do something.
But hey he should still he was able to go out and buy a gun right?

Already been lots of threads on this topic. It comes up at least a couple of times a year but it just made me mad reading this. The daily Mirror has never been the most respectable paper but i thought they were at least a few ball hairs above the Sun and the Star. Clearly i was mistaken.

If Cod makes us killers then you all better watch out because Me, Tom, Mel, Greeny, McGee, Raul, Al, Marlotov play it....we might be near you next time.
 
If people seriously blame video games for murders, then they need to go fuck themselves. That is an absolutely pathetic and lame excuse to try and use. At some point parents need to look at themselves and look at their living environment, relationships with their kids/any other family member, and reflect on themselves. Instead of always using video games as a skapegoat because they suck and fail as parents.

 
I dont think its the parents fault though. I mean you can do your absolute best as a parent but that cant help when someone has a serious underlying mental problem. thats something that requires a doctor with medication and / or therapy aswell. Murder goes back long before video games ever started. I think some people just feel the need to blame something like there HAS to be something causing it. They dont like what they cant explain.
No doubt mental problems and drugs do make *some* people do really crazy things. On the other hand some people are just bad bastards who wanna do bad things for no other reason than that they can.
 
I will agree that there are certainly mental issues that factor in as well, but overall parents need to be more responsible. You can limit what your children can/can't see. There's a reason why there's a ratings system with games. 10 year olds shouldn't fucking be playing CoD. But then again its not their fault for buying it for their kids, its the developers fault for making a violent game. Shame on me for forgetting.
 
Yeah but this guy wasnt a 10 year old. He was an Adult. Its then outta your parents hands isnt it? And despite what you see as a child it doesnt make any difference on the person you become when you grow up. My parents let me watch whatever i wanted as a kid. I was never told not to watch a film because it was too violent or too many sex scenes etc and i aint killed anyone yet!
 
I'm just meaning in general with parents blaming violent games causing people to be violent. Stop passing the buck on games. They aren't the cause of murder. Hell I played Resident Evil, MK, GTA, you name it and I have yet to be violent. Video games aren't the cause.
Thats like when people say "Guns kill people, take away guns!" No. It's not guns that kill people. People kill people. You physically have to kill somebody, the gun doesn't fire itself.
Idk just my 2 cents.
 
At first I thought this was going to be about someone that was stabbed after Buying GTA and had their copy stolen. Me and my dad were speaking on the phone about that literally 5 minutes ago. people have very different standards in this world. Some wouldn't stab anyone unless their life depended on it and others would stab someone for a happy meal.

Anyway, I haven't heard about this shooting really but it's not rocket science. The mainstream media love to bash video games. Are weak gun laws not to blame? NO, it's the evil video games poisoning peoples minds. It really sounds to me like America has some deep cultural and social problems and there is alot of people snapping; this, chained with the ease of access of firearms is a deadly combination. Yeah, second amendment is alright in theory but sometimes 200 year old laws lose a bit of relevance in modern society. Technically sticking a stamp on upside down is still considered treason. That's my summing up point, take what you like from that.
 
Guy already had deep psychological problems including intense paranoia and schizophrenia. Let's not make prominent that small detail.

Guy already had a history of random gun-related outbursts. Whatever.

Guy had been arrested for disorderly conduct five years ago. Who cares.

Guy was discharged from the Navy for a variety of reasons. Blah blah blah.

Guy was erroneously deemed to NOT be mentally unstable, so he pretty much kept the guns. Let's mute that small point a bit.

Guy just so happened to be a big fan of Call of Duty. OH MY GOD, IT'S THE VIOLENT COMPUTER GAMES!

Tabloids being tabloids. I'm just surprised it's the Daily Mirror running this as their alarming front cover and not the Daily Mail. Either that or the Mail was planning to do the same, but was beaten to the punch by their filthy red-top neighbour.

While I won't argue with the possibility that something like Call of Duty can have an effect on an individual who is already loopy (and let's face it, ANYTHING else can. Just look at your TV or computer, and cinema listings), it's nice and convenient if we prominently pin the blame on video games. Just have this huge headline and a large spread a couple of pages in to ram into the faces of the working class the evils of video games, making that the chief focal point of attention instead of his psychological history, multitudes of troubled events, and the mistakes that were made in his care. Just mute, filter out, or shove the rest into the obscure background. It's a fine example of shite journalism yet again.

I've also seen from someone online, Fox News (lol) displaying this image of all these serial shooters from the Columbine High School shooting perpetrators to the recent Connecticut school shooting, rhetorically asking what they all have in common and announcing that they were all gamers. In the spirit of something as reactionary and anti-science as Fox News, it didn't surprise me that they made the first logical fallacy of implying causation through a simple correlation, while refusing to wait for concrete evidence first. Anything but dem guns. Can't risk talking about how mentally unstable people can get access to guns without rigorous background checks. It has to be games.
 
Okay, so this makes me mad. My opinion is basically going to be echoing those of the others who've written before me but let's see if I come up with anything different. This guy had quite a list of psychological issues, it seems, most likely before he even began playing computer games. Games may well worsen psychological issues which have already been there for a while, festering quietly like an infected battle wound, but they are not the catalysts that set the destructive wheels in motion. Tabloids have always enjoyed blaming computer games for social problems that we as a society have failed to find satisfactory reason for. In fact, we as a species have done this for centuries - how else did the concept behind the Greek gods come about? Why do tidal waves happen? Oh, it must be Poseidon and his giant trident! NO! Idiots! Look at things rationally and stop blaming games because clearly your current strategy hasn't been working for... wait, has it ever worked?

One thing that the media completely fail to acknowledge, let alone even begin to accept, is that mental healthcare standards in the UK are far from being at even half acceptable levels. I won't hesitate to say that that applies in the US as well. Why, then, can these mentalheads walk into a gun shop and pick up a gun so easily? And why was this guy's permit not revoked when he left the Navy?
 
General Beatrix said:

Thats like when people say "Guns kill people, take away guns!" No. It's not guns that kill people. People kill people. You physically have to kill somebody, the gun doesn't fire itself.
Click to expand...

I massively disagree. Yes, guns clearly don't 'fire themselves' but you can't deny that if gun control was like in Europe you wouldn't be hearing all of these killing sprees on the news on such a regular basis. There have been some in Europe, sure; but I only remember 1 in recent memory; as opposed to many in the US within the last few years. You do have to pull the trigger, but it's alot easier to kill 20 people with a gun than a knife. These murderous rampages would struggle to get past 2 or 3 if it were a knife. People will try and disarm someone with a knife, not a gun. A gun can be shot at range. We have guns in the UK too but the laws and screening processes are very strict. My dad has had dozens of powerful guns over the years and other than maybe one other he's the only person I know who have ever had access to guns. Even then, the guns are locked away in special cabinets which stop them being broken in to.

Sorry for deviating slightly off topic but I just think that is the wrong attitude to have. Ultimately, the games aren't to blame. There are psychos out there with or without violent games who need the proper care and attention. Giving them easy access to guns however, is just plain stupid.

Guns don't kill people, but they are a used solely for death, be it human or animal. Knives are tools, guns are weapons.
 
Last edited:
These news are produced and directed by old and clueless people who don't even know what Final Fantasy is. See? The blasphemy starts here. They're more clueless than me!

These little museum pieces have the last say in how the news are produced. They're probably in their 50s and can break a Wii faster than a child, if they even know what a Wii is.

Being simple: they don't have a clue of what they're talking about regarding games. They just want to sell news. I mean, they forget to realize that the mentally sick can play games, watch movies just as everyone else, but that ultimately, the reason behind their behaviour is because they're mentally sick!
 
... I think ultimately it comes down to the mental stability of the person playing these video games. He obviously experienced a lot of things in the past, and those memories were probably eating away at his mind. He said he heard voices in his head. In a news report on TV, it claimed he searched for help with his problems, but didn't get any. So that makes me ask, why didn't anybody help? Then again it says they did all of these background checks and cleared him and all of that. So that makes me wonder how legitimate these tests and checks really are. I can't help but think most of his problems were ignored. In the end, who do you place the blame on? This guy who knew he had mental problems, or maybe the people he was around that didn't help him? Nooooo! Let's place the blame on video games. Games that people play everyday, and 9 times out of 10, just turn off and go back to their regular lives when they're done. Just because I play "violent" games, and know a lot about them, doesn't mean I'm gonna go outside with a mages staff and cast ice on people with it. If you're in a bad place in your mind, that's when you start thinking of replicating the things you saw in a video game. I really don't think games played that big a part in his decision, anyway.
 
Dean Ambrose said:
He said he heard voices in his head.
Click to expand...

Mmm. I'm very skeptical about mental health issues and high profile crime. I definitely don't think they are caused by video games, that's for sure; but it sounds like the easy way to avoid the needle is to claim insanity.
 
the people to blame here are the media. i strongly doubt that the police are looking at this and thinking 'oh he plays games, that's why he killed someone'. the only people jumping to that conclusion are the media, because that sounds better than a killer with a mental issue. it's been a while since someone killed because of a computer game, but there have been a few with a history of mental illness recently, so this way this story doesn't get lost in the masses. although i am quite surprised that this isn't coming from the daily mail.

it reminds me of something similar a few years ago. a guy killed a friend of his, and he really liked playing manhunt. of course it was attributed to the fact that he played a violent game, and not the fact that when he was arrested, he was carrying a duffle bag full of drugs, some of which he tested positive for.
 
Pooley is right. The media essentially need to sell a delicious story and VIDEO GAMES CAUSE KILLINGS is catchier than Man Kills, has problems in the heed.
Its true aswell because the people who are outraged go out buy the paper and read it and the ones who are curious do aswell. Its all profit for them arseholes.
 
I don't know... I think CoD might make me want to put a bomb in a randomer's Sunday dinner, Lewis. :hmmm:

We all know that blaming video games is an easy cop-out and attention grabber, we also know that tabloid newspapers(Or, how media is getting in general) is less about providing an even sided and well rounded article and more about drawing in the reader. In the world of today, Miley Cyrus looking like a retarded giraffe is considered more important than a situation like this. Journalists refer to twitter posts as if they're fact... I could go on and on about what I believe is completely wrong with news-media today.

The media didn't pull the trigger, but the media has an obligation to produce fair and in-depth articles rather than simplistic pieces of fecal matter. I couldn't care less about the fact video games are being used a scapegoat(it's always happened and when one of its primary fanbases is that of 10-20something males you're bound to have a few incidents of violence), I just think it's both embarrassing and idiotic to think that a major "news" paper would blame a form of entertainment instead of the actual mental health issues at hand.

I'm not going to say that what people watch, do, read or play doesn't affect their mind-frames, but there's going to be another aspect at hand to really push someone to do something like this.
 
I'm not sure why all you Finaru Fantaji nerds are getting worked up, the first word of the article makes it clear that it's shithouse. As do the large number of unnamed sources. Video games = violence is a better seller in the UK than VA is shit, or something about gun control. Also some of the highest rated comments are saying that Video Games causing violence is a load of shit, the other highly rated ones were complaining about how they got the kind of gun used wrong.
 
When I was growing up I used to think these articles were a load of irrelevant rubbish used by dinosaurs to bash the relatively modern past time of video games. I used to ridicule these people but these days I'm seeing their point more and more.

I don't think video games are the sole contributor nor do I think they turn ideal citizens into deranged maniacs overnight, but society is very impressionable to the influences of the media and like it or not video games is interactive media which makes impressions on all of us.

When I think of examples in media gangster films come to mind. Some guys really like gangster films and I'm one of them, but every so often you come across these guys who talk about the things they see and the characters on screen with an unsettling adulation. Even when the violence in a scene is depicted in a way to disgust or unnerve the viewer some guys you speak to relish these moments and gain a vicarious pleasure from seeing these scenes and begin to demonstrate similar character traits.

But it would be naive to relegate the problem as something that only affects the mentally unstable. It's not abnormal to exhibit violent behaviour. In fact, it's very common. The big problem in these cases is that human life is being trivialised. Toddlers lash out when they're angry and they're implored by their parents into being more compassionate and empathetic (or so you'd hope). They're taught to be more harmonious and less impulsive with their expressions, but as people go through life they experience adversity and mistreatment from others and these factors chip away at their sense of empathy.

What does that have to do with violence in the media? Well people create role models of those they're surrounded by. People in the media inspire the masses especially when they're placed in the role of the protagonist or they're depicted as virtuous either because of or in spite of their actions. When the violence carried out by the protagonist is trivialised the impression embedded in the viewer's subconscious is that the "good guy" doesn't have to account for any of the violence they perpetrated or that by some reason what they did was wholly justified.

When you go on to games you realise why it's received so much negative attention the past decade or two. Video games are interactive which makes the content far more intense. They take it a step further and where film and music pushes the boundaries video games completely shatter them. The most obvious example is probably Grand Theft Auto where you're able, sometimes encouraged and at times even obliged to commit acts of wanton carnage and depravity. We know it's just a game and they're not even real characters, but these interactions desensitise us to shocking acts of violence. People go on about picking up hookers, having sex with them and killing them flippantly when really it's actually quite sick whether it's on a game or not and it says something about the person doing it. Games like these nurture anti-social destructive attitudes in people, they break down the taboo of violence and glamourise it. In a game where plowing into a group of pedestrians on the way from A to B is commonplace human life is completely disregarded and the gravity of crime and it's effect on society isn't accounted for in the slightest. People carry these perceptions into the real world, where no one matters quite as much as number one and if someone else does something bad they're scum of the Earth, but if I do it then it's still bad but not all that bad because I'm the protagonist of my life.

I know I'm being a self righteous prick saying this especially since I play GTA myself and I'd be gutted if they stopped making them. But as much as I might not like it I have to admit that violence in the media is like alcohol - not everyone can be trusted with it and it certainly has an adverse affect on our society. I know what I'm saying may sounds ridiculous but more people exhibit symptoms of antisocial personality disorder than society thinks and once the jump is made from simulation to reality, from plucking wings off bugs to assault then you'd be surprised how easily and quickly people can progress towards torture, murder and rape. Empathy is the biggest deterrent for these actions, but by slowly desensitising society and trivialising human life it becomes harder to exercise empathy in the face of one's desires and impulses.
 
Оmar;1074992 said:
I'm not sure why all you Finaru Fantaji nerds are getting worked up, the first word of the article makes it clear that it's shithouse. As do the large number of unnamed sources. Video games = violence is a better seller in the UK than VA is shit, or something about gun control. Also some of the highest rated comments are saying that Video Games causing violence is a load of shit, the other highly rated ones were complaining about how they got the kind of gun used wrong.
Click to expand...

Dont forget slick your also an FF nerd. Its why you joined. Doesnt matter how fucking obviously shite it may be thats no reason not to get annoyed ( if you wanna) and voice your opinion over it. Play it cool all you want but its still complete crap and something i enjoy speaking out about.
And side note ish its not something thats usually in the British press so i was kinda surprised that a somewhat local paper was goin American.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top