Lawyer Blames Video Games For NIU

[MA-Caver]

http://www.switched.com/2008/02/19/lawyer-blames-video-games-for-niu-shootings/

Few things makes us more angry than taking advantage of tragedies to push personal and political agendas, especially when when that agenda lacks things like supporting evidence... or logic.

Jack Thompson, a self-described Christian conservative and Republican (which is an insult to Christian conservative Republicans everywhere), has made a career of crusading against so-called obscenity and violence in media such as rap music and video games.

His latest rant came on Fox News about the Northern Illinois University shooting and its connection to the first person shooter 'Counter Strike.' The Fox News interview is shameless on so many levels. Thompson refers to video games as simulators for practicing massacres, implies that he predicted the NIU shooting in a book he wrote (plug, plug), and he referred to a Harvard study suggesting that people are likely to copycat behavior in video games. He failed to mention that the killer spent time in a psychiatric institution or that he recently decided to stop taking his prescribed anti-depressants.
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One of my thoughts was aww geez not this **** again! For as long as I've played first shooter games (yea even unto the quarter eating arcade parlors that had them first) I've never felt the overwhelming urge to get an weapon and try it out myself. I'm sure 99.999% of you here who have played first shooter games have either.
Interesting how he plugs his book and says that it was edited because of a scenario that eerily echoes the NIU shootings. Hmm, wonder how many copies of the deed to the Golden Gate Bridge he's got to sell in his briefcase?
It's shameful how someone wants to try to make a buck off this tragic incident and try to blame something that has nothing to do with it, instead of blaming what could've have been the trigger/catalyst to this event.
Where do these guys come from? How can they do this kind of rant with a straight face? How right are they? How wrong can they be?
Sure the games are violent, but like chess or checkers or blackjack, tetris or marbles... it's just a game. Sigh.

Thanks to Ping898 for leading me to this article :asian:

 

[thardey]

One of my thoughts was aww geez not this **** again! For as long as I've played first shooter games (yea even unto the quarter eating arcade parlors that had them first) I've never felt the overwhelming urge to get an weapon and try it out myself. I'm sure 99.999% of you here who have played first shooter games have either.
Interesting how he plugs his book and says that it was edited because of a scenario that eerily echoes the NIU shootings. Hmm, wonder how many copies of the deed to the Golden Gate Bridge he's got to sell in his briefcase?
It's shameful how someone wants to try to make a buck off this tragic incident and try to blame something that has nothing to do with it, instead of blaming what could've have been the trigger/catalyst to this event.
Where do these guys come from? How can they do this kind of rant with a straight face? How right are they? How wrong can they be?
Sure the games are violent, but like chess or checkers or blackjack, tetris or marbles... it's just a game. Sigh.

Thanks to Ping898 for leading me to this article :asian:

Digital Dots being "shot" by digital bullets. From the very first, video games involved the idea of people dying. My dad told me about one game he played (I was too young to remember) where you tried to drive a car across the screen while dodging pedestrians. If you hit one, a little cross popped up in their place. But back in the 80's, it was "Dungeons and Dragons" that killed people, remember? People would get so caught up in their characters that they would commit suicide, or attack others, at least according to the stories that I saw.

Before video games, (and even still) boys shot at targets, imagining them to be the evil villain. Even if it was cowboys and indians, with cap guns. Today it's paintball. I personally massacred entire armies of little green army men with my BB gun.

I drew faces of evil villains from my favorite movies on paper plates, then shot them with my bow and arrow. What, did that make me violent?

That said, some of the violence preached in rap music does make me cringe. Even on this board, we are careful to admonish people who want to learn "to kill people." Or learn "deadly arts." Some of rap music glorifies violence in a way that treats death as a commodity. But is that rap music's fault, or is it just an accurate picture of a lifestyle that some people crave anyway? I don't know.

 

[ChadWarner]

One of my thoughts was aww geez not this **** again! For as long as I've played first shooter games (yea even unto the quarter eating arcade parlors that had them first) I've never felt the overwhelming urge to get an weapon and try it out myself. I'm sure 99.999% of you here who have played first shooter games have either.
Interesting how he plugs his book and says that it was edited because of a scenario that eerily echoes the NIU shootings. Hmm, wonder how many copies of the deed to the Golden Gate Bridge he's got to sell in his briefcase?
It's shameful how someone wants to try to make a buck off this tragic incident and try to blame something that has nothing to do with it, instead of blaming what could've have been the trigger/catalyst to this event.
Where do these guys come from? How can they do this kind of rant with a straight face? How right are they? How wrong can they be?
Sure the games are violent, but like chess or checkers or blackjack, tetris or marbles... it's just a game. Sigh.

Thanks to Ping898 for leading me to this article :asian:

I think that is partially what lawyers do... exploit anything they can for however much money can be taken from a corporation. Basically it ends up being a liability case- then into insurance defense. It is, sadly, just another business. I highly doubt him (thompson) or any of his associates really give one damn about our society and some the shifts suggesting the rule of law is for the wealthy.

I just want to know when did this happen? When did it become okay to invent a business that doesn't produce anything and no one employs you? Of course history says businesses of this type have always existed but when did it get to the degree it is now...

Lastly, I always thought parents were supposed to instill a value system in their kids... If parents don't do that job anymore how is it their titles have not been changed to custodial units? Our government needs an enema- it has become entirely self serving to its membership, ie legislative and executive branches and the many departments under their control.

 

[SageGhost83]

Amen, MA-Caver! I have been playing violent first person shooters since I was in the 6th grade and before that it was Splatterhouse and Mortal Kombat - and I don't even have a single strike on my criminal record! Parents are supposed to instill discipline in their kids, but the government has stepped in and denied the parents the right to discipline their children, so now we have a bunch of kids running around who never recieved that golden A-whoppin that we all used to recieve when we were young that set us straight. Politicians complain so much about how bad society is, but they are the ones who are mostly responsible for these things - not harmless fictional entertainment. Yes, it is funny how they overlook that obscure but very critical fact that the guy was on medication and he decided to stop taking it. At some point society has to stop making excuses and pointing the finger at someone else. At some point society needs to start accepting the fact that people are not perfectly innocent souls and they do horrible things at times becuase it is their own fault. I am surprised that Bobby knight's choking incident wasn't blamed on Homer Simpson or Sub-Zero .

 

[Darksoul]

-Two words: Operation Wolf.

-Just another example of some hack carrying on about something he knows very little about in an attempt to drum up support for his own greed.