Ban or Censor Video Games, Not Guns?

[JustTheFacts]

Is there a study that proves that violent video games cause murder in real life? Or do the studies merely overlook the probability that murders in real life enjoy violent video games?

Not that I'm championing such a mindless waste of time in a child's life, btw. I just fail to see a definitive conclusion being drawn between games and life.

you''re asking the wrong person, because I don't believe video games are the cause. I believe parenting is the cause.

I 100% believe that since the advent of parenting via a bottle we are seeing more and more kids who just don't care. Got a kid who won't pay attention in school? Hey instead of whipping that ass until they get the point, juts load em up on pills and call it good. Less work; then when you don't want to deal with those kids when they get home from school, just park them in front of a violent video game, hopped up on mind altering drugs and playing violent video games for hours on end? What could go wrong, am I right?

I honestly don't believe that bad parenting creates mass murderers. There are just too many cases of bad parenting not doing just that.

of course bad parenting in and of itself isn't causing mass murders. I just believe it is the root cause behind nearly everything a child grows up to do, and that includes committing such horrible crimes.

I would wager that if you look at every single one of these people somewhere in their lives is a parent who failed them at a critical juncture. Whether other influences helped turn them into what they are or not is irrelevant , the common factor is lack of parenting.

I don't know how old you are , but I'm 42. When I was in school , our parents believed in discipline, and the schools were an arm of that. Including a paddling if you fucked around in class. Not one kid that I am aware of was ever diagnosed with attention deficit disorder the entire time I was in school. Nope , kids that were disruptive were taken away , paddled and sent back to class. Usually that was the end of them being disruptive.

Fast forward 20 something years and there are kids in my daughters 2nd grade class who are on medication for ADHD I mean come on, they're little kids. A certain level of misbehavior is normal, and if they most beyond that, handle it, don't medicate them.

I don't know what it is with America. everyone wanting to blame this product or another rather than just putting the blame where it belongs, on parents.

Take the Sandy Hook kid for example. He didn't just wake up one day and go shoot 26 people.

Somewhere along the line, he killed a family pet, or beat up a little kid, or tortured neighborhood cats, or something similar and the mother responds by doing what? Oh telling the baby sitter not to turn his back on him. Here's an idea you lazy mom " remove the guns from the house if you know he's that dangerous"

That mom is 100% responsible for those deaths in my book.

 

[AmyNation]

Why do you keep dismissing facts that disagree with your narrative? What increase in violence? Murder is at a 30 year low in the US.

 

[Ravi]

This is not a discussion on gun control. I thought I made that clear? Perhaps you might want to revisit the OP? Please?

Did I misread your title?

No, I didn't.

My point was also valid and I'm not quite sure why you don't like it when people point out the holes in your logic.

 

[TakeAStepBack]

Why do you keep dismissing facts that disagree with your narrative? What increase in violence? Murder is at a 30 year low in the US.

Because that rejects the narrative.

 

[Ravi]

you''re asking the wrong person, because I don't believe video games are the cause. I believe parenting is the cause.

I 100% believe that since the advent of parenting via a bottle we are seeing more and more kids who just don't care. Got a kid who won't pay attention in school? Hey instead of whipping that ass until they get the point, juts load em up on pills and call it good. Less work; then when you don't want to deal with those kids when they get home from school, just park them in front of a violent video game, hopped up on mind altering drugs and playing violent video games for hours on end? What could go wrong, am I right?

I honestly don't believe that bad parenting creates mass murderers. There are just too many cases of bad parenting not doing just that.

of course bad parenting in and of itself isn't causing mass murders. I just believe it is the root cause behind nearly everything a child grows up to do, and that includes committing such horrible crimes.

I would wager that if you look at every single one of these people somewhere in their lives is a parent who failed them at a critical juncture. Whether other influences helped turn them into what they are or not is irrelevant , the common factor is lack of parenting.

I don't know how old you are , but I'm 42. When I was in school , our parents believed in discipline, and the schools were an arm of that. Including a paddling if you fucked around in class. Not one kid that I am aware of was ever diagnosed with attention deficit disorder the entire time I was in school. Nope , kids that were disruptive were taken away , paddled and sent back to class. Usually that was the end of them being disruptive.

Fast forward 20 something years and there are kids in my daughters 2nd grade class who are on medication for ADHD I mean come on, they're little kids. A certain level of misbehavior is normal, and if they most beyond that, handle it, don't medicate them.

I don't know what it is with America. everyone wanting to blame this product or another rather than just putting the blame where it belongs, on parents.

Take the Sandy Hook kid for example. He didn't just wake up one day and go shoot 26 people.

Somewhere along the line, he killed a family pet, or beat up a little kid, or tortured neighborhood cats, or something similar and the mother responds by doing what? Oh telling the baby sitter not to turn his back on him. Here's an idea you lazy mom " remove the guns from the house if you know he's that dangerous"

That mom is 100% responsible for those deaths in my book.

I hear what you are saying. I just don't know the situation enough to pass that judgment on her. Yes, she shouldn't have had guns in her home if she had any clue at all as too how fucked up her son was.

IMO, there are some really fucked up people out there and the best course of action is to figure out how to keep them from the tools that enable them to hurt others.

How to accomplish that I don't know, but if we are going to be serious about stopping these people, we need to figure out how to do it.

 

[PixieStix]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/12/30/violence-and-video-games-in-america/

I am a huge believer in playing video games with my kid, I always have, or at least watching him play and being involved with what interests my child. And my kid has never killed or attempted to kill or even desires to kill another human being

Blaming video games? Dumb.

Blaming parental skills? Indeed!

I actually believe that we adults have shown our children; for an entire generation, just how little life means to us as a nation. We sanction abortion and other forms of death and use drones to do our wars, and people want to blame video games? Come on be real

 

[JustTheFacts]

Why do you keep dismissing facts that disagree with your narrative? What increase in violence? Murder is at a 30 year low in the US.

Murder is at all time low, if you look at the overall numbers, but we have to look past that and understand that okay in the 90s gang violence was at an all time high and blacks were killing other blacks in HUGE numbers, but we could easily see why, it was completely financial motivated.

That has tapered off over the last 15 years and although gangs still exist, it is in MUCH smaller numbers and the gang violence has dropped precipitously.

Meanwhile all the sudden RANDOM shootings have skyrocketed. Twenty years ago were people shooting up movie theaters? I don't find any reference to such. Were people starting fires in order to shoot firemen? Shooting up kindergarten classes?

I'd bet that if you took out the gang related shootings from 1990-2000 and then compared that decade to 2001- to so far in 2013 the number of murders has actually risen.

and before someone misreads, no I am not saying that the lives of today's victims are more valuable than the lives of those victims, I'm just saying that with gang shootings at least we understood the motive. With these shootings, there is no motive.

 

[Foxfyre]

And that is what I am interested in JTF, so thank you. If others have interests in other areas, so be it, but I am doing my damndest to keep focused on the issues raised in the OP. If we decide all that is bunk and those studies we linked are bunk and not to be considered, also so be it.

But considering everything our more thoughtful members have offered here, I do think we can't really dismiss any one single thing as irrelevent now.

 

[JustTheFacts]

I honestly don't believe that bad parenting creates mass murderers. There are just too many cases of bad parenting not doing just that.

of course bad parenting in and of itself isn't causing mass murders. I just believe it is the root cause behind nearly everything a child grows up to do, and that includes committing such horrible crimes.

I would wager that if you look at every single one of these people somewhere in their lives is a parent who failed them at a critical juncture. Whether other influences helped turn them into what they are or not is irrelevant , the common factor is lack of parenting.

I don't know how old you are , but I'm 42. When I was in school , our parents believed in discipline, and the schools were an arm of that. Including a paddling if you fucked around in class. Not one kid that I am aware of was ever diagnosed with attention deficit disorder the entire time I was in school. Nope , kids that were disruptive were taken away , paddled and sent back to class. Usually that was the end of them being disruptive.

Fast forward 20 something years and there are kids in my daughters 2nd grade class who are on medication for ADHD I mean come on, they're little kids. A certain level of misbehavior is normal, and if they most beyond that, handle it, don't medicate them.

I don't know what it is with America. everyone wanting to blame this product or another rather than just putting the blame where it belongs, on parents.

Take the Sandy Hook kid for example. He didn't just wake up one day and go shoot 26 people.

Somewhere along the line, he killed a family pet, or beat up a little kid, or tortured neighborhood cats, or something similar and the mother responds by doing what? Oh telling the baby sitter not to turn his back on him. Here's an idea you lazy mom " remove the guns from the house if you know he's that dangerous"

That mom is 100% responsible for those deaths in my book.

I hear what you are saying. I just don't know the situation enough to pass that judgment on her. Yes, she shouldn't have had guns in her home if she had any clue at all as too how fucked up her son was.

IMO, there are some really fucked up people out there and the best course of action is to figure out how to keep them from the tools that enable them to hurt others.

How to accomplish that I don't know, but if we are going to be serious about stopping these people, we need to figure out how to do it.

See, that's where I get on board with gun control. I myself believe I should be able to own whatever I want and can afford (I'm talking about man portable weapons here, no nukes or anything of that nature) If I want a SAW249 I should be able to buy one. But I DO believe the state has a compelling interest in making sure that I am not someone who ought not have that weapon.

Myself I would like to see the state be able to take that woman's weapons away from her if she isn't smart enough to do it herself.

The "guns don't kill people" meme is stupid. No one believes guns kill anyone on their ow, that's just illogical to believe. That is just a meme the NRA started years ago to fight the fact that taking a gun away from a loon assures that loon won't be able to use that gun to kill people. Yes of course that kid could have went somewhere else and obtained a gun had he wished to, but my feeling is most of these kids wouldn't use a gun if it wasn't so readily available.

 

[AmyNation]

I posted this in a different thread, but I think it works here too.


The Facts about Mass Shootings - John Fund - National Review Online

Violent Crime Declines 70 Percent

Charts of the day: Gun violence in America declining over last 20 years « Hot Air

U.S. violent crime down for fifth straight year - CNN.com

"The bottom line of the two reports is that violent and property crime are at record lows for the country and , generally speaking, have been decreasing for the last two decades. While this news is of little consequence to those living in areas where crime continues to be a problem, it is never-the-less great news for a country that suffered large increases in crime and violence for decades since the mid 1960′s."


Murder is down, sexual assault is down, burglary, larceny, auto theft, down down down. We are, overall, the safest we've been since the mid 80's.

 

[AmyNation]

From the 1st link

In fact, the high point for mass killings in the U.S. was 1929, according to criminologist Grant Duwe of the Minnesota Department of Corrections.

Incidents of mass murder in the U.S. declined from 42 in the 1990s to 26 in the first decade of this century.

 

[Foxfyre]

I've already conceded that you believe there is no problem, Amy. And that's fine.

But I'm sure you have no objection if those of us who aren't as certain as you are go ahead and discuss the topic. I am well aware of all the statistics you have posted. I have probably posted them myself in other contexts.

1929 for instance was during the height of prohibition and when mob violence related to that was at its highest. The mass killings involving competing mobsters were not comparable to the premeditated mass killings of innocents that the killers didn't know. These incidents are different than somebody shooting a teacher they got mad at. This has been pretty much a new phenomenon in more recent times and, in my opinion, has been escalating and occuring at a rate that merits attention.

 

[Foxfyre]

of course bad parenting in and of itself isn't causing mass murders. I just believe it is the root cause behind nearly everything a child grows up to do, and that includes committing such horrible crimes.

I would wager that if you look at every single one of these people somewhere in their lives is a parent who failed them at a critical juncture. Whether other influences helped turn them into what they are or not is irrelevant , the common factor is lack of parenting.

I don't know how old you are , but I'm 42. When I was in school , our parents believed in discipline, and the schools were an arm of that. Including a paddling if you fucked around in class. Not one kid that I am aware of was ever diagnosed with attention deficit disorder the entire time I was in school. Nope , kids that were disruptive were taken away , paddled and sent back to class. Usually that was the end of them being disruptive.

Fast forward 20 something years and there are kids in my daughters 2nd grade class who are on medication for ADHD I mean come on, they're little kids. A certain level of misbehavior is normal, and if they most beyond that, handle it, don't medicate them.

I don't know what it is with America. everyone wanting to blame this product or another rather than just putting the blame where it belongs, on parents.

Take the Sandy Hook kid for example. He didn't just wake up one day and go shoot 26 people.

Somewhere along the line, he killed a family pet, or beat up a little kid, or tortured neighborhood cats, or something similar and the mother responds by doing what? Oh telling the baby sitter not to turn his back on him. Here's an idea you lazy mom " remove the guns from the house if you know he's that dangerous"

That mom is 100% responsible for those deaths in my book.

I hear what you are saying. I just don't know the situation enough to pass that judgment on her. Yes, she shouldn't have had guns in her home if she had any clue at all as too how fucked up her son was.

IMO, there are some really fucked up people out there and the best course of action is to figure out how to keep them from the tools that enable them to hurt others.

How to accomplish that I don't know, but if we are going to be serious about stopping these people, we need to figure out how to do it.

See, that's where I get on board with gun control. I myself believe I should be able to own whatever I want and can afford (I'm talking about man portable weapons here, no nukes or anything of that nature) If I want a SAW249 I should be able to buy one. But I DO believe the state has a compelling interest in making sure that I am not someone who ought not have that weapon.

Myself I would like to see the state be able to take that woman's weapons away from her if she isn't smart enough to do it herself.

The "guns don't kill people" meme is stupid. No one believes guns kill anyone on their ow, that's just illogical to believe. That is just a meme the NRA started years ago to fight the fact that taking a gun away from a loon assures that loon won't be able to use that gun to kill people. Yes of course that kid could have went somewhere else and obtained a gun had he wished to, but my feeling is most of these kids wouldn't use a gun if it wasn't so readily available.

I hear that, but I also know that I grew up at a time when ALL we kids had easy access to guns and a lot of ammunition to go with them too. That was true throughout our entire area. Some of us had crappy parents--I certainly did. There was alcoholis and all sorts of mental problems then too. Some kids did poorly in school and there were as many bullies and unkind people then as there are now. We had good teachers and bad teachers.

But not one of those kids--I repeat not one--ever shot anybody by accident, much less in anger or in a senseless mass murder. Such a thing was pretty much unheard of in our part of the world. That part of the country that included Columbine and Aurora.

So based on my anecdotal experience, I have to believe there is something more than access to guns involved in the plethora of senseless mass shootings we have seen in the last 30 years.

 

[blackhawk]

NOTE: Clean debate zone thread here. . . .

This morning I was listening to a concept put out by a military psychologist who suggests that it is not guns that are the problem in a 'violent America', but rather the changed American culture. Violent concepts are prevalent in our television programs, movies, comic books, music, and most especially in video games that are available in large quantities to very young children.

His theory is that this is desensitizing young people to violence and even exalting and promoting it.

Are video games conditioning kids to accept violence as virtue? As the way to get things accomplished? To win? To reach the pinnacle of success? In many/most of video games out there, it is necessary to be ruthless in order to win the game. Does this change the way people view their world in an unhealthy way?

If you do see this as a problem, how do you get around censorship as being somehow better than gun control? Do you want the government to have power in that area?

Or is there a way for the public/radio/Hollywood to self censor itself as it once did? And should we push for that?

Or maybe you don't see it as a problem at all?

It's a combination of many things the problem is every group wants to focus all it's attention on one part of the problem instead of the whole.

 

[eflatminor]

This has been pretty much a new phenomenon in more recent times and, in my opinion, has been escalating and occuring at a rate that merits attention.

I don't think history supports that conclusion. Charles Whitman, the 1963 Texas bell tower sniper, that was akin to what we see today. We've had mass killings for a long time. They're on the decline despite more firearms and more violent entertainment. There is no empirical evidence to suggest either lead to actual violence.

Nobody is happy with crazies killing innocents but it's reasonable to keep in mind that this kind of thing is exceedingly rare, less than one tenth of one percent of murders. There are ways to guard against such things without impeding on the rights of others. IMO, Free people making voluntary choices will respond the best way possible to deal with this kind of craziness.

 

[beagle9]

A lot of thoughtful posts here, people, and I appreciate the careful consideration and effort that went into them. With enough people recognizing that there is a problem and looking for the right way to address it, I think sooner or later our collective wisdom just might come up with the best solution.

As for those who want to say that everything is just hunky dory and fine--move along--there's nothing to see here--I don't know what to say to that. I simply refuse to believe that the way we are is the best we can do.

Unfortunately the only way to fix it is better parenting. Unless you want to force parents to be better parents I don't know what we can do.

Taking products off the market isn't a solution.

Hmmm so corporations win because of the money involved is what you are basically saying ? I remember when I was coming up, my parents taught me about the Lord and his word at home, then Hollywood gave me stuff like Gilligan's Isle, Gomer Pile, Andy Griffith, Ultra Man, Bewitched, Gun smoke, John Wayne and Walt Disney etc. All these combined made for a people that were a non-violent and more loving people, and then I saw it begin to escalate to a more violent and evil culture, where it began producing the results from this culture that included all sorts of bad into it now...We can change things if people want to, but first the devils have to be dealt a severe blow by putting shame back into their game's. (Pun intended!) They need to be shamed out of existence is what I say, and the people freed from their bondage in which they are trapped in with this sort of stuff anymore.

Right now there is no shame, just evil justifications of this stuff, because the ground that the demons have gained, will not be given up so easily now, but if we could look backwards in order to take from the good we had in the past, and then bring it forward, we might just have a chance again in this nation..

 

[beagle9]

This has been pretty much a new phenomenon in more recent times and, in my opinion, has been escalating and occuring at a rate that merits attention.

I don't think history supports that conclusion. Charles Whitman, the 1963 Texas bell tower sniper, that was akin to what we see today. We've had mass killings for a long time. They're on the decline despite more firearms and more violent entertainment. There is no empirical evidence to suggest either lead to actual violence.

Nobody is happy with crazies killing innocents but it's reasonable to keep in mind that this kind of thing is exceedingly rare, less than one tenth of one percent of murders. There are ways to guard against such things without impeding on the rights of others. IMO, Free people making voluntary choices will respond the best way possible to deal with this kind of craziness.

You know I have lived in this nation since I was born in 1960, and I remember it never being this bad for our youth over the years in this way, and this especially so as is found in percentages of now, and to the bombardment we are experiencing in this nation to date, so there is no way that you can go back and mention a few bad instances that were few and far between in percentages of, in order to suggest that we are not really in that bad a shape these days, because you are wrong on that assumption or statement my friend, and everyone here knows it.

 

[beagle9]

I hear what you are saying. I just don't know the situation enough to pass that judgment on her. Yes, she shouldn't have had guns in her home if she had any clue at all as too how fucked up her son was.

IMO, there are some really fucked up people out there and the best course of action is to figure out how to keep them from the tools that enable them to hurt others.

How to accomplish that I don't know, but if we are going to be serious about stopping these people, we need to figure out how to do it.

See, that's where I get on board with gun control. I myself believe I should be able to own whatever I want and can afford (I'm talking about man portable weapons here, no nukes or anything of that nature) If I want a SAW249 I should be able to buy one. But I DO believe the state has a compelling interest in making sure that I am not someone who ought not have that weapon.

Myself I would like to see the state be able to take that woman's weapons away from her if she isn't smart enough to do it herself.

The "guns don't kill people" meme is stupid. No one believes guns kill anyone on their ow, that's just illogical to believe. That is just a meme the NRA started years ago to fight the fact that taking a gun away from a loon assures that loon won't be able to use that gun to kill people. Yes of course that kid could have went somewhere else and obtained a gun had he wished to, but my feeling is most of these kids wouldn't use a gun if it wasn't so readily available.

I hear that, but I also know that I grew up at a time when ALL we kids had easy access to guns and a lot of ammunition to go with them too. That was true throughout our entire area. Some of us had crappy parents--I certainly did. There was alcoholis and all sorts of mental problems then too. Some kids did poorly in school and there were as many bullies and unkind people then as there are now. We had good teachers and bad teachers.

But not one of those kids--I repeat not one--ever shot anybody by accident, much less in anger or in a senseless mass murder. Such a thing was pretty much unheard of in our part of the world. That part of the country that included Columbine and Aurora.

So based on my anecdotal experience, I have to believe there is something more than access to guns involved in the plethora of senseless mass shootings we have seen in the last 30 years.

It's the mind game that has been run on this nation, and the consequences of that game is showing up big time now.

 

[Ravi]

This has been pretty much a new phenomenon in more recent times and, in my opinion, has been escalating and occuring at a rate that merits attention.

I don't think history supports that conclusion. Charles Whitman, the 1963 Texas bell tower sniper, that was akin to what we see today. We've had mass killings for a long time. They're on the decline despite more firearms and more violent entertainment. There is no empirical evidence to suggest either lead to actual violence.

Nobody is happy with crazies killing innocents but it's reasonable to keep in mind that this kind of thing is exceedingly rare, less than one tenth of one percent of murders. There are ways to guard against such things without impeding on the rights of others. IMO, Free people making voluntary choices will respond the best way possible to deal with this kind of craziness.

You know I have lived in this nation since I was born in 1960, and I remember it never being this bad for our youth over the years in this way, and this especially so as is found in percentages of now, and to the bombardment we are experiencing in this nation to date, so there is no way that you can go back and mention a few bad instances that were few and far between in percentages of, in order to suggest that we are not really in that bad a shape these days, because you are wrong on that assumption or statement my friend, and everyone here knows it.

I guess you have a faulty memory. Here's an interesting article on school shootings in just the Northeast during the 1940s and 1950s.

Concealed Carry Laws and School Safety: Evidence from the 1940s and 1950s «

 

[yidnar]

NOTE: Clean debate zone thread here. . . .

This morning I was listening to a concept put out by a military psychologist who suggests that it is not guns that are the problem in a 'violent America', but rather the changed American culture. Violent concepts are prevalent in our television programs, movies, comic books, music, and most especially in video games that are available in large quantities to very young children.

His theory is that this is desensitizing young people to violence and even exalting and promoting it.

Are video games conditioning kids to accept violence as virtue? As the way to get things accomplished? To win? To reach the pinnacle of success? In many/most of video games out there, it is necessary to be ruthless in order to win the game. Does this change the way people view their world in an unhealthy way?

If you do see this as a problem, how do you get around censorship as being somehow better than gun control? Do you want the government to have power in that area?

Or is there a way for the public/radio/Hollywood to self censor itself as it once did? And should we push for that?

Or maybe you don't see it as a problem at all?

when kids are growing up spending hours a day playing violent games it will have a negative effect on some of the kids ..maybe even more so in single parent homes .