Is it time to talk about guns?

Wow, that’s much easier than we got it here in NC.

 

His heart was in the right place but his voice really threw me off.

 

Nah... Those are the rapists coming in with drugs... Completely different group.

 

However, it seems that arresting children is constitutional.
I wonder if they are not missing the mark.
"Boy, 10, is 'crying all day' as he is held for THREE WEEKS in detention center".
Instead of putting the emphasis on the acquisition of weapons, they are chasing children who don't yet have their minds developed and don't understand that there are sensible topics on which they should not make jokes.

 

I'd rather call him a mass murderer. Serial killing implies that a person kills over a long period of time.

Well, congratulations. You managed to find that one, sole exception who superficially stands out as fitting your profile of a psycho killing video gamer. Here's a head pat for you. Only, the Guardian's article that you linked says that he merely practiced his aim with Call of Duty. A.k.a used the game as a tool. Nowhere does it say that he was directly triggered/influenced by the game itself to kill people. Breivik is a bloody nutter with several conflicting views, and badly detached from reality. His right-wing political beliefs, very strong ones at that, are such that he would've carried out those Utøya murders and the Oslo bombing regardless of ever having played any video games. In the absence of the Call of Duty-videogame, he most likely would have used something else to train with. Most probably the illegally acquired gun itself to do some target shooting for practice.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which is the game connected to this incident, doesn't really even support his political beliefs. The single player campaign's plot deals with a military operation targeted against ultranationalists. Breivik is an ultranationalist himself. Hard to get inspired by a plot that runs against your beliefs. Breivik claims to hate muslims. And yet, he has expressed open admiration to Al-Qaida, a terrorist group with Islamic beliefs. That's a contradiction right there. He's a crazy person, and one shouldn't lend any credence to his words. Breivik probably dropped the game's title just to sound edgy and ruffle some feathers, as I'm sure he hasn't missed the debate surrounding video game violence.

BTW, Breivik is not called Breivik anymore. He officially changed his legal name to Fjotolf Hansen in 2017.

 

In my view not long enough and probably not thorough

This is the UK length of time in comparison and this is for a shot gun licence


"How long does it take to get a shotgun license UK?


The entire process is likely to take eight weeks, more or less. Not all Police Forces are the same and they review and change their processes from time to time so the above should be taken as a guide only."

 

Here is a list of banned video games around the world.

List of banned video games - Wikipedia



Wolfenstein had been banned in germany and later the ban has been lifted.


Mass murderers in brazil and U.S. seems to have been avid mortal combat video gamers.

Controversies surrounding Mortal Kombat - Wikipedia


Doom seems to have been banned in germany

 

A violent video game involving guns gives the message that skillfully murdering a lot of people makes you a glorious winner, but not murdering many and getting murdered yourself by an another more skilled murderer makes you a pathetic loser.

Impressionable children and teenagers are vulnerable to this kind of anti-social conditioning, and the extent of mental programming increases when one spends many hours on such games.

Obviously video games have a huge market and their creators wants to make these games as realistic and convincing as possible to gain constant adherents, which is good for business and maintaining a fat bank account.

Those with low self-esteem are especially vulnerable to this kind of conditioning, and this could be the reason for some to take to mass murders while others do not.


Anders Behring Breivik and recent Texas mass murderer Salvador Ramos were avid players of violent video games.

It is said that playing more than one hour of video games in a day can lead to mental and social complications and we can see Breivik playing violent video games 16 hours a day in his mothers house. Such kind of isolation from the outside world can induce a detachment from reality.


Stephan Paddock, mass murderer of the 2017 Las vegas shootings, who killed 60 people and injured 867, was similarly an avid video gamer with poor mental hygiene habits.

Studies have also shown that video game use is associated with a decrease in empathy and other socially desirable behavior.

In Pakistan and India too, the violent mobile game pugby which can be downloaded into mobiles without needing much memory space and internet bandwidth, has been similarly associated with unprecedented hyper-violent crimes among children. This has lead to its ban.

India banned pubgy in 2020.


Beheadings, Mass Murders, Suicides: 10 Times PUBG Killed In Real Life


So you can see from such examples that video games can cause or be one of the causes in aberrant behavior.


I personally played the video game Streetfighter around 25 years back as a teenager in friends house and used to play a bit and mainly watch expert players in arcades. I was interested in hatha yoga and martial arts back then, and enjoyed such simulated games as entertainment, and even found myself aping the moves at times.

Fear of being addicted and wasting valuable time and money, led me to keep away from such games later on. My interest in other fields also helped me in this regard. You can say I grew out of that phase.

Like guns, violent video games is also good business, and a lot of money can perhaps also fund dubious research papers to prove that video games are not linked to any violence and even increase sociability, compassion and empathy. I know of similar such tactics for product endorsement in other areas, so it is important to do ones due diligence in verifying the authenticity of such research bodies.

 

So... apparently if we banned violent video games and then made sure everybody had shyt tons of guns and ammo, everything would be fine....

Sorry... Not buying it.

 

There are many other causes such as violent films and video games is just one of them.

5 Times The Chucky Movies Inspired Horrifically Real Acts Of Murder And Torture

A thousand small leaks can sink a large ship. So identifying the leaks and patching them up might prevent a strategic failure.

 

Sure... fix the small leaks.

Totally ignore the missing section of the hull that is easy access to guns, everything will be fine.

 

https://www.star-telegram.com/news/nation-world/national/article258174698.html







One of the many beauties of public education is that locally elected school boards help shape curriculum to match community norms and needs,” the statement read. “In Wyoming, the vast majority of households have firearms. It is important for students to safely learn about and respect things they will encounter in their everyday lives.”

Hunt and Skelton added that students are not required to take part if they don’t want to, and an “alternative assignment” is available. “To date, no students have requested an alternate unit or assignment,” the statement said.

 

Well, there ya' go. The ultimate Retrumplcan solution. Arm the kiddies. Next guy who sticks his AR-15 into a classroom will be blown away by the armed and ready 10 year olds! We might also equip them with bullet proof vests. The NRA will be proud!

 

There's roughly 90 million registered firearm owners the US, a little more than 5%of them are members of the NRA. None of its members have ever been involved in any mass shootings. Their total political contributions are less than 5 million a year on average.
Why do you feel they're such a driving force in 2nd amendment rights and firearm legislation?
Or are they just "gun nut ground zero" in your mind?

 

You conveniently ignore/do not mention the fact that Ramos, according to articles written about him was a victim and a target of frequent school bullying, a form of emotional and often even physical violence that is emotionally very damaging, especially when it comes to children who are still developing emotionally, and is very often the motivator behind many school shooting incidents, where a teenager opens fire in a crowded school building. People being targeted with this behavior often feel that they're being treated unfairly, because the system, the teachers, the authorities and anyone in a position of power are impotent and won't do anything to stand up for the victim being bullied. Of course they will then resort to violence. They see no other way out because the system fails to act. Has absolutely nothing to do with video games, and everything to do with being treated like shit by your community, as once again, this is behavior that far out-dates the era of video games.

You still haven't explained to me where all the 19th century and earlier, pre-movies and pre-video games violence and mass murders emanated from.

Based on what I know about the Stephan Paddock-case, Paddock's poison of choice was the video poker machine, another no guns/no violence type of gaming option, unless you happen to live in the Old West. Hardly a reason to go postal, unless he gambled himself into some heavy debt and decided to get away with not paying in his desperation. In which case, it was his own fault for not having any self-control with his finances.

I've seen many examples of holy religious writings, texts and teachings causing or being one of the causes in aberrant behavior. So would you also like to ban the Bible and the Qur'an as well? Islam hasn't been a very peaceful religion as of late. Al-Qaida, Isis (Daesh), and the extreme fundamental mind processes of the Afghanistan Taliban movement come to mind as immediate examples of religion doing exactly what you accuse video games of doing. With way more proven instances. The Catholic church frequently covers up very serious cases of pedophilia and helps their priests get away with it. Shall we ban the Christian faith now? It has ruined many children's lives.

Likewise, I see many examples of alcohol causing or being one of the causes in aberrant behavior. As a life-long straight edge who has never touched the stuff, I ask you, why isn't alcohol fully banned already? While you whine and moan about video games, I see hundreds, if not even thousands of alcohol-related cases of violence happening each year. All cases actually verified by legal authorities and reliable statistics, yet nobody bats an eye. Where's the moral panic there?

Listen, dude, you're literally scraping the bottom of the barrel here. You keep listing these most extreme of fringe cases and making the claim that video gamers habitually kill every day, when in reality the video gaming connections are few and far between. We're talking about sub-1% of all cases, compared to how many active video gamers there are in the world. You're attempting to demonize an entire culture and form of entertainment, all the while ignoring everything else that is wrong with these people's lives who commit these acts. You keep mentioning Breivik, a mentally very ill man (paranoid schizophrenia) who has the capacity to do violence regardless of where he draws his inspiration from. Breivik BTW enjoys Norse mythology as well, and has declared himself Odinist. So, shall we now ban all things viking as well? It was clearly an influence to his actions.

Put things to perspective, man. Something like less than 100 gamers in recorded history of games have supposedly killed people in ways where it can at least in certain ways be connected to gaming. And even then, often unsatisfactorily. And all the while people keep ignoring the fact that the Breivik murders, and the Stephan Paddock-case, and all the similar incidents of gun violence could've been averted with stricter, stronger gun control that would've prevented these people from getting their deadly weapons in the first place! Thus rendering them impotent to act.

Cite sources.

Which studies?