Your thoughts on gun violence in video games?

[Lord Jesseus]

Do you even know how the newtown guy got the weapons? They weren't his. They were his mothers. He didn't go to the store and buy them. He took them. Stole them.

Ok. So?
Instead of "gun restrictions could have prevented him from buying guns which he used to kill 20 people" its "gun restrictions could have prevented his mother from buying guns which he used to kill 20 people". INCREDIBLE.
Are you really suggesting that stealing from your mother is easier than arranging an illegal arms deal?

And he is just one example, I was speaking in more general terms.

 

[Outlaw]

Ok. So?
Instead of "gun restrictions could have prevented him from buying guns which he used to kill 20 people" its "gun restrictions could have prevented his mother from buying guns which he used to kill 20 people". INCREDIBLE.
Are you really suggesting that stealing from your mother is easier than arranging an illegal arms deal?

And he is just one example, I was speaking in more general terms.

Except, you know, his mother got them legally and was of sound mind up to the point of her death. So she would have passed any arbitrary muddy laws you could concoct.

 

[More Cowbell]

I remember that after the Utoya killings in Norway, in which Anders Breivik killed over 70 people, games got blamed as well, at least partially. This was because Breivik, apparently, locked himself in his house for over a year to play World of Warcraft or something. Because of that, games get the blame. But what about social isolation? People who play a lot of video games are more likely to be out of touch with others, and lose sensibility towards others. I think that may be a bigger factor than actual violence in video games.

I also recall reading about a research that proved a connection between the likeliness of people committing murder and the number of refrigerators they owned. Now this may be a little far fetched, but something similar could be happening with video games. How many murderers also play the trumpet? How many enjoy romantic comedies? If you look hard enough, you can always find a connection between two things.

 

[M. Rock]

.....so now is it safe to suggest that we should rename this The Newton Shooting Discussion Thread? That's kinda what it's turning into.....

I'd chime in something else about how gun violence in games----->gun violence IRL is bull, but I don't think there isn't anything that hasn't been said

 

[Lord Jesseus]

Except, you know, his mother got them legally and was of sound mind up to the point of her death. So she would have passed any arbitrary muddy laws you could concoct.

Fine, I'll concede that point.

But you're really still missing the big picture and my actual overall point. I don't really give a shit about this one case. I never even looked into the actual incident and knew almost nothing about it aside from the basic details until you started using is as your rebuttal.
I'm saying "there is probably some sort of link between the rates of gun violence and the availability of guns", and you're saying "but this one guy actually stole the guns from his mother SO THERE!"

I don't see how anyone could possibly think that the ready availablilty of firearms is not at least partially responsible for the amount of deaths caused by firearms.
And I think you'd be hard pressed to argue that the same amount of murders would be able to be carried out successfully without guns either - when it comes to killing, guns are simply one of the best tools there are.

As far as "arbitrary muddy laws", I would argue that the fewer guns, the better, ideally close to none. But that's obviously never going to happen in America.

 

[Lee]

I don't see how anyone could possibly think that the ready availablilty of firearms is not at least partially responsible for the amount of deaths caused by firearms.

yeah, no shit

spot the countries that don't arm their civilians

 

[Lord Jesseus]

In regards to Lee's graph, it's worth noting that America also beats out all those countries in terms of overall murder as well.

Their ranking for non-gun related homocides are a bit lower, though.

 

[Lee]

i'd wager that US firearm-related murder per 100,000 single-handedly beats the overall murder per 100,000 of nearly every country on the list. school shootings etc always bring a spotlight to the debate but focusing on the 20 that died last week is dismissive of the 8000+ people that were shot dead in the US last year and the countless more who were seriously injured or robbed at gunpoint.

i hate to sound naive but i am in a country virtually unaffected by guns and i need to know -- what are the benefits of your current gun control laws? i often see the argument 'it allows us to empower ourselves/make us feel safe' but that seems entirely contradictory because even if I had an entire arsenal at my disposal I would never feel safe or empowered in a country where there are 88 civilian-owned guns per 100 people. Rather, I'd always feel a little threatened.

 

[mattj]

Note the distinct lack of African countries in that graph. No skewing going on there, of course.

 

[frogoholic101]

Note the distinct lack of African countries in that graph. No skewing going on there, of course.

Did you miss the 'in the developed world' part of the graph title?

 

[mattj]

Yeah, they are really quite similar items there is no real difference of danger between guns and knives. I heard US military have decided scrapping buying guns because knives are a cheaper alternative.

No I saw it. I got the whole "Look at that America with it's much higher gun death rate. Shame shame." While ignoring all the other countries with high gun rates. "Let's just look at these countries and exclude any countries that don't fit the point we're trying to make".

 

[frogoholic101]

But isn't America more like, say, Australia than it is like Burundi?

 

[shade]

No I saw it. I got the whole "Look at that America with it's much higher gun death rate. Shame shame." While ignoring all the other countries with high gun rates. "Let's just look at these countries and exclude any countries that don't fit the point we're trying to make".

all i see in this post is another backwards american that is too blinded by over-patriotism to comprehend that some things that america does may be flawed. comparing america, one of the most powerful countries in the world, to a country like uganda or somalia would be ridiculous.

making guns legal just creates a gun culture, gun culture leads to gun related crimes. its so simple it pains me to see people arguing that making firearms legal is a good thing.

 

[Codraroll]

A little off-topic, but maybe relevant to the website as a whole:

If killing people efficiently was a metagame, handguns would be a game breaker. They are easily available without raising much attention, require little preparation and/or skill to kill somebody (at least compared to any other metod), are reliable, not likely to hurt the user, easy to conceal, high mobility, can be used several times in any desirable timespan, have a very high damage output compared to the amount of power they require to operate, can kill at a distance, can kill selectively, and can be used by almost anybody, in almost any state of mind, in almost any environment.

In short: Guns for Ubers.

No other known method or item can claim the same efficiency of killing people. I believe the world to be a slightly safer place without them. Or at least, I'd prefer the government to have the "monopoly of violence" as Hobbes (or Locke?) put it. I don't think having highly-efficient murder items being strewn all over the civilian society is a very good idea.



Having them in games, however? Actually, I'm all for that. We all get those moments where we just want to punch somebody. Why not blow off steam by smashing a virtual avatar of some stranger in a game? It's certainly better than doing it in real life. At least games keep people occupied enough not to do other stuff. Graffitti crime, drug use and youth gang violence has dropped drastically over here since the introduction of video games. Give your average, bored teenager the choice between sitting inside shooting people on a screen, or freeze his ass of outside trying to spray-paint a dong on a school wall, which he knows will get him into trouble. I think most people would choose the former. Video games are a safer spare time occupation for youths than the stuff earlier generations used to do. Also, while not entirely like real life, guns in games can "quench the thirst" many young males have for violence. They may not have the recoil or the loud bang as real guns do, but in a virtual world you can be a lot sloppier with safety, you don't have to clean them, and - while somewhat brutal - you can see the effect they have on people. Without killing or hurting anybody.

 

[Gabe]

I think I'm just going to opt out of discussion in this thread because the narrative is too slanted here. On a website that's mostly composed of gamers, I don't expect many to agree with the idea that video game violence (specifically shooting) has negative effects on our society.

I mean, others have made great points & they are dismissed without much consideration & that is depressing to see. I used to play video games frequently & bought into this idea when I started studying sociology & psychology. I don't think people should ever marry themselves to pleasures when it comes to argumentation. Why more people don't find it alarming that the most popular form of escapism in our country is one where the individual is placed in a position where they kill without consequence and are rewarded for it is hard to digest. Add to that classist & ableist comments peppered throughout this thread it becomes clear that the discussion in itself is useless for there is no Pavlovian effect on some people.

 

[Stratos]

"excluding mexico"

ahahaha lee that graph is shameful

 

[vonFiedler]

I think I'm just going to opt out of discussion in this thread because the narrative is too slanted here. On a website that's mostly composed of gamers, I don't expect many to agree with the idea that video game violence (specifically shooting) has negative effects on our society.

I mean, others have made great points & they are dismissed without much consideration & that is depressing to see. I used to play video games frequently & bought into this idea when I started studying sociology & psychology. I don't think people should ever marry themselves to pleasures when it comes to argumentation. Why more people don't find it alarming that the most popular form of escapism in our country is one where the individual is placed in a position where they kill without consequence and are rewarded for it is hard to digest. Add to that classist & ableist comments peppered throughout this thread it becomes clear that the discussion in itself is useless for there is no Pavlovian effect on some people.

Spectacular job opting out, but the only other person than you approaching the same opinion said he had scientific evidence and when I asked for it, he never replied. Was that too dismissive of me? With this "overwhelming narrative" of video gamers here, aren't you the one who is being dismissive here?

Did you watch the TotalBiscuit video? Penn & Teller? Have you seen the evidence suggesting that the news media are the ones supporting school shootings? Are you remotely aware that Dynasty Warriors is being blamed for this, or what kind of game that is? Have you seen all the stats we've posted that, while correlation does not equal causation, hurt your same fallacious arguments?

What do you have to say in response to my own entry to this conversation, that video games are about change and death (not unlike most songs being about love), and so why is a medium contemplative of death a bad thing?

Do you even realize that video games reward people for fighting on equal grounds 99% of the time? How does this fit into people shooting up schools?

Don't come in here and tell us we are married to our pleasure and thus everything we say is thus wrong. That's a fallacy. You are being thoroughly fallacious.

 

[verbatim]

"excluding mexico"

ahahaha lee that graph is shameful

Given the hug impact of the drug war in Mexico on its gun crime rate, it makes sense to leave it out of a graph detailing correlations between gun possession and gun death when so much of that death is a direct result of such a unique x factor.

 

[Trax]

No I saw it. I got the whole "Look at that America with it's much higher gun death rate. Shame shame." While ignoring all the other countries with high gun rates. "Let's just look at these countries and exclude any countries that don't fit the point we're trying to make".

It's excluding third world holes with no law enforcement, constant conflict and absurd poverty rates. You know, the countries that you damn well should be doing better than.

If you're going to compare national performance of the United States to countries like Zimbabwe and South Africa, that's just pathetic.

Why more people don't find it alarming that the most popular form of escapism in our country is one where the individual is placed in a position where they kill without consequence and are rewarded for it is hard to digest.

It's not alarming because people should be able to clearly identify the difference between a video game and reality.

 

[mattj]

Given the hug impact of the drug war in Mexico on its gun crime rate, it makes sense to leave it out of a graph detailing correlations between gun possession and gun death when so much of that death is a direct result of such a unique x factor.

because there couldn't be any unique factor to the united states no it has to be gun ownership, unlike those other countries

 

[Lee]

maybe you could explain it to us then? i assume from your sarcasm that it's obvious but i must remind you that not all of us hail from the US so i'd be interested to hear which factor is present over there that accounts for such a horribly bloated gun murder rate?

hint: make sure that factor is not also present in present in say, Britain or Australia or Ireland or Israel or Spain or Japan or Greece or Estonia or well, any other developed country on Earth.

 

[Woodchuck]

wow this turned into a gun control thread fast
maybe we should implement some... gun control control?

anyway, I think most of the basis for people pointing to gun violence in video games as a cause for greater violence is the fact that the demographic for people who tend to commit these crimes (reclusive young males) is part of the section of the population that plays the most video games (young males). It is true that, as Kevin Garrett has pointed out, video games do have an effect on the mind. I'm not entirely sure of the details of the study he is referring to (such as exactly when the subjects were tested [during playing video games, immediately after, hours/days after...]) but these effects seem to be more likely to cause impulsive, smaller-scale crimes--and not sustain rage long enough to fuel a massacre.

Glorifying violence is not a good thing, but censoring gun violence as gameplay in video games is the wrong approach. It is more important on the part of the parent to give the child context around the violence rather than sheltering children from it altogether--they are, after all, going to be exposed to it eventually.

 

[Firestorm]

Also awaiting the unique challenges facing America that makes it comparable to Somalia, Uganda, and other countries that are obviously in the same level as the United States. After all, using places like Canada and the United Kingdom is so unfair. G8 countries? Really? You think America is a G... Hmm.

 

[ssbbm]

@: Lee

It's because the US is so radically different from basically every other single country due to a unique culture which is essentially the forced mixing of a bunch of other different subcultures. Homogenity leads to peace: look at Lee's graph and you notice that Japan and South Korea, both nation-states, have the lowest rates of violence. America, on the other hand, is so radically mixed that it's basically impossible to ensure peace when it is, to an extent, like Africa; except, instead of the Hutu and the Tutsi you have the Whites and the Blacks. This is exacerbated by the unique "Southern Honor" where honor essentially is more important than life. This type of "honor" is also seen to an extent in the African-American culture.

I am sure that without guns we would still have quite a large amount of violence (since that's American culture in a nutshell)!

 

[Lee]

^ you think the usa has a monopoly on racial diversity?

seriously?