259: Gunners and Gamers

warmonkey

New member
Dec 2, 2009
84
0
0
C4N4DUCK18 said:
I think it's obvious that video games (whether they be Shooters or platform games, etc.) make children more aggressive. If a child can't get passed a point in a game, most often times they're going to react aggressively. By aggressive I mean jumping up and down, screaming and yelling, cursing and so on. The real topic should be whether or not shooters are more prone to make children more aggressive than other types of games. As for the article, I feel it was well written, though I think more info was taken from those guy's at that gun forum than anything else. The story about the punk trying to buy a sniper rifle made me laugh a little, but it really just made me disappointed. To think that kids could be that dumb is really depressing. Perhaps North America should adopt a better education system, to make today's youth more educated in the world around them. If children want weapons to "Headshot some Noobs, like in Halo!" than there is something really wrong with the way kids are taught.
I agree with your last point, but that's not anything that has or will be taught in schools.
Getting back to your first point: If a kid freaks out and throws a temper tantrum over a game, their god damned parents should be there to tell them to stop acting like an idiot and calm the hell down.
The ACR/Headshot punk also clearly lacked responsible parents.

Anecdote: Cousin-in-law is a nurse. She had at one point been working with cancer patients. Later transfered and was working with child births. She did that for a while, but had to leave because it was too depressing.
Yeah, bringing new life into the world was more depressing than dealing with people who were dying.

Having had a parent with cancer, and maybe this was just a local thing, but all the patients getting treatment were generally all in very good moods. They were talking to eachother, making jokes, and generally just enjoying themselves.
She had to get out of the childbirths because she said she couldn't take it anymore -- girls showing up alone. Nobody else, not family, not the father, just the pregnant girl. No smiles. Not a joyous occasion, just a life-altering problem. I know I couldn't deal with that.
I'm sure some of those kids grow up fine, but I'm sure some wind up like the Headshot kid. Completely lacking in any support or direction as they're growing up. Teaching them right from wrong is too much work.

Kids don't need to learn more about the world around them, they need to learn more about how to act, think and behave like a human being.

For the record I started playing video games on an Atari 2600 in the early 80s and got my first gun at 6 (obviously a .22 :D ). It wasn't mine to control at all times, nobody would do that -- I could only use it at the range, and for many years I wasn't to touch any of our guns without my dad knowing.

And ya know what? Being around guns from such a young age made me a less violent person. I actually recall a time in elementary school, at a point where I lacked any friends (not a single one), where a kid picked a fight with me. I fought back. His friends showed up. The thought occurred to me that if this escalation continued, some serious shit could happen -- it would be absolutely trivial for me to kill any and all of them. The only thing stopping that escalation from happening was my own self-control; even then I had a mighty disdain for most people and wouldn't trust them to be responsible any further than I could throw 'em.

So, yeah, a few years after War Games came out and a few years before I would be able to understand that movies have messages I had on my own, thanks to the responsibility and respect for life my parents taught me, figured out that the only way to win is to not play at all. Not in some ephemeral allegorical example, but with the hardness of reality and personal involvement.

It's not something I've brought up with many, but all the kids I knew growing up who were avid shooters and who had good parents who taught them about firearm safety and respect for others in general.. none of them were violent. None of them got into fights, none of them were into wanton destruction or desecration of others' property.
 

Croix Sinistre

New member
Oct 25, 2009
201
0
0
I feel like this is just rehash of the "kids dont know video games from reality" argument.

While its true to an extent, being a gamer has had no effect on how i handle and fire my weapons. I began playing FPS games about the same time my dad had bought two firearms and i never had any desire to attempt to 'pwn some noobs' or any such nonsense, from day one i had a healthy respect for guns and what they are capable of.

Also, let these idiots who try video game things in real life kill themselves off. Let the racers try some NFS stuff and get killed, or the ACR guy to shoot himself because he took painkillers.
 

striker121

New member
Apr 28, 2010
8
0
0
First off, I'd just like to inform the non-American people here on gun laws in the US.
With the notable exception of Washington D.C. and some other major cities, rifles and pistols are available anywhere as long as you are of age and have no criminal past or mental issues. With the mental issues, someone brought it up before about the Columbine perpertrators. There was NO way of knowing that had mental illnesses, there was no evidence that had been brought up etc, so there really was NO possible legislation beyond outright banning that would have stopped it. Hell, even then they likely would have still used explosives and knives, but I digress. Now, with rifles its 16 years of age that you have to be to own one and 18 with pistols. NON of these weapons can be automatic in almost any circumstances. The ONLY exceptions are those owned by members of the military, those owned (sometimes this is allowed) by former members of the military, and those owned by place where you can rent out time with the automatics on the range. Now those assault rifles mentioned before and people buying them, the people who buy them are NOT buying military versions, they are buying civilian semi-auto versions of the same or similiar guns.
Personally I own a rifle myself (Age 16). My father gave it to me when I turned 16 and got a hunting license. (I don't actually hunt but the license is needed for owning a gun, I'm actually a pacifist.) Shooting is actually one of my favorite hobbies. Its fun, requires great skill in order to do well at distances, and shooting fruit whenever you can find produce is just epic fun :) (Hint, use watermelon, they explode nicely). Now with people using guns being more violent...thats just plain stupid. I grew up with guns, it was just another way of having fun, BUT CERTAINLY not a toy. Even at 6 I was old enough to understand that and know EXACTLY what would happen if I wasn't safe with a gun. Hell, most of the respect I learned I learned from shooting. At 10 I had a huge amount of disdain for most of my school because of that. I was able to realize that most of them were being immature idiots and not to copy what they did. Anyone who would argue video games causes violence in a NORMAL person would have to be an idiot. Unless they're under 8 or have mental issues then people already have their morals, shooting in game fake things isn't going to change them.

(Hope that was formed into a coherent wall of text, Its 1 in the morning and I spent way to much time writting that)
 

potemkin.hr

New member
Dec 8, 2009
35
0
0
Gummy said:
I also don't like your use of statistics, 'there are 40% more deaths caused by motor vehicles than guns' says nothing, I assure you the population of motor vehicle users is a lot more than 40% higher than the number of people that own or are regularly around guns.
Good point. Seeing how much higher the number of people owning a driver's license and driving is than the number of users legally owning guns, but showing similar numbers of kills just shows how much higher the chances are for you to be hit by a stray (or intentional) bullet than to be hit on a road, in the case of equal numbers of cars & guns. The only thing why there are fewer gun related deaths is the constant exposure of the modern man to motor vehicles (this doesn't cover drunk rednecks driving and shooting at the same time).
 

Daemascus

WAAAAAAAAAGHHH!!!!
Mar 6, 2010
792
0
0
The fact the most of the morons from things like MW2 can get fire arms scares the hell out of me. Unless your gonna go hunting you dont need a gun, and if you want to shoot targets get a .22.
 

Silva

New member
Apr 13, 2009
1,122
0
0
I objected to this article the first time it was published, and I still object to it now.

This isn't journalism, this is a cardboard comparison between a potentially deadly, dangerous and unnecessary hobby and a harmless, completely unrelated one. It is using flawed logic and completely irrelevant statistics like the car deaths comparison (which, as someone already pointed out, does not include or consider the greater numbers and percentages of people with cars compared to guns) to promote this dangerous hobby.

This article will, quite likely, encourage gamers to (responsibly or not) take on and defend a hobby that is indefensible except in places where it is a legal one, which could mean more pressure for "the right to bear arms" to spread to places where it is quite emphatically not needed. Like my country.

Take your gun loving to a gun magazine read by Americans. This is a gaming magazine read by the whole world. While it might be appropriate in America, nations where arm-bearing is not considered a right are, to say the least, uninterested in this information.
 

Blackdoom

New member
Sep 11, 2008
518
0
0
I have used guns since I was a little kid starting off with simple air soft rifles and working my way up to proper rifles. I agree with the point about education and knowledge of weapons because the one thing that was drilled into my mind about them was to respect them and always remember that they can kill a person if something goes slightly wrong or if I do something stupid.

Most of of my knowledge of guns came from hearing about them in a game or some where else and then doing research into them myself. Even though I know I can't buy them due to them being illegal I am still curious about them and how they work.
 

destiaer

New member
Jun 26, 2010
43
0
0
Very impressive and dissisive article. I whole-heartedly agree with many of the points in here, but of course, disagree with some. And I will not stand for someone taking away my rights as a human being that I've had for more than 200 years before I was born. People will kill no matter what. It's not the guns' fault that people are killing, it's the people. They'd do it with anything they could find.

Sad, really, when you think about it.
 

akmarksman

New member
Mar 28, 2008
593
0
0
I grew up shooting a Winchester Model 69 and a 69A and a M1 Carbine long before I got into "murder simulators"/FPS games.

I was saddened when Columbine happened and get angry when politicians in blue states think that removing all guns makes society safer. It doesn't.

Barry Soetoro/Barrack Hussein Obama's Chicago...handguns are banned there,but it's more violent there than ever. 8 people died,and 52 were shot..
http://www.thisis50.com/profiles/blogs/chicago-out-of-control-mayor

I thought these blue states were the safe havens from the evil gun toting red states..apparently not.
Ted Kennedy's car has killed more people than all of my rifles combined..and I have about 8 of them.ALL of them are "vintage/old" guns.

I've been gaming and shooting guns since the 1980s and I live in Alaska..you would think the odds are that I would have had to shoot someone or something(charging bear,charging moose) by now.

I still say I would rather get up close and personal with my pocketknife if someone had intent to kill me whether I am in my car or my house..why use a gun? It's just more ammunition for politicians to take away legal guns in legal citizen's hands.

Fuck..give me a hammer and let me bludgeon the sonofabitch to death..a lot more bloody,but maybe after a few dozen hammer deaths,they will be licensed and registered and not sold to anyone under 18 and have to pass a NICS/FBI background check.

Citizens,put down your guns and pick up your chainsaws,your axes and your hammers..guns are for n00bs..strike down your enemy with your tool made of iron and wood.
 

Unesh52

New member
May 27, 2010
1,375
0
0
BrotherRool said:
Agree about the statistics. There's a quote from around the turn of the century that goes, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." While statistics have their uses, they can easily mislead, and should always be taken with a grain of salt. Yes, numbers never lie -- but that's only because they don't say very much.

BrotherRool said:
You're also falling into the trap of 1 death is a tragedy and 30 000 is a statistic. Sure 15 000 deliberate shootings is a lower number than 30 000. But listen. 15 000 people died. That's every single person you have every loved or known in this world. Maybe it's every single person you've ever had contact with. You can't fob it off with comparisons, instead you've got to look at each life and wonder if it was really worth losing.
This is a bit impractical I think. The idea you're trying to get across is that human life is invaluable, and therefore should be protected at all costs, but if policy makers adhered to the letter of that sort of ideology, we'd all live in gov. issued bubble suits (exaggerating, of course). There has to be a point at which you just say, "it's worth the risk that some people are going to die." Where that point is has to be determined by comparing the number of potential fatalities to the cost of preventing them. It's an abstract, blurry point, but it exists, and it needs a good hard looking at.

...I forget (or never heard), is it the liberals or the conservatives advocating fire-arms regulations?
 

Gummy

New member
Oct 24, 2007
72
0
0
Ari Brown said:
There's a saying that goes: "Guns don't kill people. People kill people." and I tend to think that has weight to it. Do video games make children more violent? I can't say but if my knowledge of history has taught me anything, if someone wants to kill badly enough, they'll find a way. The method is just pudding.
destiaer said:
It's not the guns' fault that people are killing, it's the people. They'd do it with anything they could find.
But why make it easy for them?

At least with a melee weapon, the killer is less detached from the violence. it takes more passion and motivation to club or stab someone to death. it's personal, rather than a thoughtless, distant, even accidental pull of a trigger. if someone is forced to confront the brutality of their actions right in their face, it may force them to calm down and reconsider the taking of another human life. and even if they are still committed to follow through, at least the victim would have a vastly improved chance of survival. much easier to run away from a bat than a bullet

destiaer said:
And I will not stand for someone taking away my rights as a human being that I've had for more than 200 years before I was born.
It's not a human right to own a weapon. it may be a constitutional right in your nation, and that just makes you fortunate (or unfortunate) to be born there.
I think that any government that upholds such a right should put priorities like education and healthcare even higher though. Education because everyone should know why such a right exists, how it came to be and why it should not be abused. and healthcare, because with that many guns around you're going to need it.

by the way, it just occurred to me that the constitutional right to bear arms doesn't (to my knowledge) specify firearms. it could mean swords or clubs or flails.
If bombs or grenades or rocket launchers are contraband, these are just as much 'arms' as guns. why not ban guns too, and just allow people to carry swords?
---

RvLeshrac said:
Where do you think all those terrorists get weapons?
The government supplied them
RvLeshrac said:
In most of the first world, it would be considered treason, which is a capital offence, to sell weapons to terrorists.
Interesting point, are you saying the govt should be tried for treason? bold words my friend, got the balls to follow through?
 

RvLeshrac

This is a Forum Title.
Oct 2, 2008
662
0
0
Gummy said:
RvLeshrac said:
Where do you think all those terrorists get weapons?
The government supplied them
RvLeshrac said:
In most of the first world, it would be considered treason, which is a capital offence, to sell weapons to terrorists.
Interesting point, are you saying the govt should be tried for treason? bold words my friend, got the balls to follow through?
Yes. What I don't have is the trillions of dollars necessary.

Nice try at snark, though. Really amazing how you called me out by re-stating what was obviously my point to begin with. You're clearly related to the awesome guy what explains the joke not five seconds after it was told.
 

Del-Toro

New member
Aug 6, 2008
1,154
0
0
A lot of the people who scream about banning guns "for the children" or for whatever self righteous high horse reason they have are the same people who scream that weed and other drugs ought to be legalized or else the smugglers will have their monopoly need to remember something. If crooks and killers want to get their hands on a gun, they can get it from the Black Market with little difficulty. Your beloved mommy state can't stop them because the soulless legislators in Washington/Ottawa/London/Berlin/Tokyo/Moscow that you worship can't stop the flow of illegal goods. They couldn't stop something as impotent as alchahol, they can't stop the trade of something as powerful as weapons. If there's a will there will always be a way. All you'd be doing is keeping the guns out of the hands of responsible, law abiding people. It's not as if people need guns to kill anyway. Once again, if there's a will, there's a way.
 

mageroel

New member
Jan 25, 2010
170
0
0
Not saying I disagree with the article but
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the number of people killed in the U.S. by firearms in the year 2005 was 31,000, but the number of people killed in traffic accidents was 43,150, making driving in the U.S. almost 40 percent more dangerous than guns - a fact you don't hear a lot of talk about on Capitol Hill.
is just not a good comparison - not because cars and guns are eternal in America blah blah see comment above, but because there are far more cars owners in america than there are gun owners - the figures don't mean shit because you can't compare them like this. The numbers should be a least near each other to compare, or use percentages, not just blindly say "oh yeah, and there are far more deaths in car accidents." It's like comparing the death-by-guns to a natural death, or death-by-cancer or something.

I understand you might argue that it is about it being dangerous rather than the actual figures, but it's something to keep in the back of your mind: people are driving a lot more without lethal accidents, the actual chance of getting in a lethal car accident is way lower than the chance of getting shot to death.

Also, I see a difference between cars and guns in use: cars are there for transporing you, whilst guns are made for killing. How can you compare those two without further information or arguments?

/rant now, I agree with the rest of the article.
 

Bradeck

New member
Sep 5, 2011
243
0
0
Great article. Showing this at my local range tomorrow to illustrate a point. Every week we get yahoos and city kids coming in for the day with newly bought gear from the local sporting goods store, who have no idea about gun safety. They just want to be like the Special Forces joes they see in COD or MOH. Everytime I feel like I'll get shot standing next to them, not due to malice, but to ignorance.

Thanks again for a great article. Really well put forward.