I agree with your last point, but that's not anything that has or will be taught in schools.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.
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 ). 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.