Anti-Game Critic Says "This Generation Will Give You Massacres"

[xptn40S]

Grossman apparently believes that we need to take steps to stop violence in schools in the same way we've made an effort to prevent fires. He pointed out that dozens of children are killed in schools every year by gun-toting maniacs, while not one has died in a fire in more than 50 years.

How......ignorant...narrow-minded...childish...insensitive...mean spirited...blatantly scaremongering...intellectually deprived...goat-fucking insane and holy bejeebus stupid does one have to be to actually believe that kind of depressingly high level of bullshit?

Whatever his agenda is, (which I don't care about in the slightest, because why would you begin to take just another Jack Thompson wannabe seriously?), he's doing a terrible job at keeping whatever integrity that he could have possibly had to have any kind of leg to stand on, but by the looks of it, I don't think that there's any need for anyone to call him out on this, since he's doing a pretty good job at crashing and burning all by himself.

 

[DragonStorm247]

His analogy doesn't even work. Firefighters don't prevent fires, they put them out. Fire is merely less lethal on average than guns.

 

[Skrag The Summoner]

Has this guy heard of south Korea? the most heavily gaming focused country in the world and yet how many shootings have been a result of video games over there?

some people love talking out of their own ass so much that they seem to think that they are spitting gospel

 

[Longstreet]

Why am i getting the feeling he is just bullshitting this to get free publicity?

This topic has discussed to death, the people that say "gamers are murdererzz" have been proven wrong time and time again. Yet they keep bringing it up.

What is most disturbing is that these kind of people are well respected and some people actually listen, and believe what these idiots say.

There have been reports stating that crime rates actually DROPPED when a big AAA game was released.

But lets get some other arguments in here.
-He kills real people, we out smart ones and zeros
-He creates something called KILLOLOGY.
-Last i checked, no one was killed by a dvd. It was always the guns that caused people to die(and no, not trying to let this turn into a gun debate)

It's not that the people who decide to go on mass killing sprees had some sort of metal issue or other severe issues with access to legally purchased firearms. No it's because they play Dora the explorer.

Like i said in the gameviolence debate news topic from yesterday. If someone would walk in a room full of people and start shooting, without EVER having played a game. Everyone who wants to keep guns (2nd amendment and all that) start screaming "guns don't kill people, people kill people."

But when the same thing happens and he has one video game in his house, that gets the blame.

Seriously how bloody daft are these people and who the hell put them in charge.

 

[SageRuffin]

So on one hand we have the usual pablum about "games are making kids into killers!" without even approaching the concept of just keeping kids from playing them (with some of that "parental supervision" stuff I heard about somewhere), and on the other hand he calls for hunting down and killing others and apparently advocates the continued presence of US troops in Afghanistan (which has gotten us exactly what over the past decade-plus?).

I mean, the term "killology" is enough to scoff at, but now I wonder if the US Army does intelligence testing as a part of its officer selection.

It's an inside joke within the Air Force (not sure if the other branches indulge this) that both the Army and Marines are a few fries short of full combo meal from McDonald's. It's all in good fun though. Usually.

I respect this guy on the grounds alone that he's a retired Lieutenant Colonel, but that's where it ends (also because I've never heard of this guy before now, so I'm greatly lacking the prerequisite amount of fucks to give at the moment). Not to mention that you'd think a retired veteran would be the first person to realize that handling a weapon in a video game is way different than handling that same weapon in real life.

 

[MiskWisk]

I for one agree with his point if not his reasoning.

If CoD doesn't stop being made, I think I might snap simply because that would be more interesting.
[sup]Disclaimer: I do not actually agree with this guy, don't quote me as such please and thank you[/sup]

 

[Generic_Dave]

This is just ludicrous. There has been, and continues to be a huge decline in violent crime across the Western World over the last three decades. To say there has been a "dramatic uptick in real world violence", let alone to try to connect this fictional upsurge in violence to video games, is preposterous and disingenuous.

 

[TheMadDoctorsCat]

He seems paranoid enough that few will take him seriously.

Lord, I hope that's true.

Apparently it's only ok to kill people that this guy thinks poses a "threat". When was the last time that the sovereign nation of Afghanistan invaded the US, exactly?

 

[Jodan]

maybe a rising population creates more competition for resourses increasing the tension in society creating more violence.
i'd look to Malthus before i look to Molyneux

 

[Hellfireboy]

First let me say that Grossman is not merely respected for his pedigree but for the quality of the theories that he has laid out in his several books. I have read On Killing and have heard him speak when he was invited by by Brigade Commander to speak to the 3rd BCT of the 101st Airborne Division before my first tour in Iraq. His ideas of video games being trainers for mass murderers is that he likens them to military style training, which pursues realism in the training environment, but lacking the control mechanism such as target identification and not shooting until told to do so. In truth his opinion comes from a place of being unfamiliar with how these games are actually made and how the missions are constructed. There are controls enforced in most of these games. Many shooters will penalize you for engaging a friendly or non-combatant target. Rescue missions where you are required to defend a non-combatant from hostiles is also a fairly common mission type. In CoD3 Mission mode there is a mission where you must rescue friendly rebels and another where you have the choice to rescue individuals that are about to be executed. Missions like this display the fire control and target acquisition disciplines that Grossman claims that video games don't have. Despite the fact that they get all the attention, games like Grand Theft Auto and the CoD2 airport mission are exceptions and not really the norm. The airport mission is actually skippable.

In 2007 the Department of Justice helped fund a study to see if there was a causal link between violent video games and actual violence. This study was later published as a book called "Grand Theft Childhood". What they found was that there was no link between violence in media and violence in real life and that often the focus on straw men like violent games detracted from attention to know contributors to violence such as economic status and mental health. Studies like this are often ignored because they don't say what people who want to find a scapegoat want to hear.

 

[somethingprofound]

I think you'll find they're called 'Multi-kills' *adjusts monocle*

 

[Alar]

"We cannot deter these people," he said. "All we can do is track them down and kill them."

So, the guy advocating genocide is gonna tell us how we're all too violent... right...

Oh, & youth violence, along with violent crime in the U.S. in general, has been going down for the past 18-ish years, so his argument is invalid on its face

Also, "killology"
That is all

NAH MAN! Movies 'n' shiz don't let YOU feel like you're killin' people! They just let you watch other people kill people! S'totally different, maaan~!

In all seriousness, people like this really make me cringe. Killology? Wut?

 

[Use_Imagination_here]

Aaaaand with the word "killology" he instantly loses any respect he gained with his prior accomplishments.

I mean killology? Really?

 

[Hellfireboy]

This is just ludicrous. There has been, and continues to be a huge decline in violent crime across the Western World over the last three decades. To say there has been a "dramatic uptick in real world violence", let alone to try to connect this fictional upsurge in violence to video games, is preposterous and disingenuous.

According to a report released this month by the Department of Justice, since 1993, firearm homicides are down 40% and "nonfatal firearm-related violent victimizations" are down 70% (http://bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/fv9311.pdf). During that same period some of the most realistic and violent shooters have seen release. At the same time, in a survey done by Pew Research, only 12% of Americans were able to correctly answer that gun violence was declining with 56% thinking that it was going up (http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2013/05/07/gun-homicide-rate-down-49-since-1993-peak-public-unaware/). The majority of the argument seems to be based on a fearful, hyperbolic perception of reality rather than an objective gathering of facts. Unfortunately this means that, since one side of the argument is fundamentally based on a mythology that they hold to with the tenacity of a starving dog defending a scrap of bone, the voices of reason are in the end screaming at the wind.

 

[antidonkey]

We can't have video games teaching kids to kill......that's the military's job once they turn 18.

If find it very hard to take this guy's opinions seriously. I'm sure he has some valid points but when a guy who's killed real people in reality is telling me to stop killing fake people in make believe......well, he just sounds like a major douche-canoe.

 

[Mr. Q]

I'm pretty sure a 9 year old would find this d-bag mentally incompetent and unfit for... well, anything.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

The hypocrisy is strong in this one.

More like the desperate need for attention and media coverage.

Nothing much to see here, it's another right-wing nutjob thinking all of us are foaming at the mouth whenever we aren't given life bars and hit boxes to mess with. He'll flap his gums, his already conquered audience will freak out, he'll get a seat on The View - and the rest of the planet will not give a single fuck.

 

[Retardinator]

Oh for fuck's sake, here we go again...

No, I don't think any additions to this post are necessary.

 

[Lieju]

I don't know. My great grandfather killed a lot of people and didn't have any video-games.

I've played video-games my whole life and only ever murdered two people. (One of them totally deserved it, though, so let's say one murder)

 

[Johnson McGee]

So what data is in direct contradiction of his assertions?

/Snip

I know I know. Correlations don't prove anything, but the burden of proof is on the accuser. The man blindly speaks nonsense.

You can't say based on that data that violent video games cause a decrease in violent crime. However, that data makes a very strong case that violent video games don't cause it to increase either.