Authorities Blame Games for Sword Attack

[Kakashi on crack]

Ok...

the way I see this, yes video games were why he might have attacked, but the reason he attacked was cause the kid was obviously MENTALLY. FUCKING. UNSTABLE.

Yes, as much as I hate admitting it videogames might have been the cause, but any average person who still retains half their stability wouldn't have this happen; they'd put down the controller before they decide to start STABBING PEOPLE.

And the fact that they didn't take away the sword the first time *sigh*

I'm not claiming anyone deserved it, but that was a pretty stupid move to let him keep the swords if he was arrested in the past for using them as a weapon. It would be one thing if it was an accident that cut the old lady's foot, but that first case was obviously on file if he was arrested for it I.E. someone called the cops. I.E. someone was an idiot and didn't take his weapons away.

 

[Mailman]

I blame the Bronze Age on up.

 

[brodie21]

there should be some sort of screening test at birth that determines whether you are a psychopath or not. if you turn out to be a psychopath they should drop you off a cliff like the spartans did

 

[Samsont]

Yeah, but a psycho like that would have gone all murder happy if she had told him to turn of the cartoons too. Probably along with, turn off that music, clean your room, sweep the porch, go to bed, etc.

He's a violent and disturbed individual and if he had shot out two windows (if I were a cop) of my patrol car I would have shot him first. Send a lovable German Shep into that psycho's house I don't think so.

His own disturbed behavior caused these tragic events, not games.

Thank you for being a voice of reason. Video games no more caused this tragedy than Spongebob.

Video games don't kill people. Individuals with deep rooted psychological problems do.

Well, I think what they were really saying at the end is. It's a tragedy, and they hope that it isn't used in the anti video games stupidity.

 

[King of Wei]

What do you do with mentally unstable teenagers? Give them weapons! That'll only end well.
Tragedy aside this is kinda amusing. "Death by sword" stopped being common a few centuries ago.

 

[Samsont]

there should be some sort of screening test at birth that determines whether you are a psychopath or not. if you turn out to be a psychopath they should drop you off a cliff like the spartans did

The thing is...you aren't born a psychopath. You're turned into one by some sort of traumatic, or overly stressful event.

 

[Sinspiration]

Games get blamed for everything these days, from the common cold to impeding world destruction.
The question I have is simple, who wielded swords first? Humanity? Or Game characters?

Humanity.

So saying a human is inspired by a game to kill another human based on a game would be no different to blaming it on a history book or even a fictitious novel which is still based on history.

Savagery is a natural part of human history and, sadly, human nature, and what do we do these days? Blame video games.
All these idiots are starting to sound like broken records. If the kid was screwed up, don't blame video games. It didn't turn every other kid who played them into murderous little bastard. The kid was messed up.

 

[fundayz]

Aren't videogames prevalent enough these days to finally be considered more of a coincidence than a cause?

This, this and this. I'd say around 80%-90% of today's male teens play video games, most of them violent in one way or another.

It's like saying "wearing running shoes causes breaking and entering" because a lot of people happen to wear them when they B&E.

Perfect example of fallacious 'Correlation = Causation' reasoning. The real reason behind tragedies like these are underlying mental/social problems; video game addiction is more of a SYMPTOM rather than the actual problem.

 

[Mr. 47]

I never played Majora's Mask or Link's Awakening, which is the one where link shish kabobs his grammy?

 

[Jaime_Wolf]

You need a license to own a gun but you don't need a license to own a sword. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

It is profoundly easier to kill someone with a gun than a sword. Suggesting that their potential to cause damage is even remotely comparable is silly.

To be fair, the current laws are a mess in most of the US. Swords are almost invariably treated as typical fixed-blade knives, which makes things awkward for people carrying them (very few officers know about the legality of it and most just assume it would be illegal) and makes things seem crazy and unregulated when things like this happen. It's almost universally illegal to sell swords to people that young though, so at some point someone probably bought it for him.

But requiring a license for a sword seems pretty ridiculous since, in an average person's hands, they're probably less dangerous than a kitchen knife.

The real problem here, as it almost always is, is a troubled kid who had shown that he needed some sort of help or additional supervision repeatedly, but was simply put through the motions until he did something terrible enough to warrant decisive action. And now someone's dead and he'll probably never get any real help.

Wait, what? How the hell did he even get a sharp weapon?

Even my katana and daggers are blunt on purpose, because it's quite illegal to buy such objects. No shop will do that, you can sharpen them, but no battle-ready objects allowed.

Really? Where do you live? I own a properly sharpened Ghurka Kukri, and I'm in Britain.

Poland. It's illegal for stores to sell sharp weapons. Knives aren't considered weapons, talking about swords, katanas, daggers (used to stab, not slice bread). But like I said, it's perfectly legal for me or anyone else to sharpen it.

Maybe it's just online stores, as I didn't see any weapon stores in my city... Dunno. Fact is, my katana is blunt.

Swords are legally fixed-blade knives in most of the US - this puts them in the same category as kitchen knives or hunting knives. So yes, you can most definitely buy them sharp. Which is sort of reasonable - the average person is a lot more dangerous with a kitchen knife (easier to handle, easier to conceal) than with a sword. The overwhelming majority of sword shops I've seen here sell blunted swords though to avoid being associated with situations like this (and because the majority of swords sold here are for decoration only and wouldn't be of much use sharp anyway).

 

[alandavidson]

According to witnesses, his 77-year-old great-grandmother had asked him to turn off a videogame. Sigh.

I just hope this deranged teenager didn't also help fuel the seemingly never-ending anti-videogame blame-game.

Games were never blamed here. Grandma asked him to turn off the game and he went berserk and chop-happy. Games were not the motivation for the killing, not getting what he wanted was the motivation.

I'm all for defending video games when they are actually blamed for tragedy (as is the case in the Oslo massacre), but we need to be careful to not jump the gun and cry "they're blaming us again" when no one really is.

 

[James Crook]

If he's done this type of thing before then he is obviously messed up within his head. But nobody cares about that.

Talking about bad parenting, I'd just point out that the kid's great-grandmother was ONLY 77. If you're 77 and already a great-grandmother of a 14-year old kid, then when did your direct children marry and have kids themselves? Would that be good? I'd rather blame a dysfunctional family, considering the kid had friggin' swords that should have been kept away from him.
Let's do the math here folks: if she's 77, then she'd be a young parent, and maybe even a teen mom, as probably are the kid's parents and grandparents.
I blame poor parenting.

 

[RoBi3.0]

Recently a very well know Biblical historian announced that after years of rigorous research he is able to prove that just before Cain killed Able, the two had be playing a rather intense session of Street Fighter IV. Eventually Able bested Cain. Cain unable to cope with the defeat and filled with violent rage from to much video game use killed Able.

See boys and girls video games are the cause of all murders ever.

 

[ckam]

Why don't people blame the fact that he had a fucking sword?!

 

[HalfTangible]

To be fair, the police haven't said they agree with the eyewitnesses - just that the eyewitnesses say that the instigator was him being asked to turn off his game.

 

[ReservoirAngel]

See this is why nobody listens to these people any more.

 

[bulldogftw]

I don't blame video games, I blame the sword.

 

[MasterOfWorlds]

The kid obviously has problems that go beyond him simply playing videogames. The kid has been arrested three times and institutionalized? Take any and all things that might even be considered weapons out of reach. This is as much a case of bad parenting/supervision as it is lack of foresight.

Also, I own several swords, all of which are sharp enough to harm people, but have never felt the urge to pull them on anyone in a violent way.

 

[rokkolpo]

I see then.

cause it couldnt possibly be all those samurai, pirate, and knight movies that influenced this.

Or maybe that braveheart film.

I blame passion of the christ.
That had a lot of violence in it.

>_0

 

[MasterOfWorlds]

So... a 14 year old owning several swords... anyone see a problem here?

I've had most of my swords since about that age and even a little younger. I've never felt the urge to hurt people with them. Not that I'd hesitate if someone broke into my house, but that's a different situation altogether. XD