Call Goes Out For Shooter Cease Fire

[Formica Archonis]

This is like those people who tell me not to buy gas on a certain day, right?

 

[Dansrage]

Yeah, no.

A mentally ill man shoots up a school, that has no relation to me or my hobby in any way, I don't even live in the same country that it happened in.

I will happily play my murder simulators, because I don't own guns nor do I have any significant mental problems.

 

[Brad Shepard]

You know, Ill play all shooters on that day just to spite this shit, because they are blaming video games for that crazy bastard shooting up the school.

 

[mattaui]

I suggest if you want to do anything, you actually -do- something. These 'Day of not doing x' non-events are ridiculous.

We all know, as gamers, that no amount of digital bodycount turns you into a killer.

Of course, there's a reason we all find simulated killing so enticing, and that's because we're human beings.

 

[Denamic]

Does this include characters that uses guns in other types of games? Like Rozalin from Disgaea? Because she's one of the characters I use the most.

 

[Goliath100]

Since you mentioned Fox News, you must surely be familiar with the false equivalence fallacy.

It is the "fair and balanced" notion that knives and the like are equally as deadly as guns.

As long as people hold that artificial equity true, it's virtually impossible to argue safety.

I wanted to say this for some time:
"Fair & Balanced" is an oxymoron. "To be Fair" is to give all sides equal room to maneuver. "To balance something" is to make something that arn't equal to become equal. For Fox News to be "Fair & Balanced" they have to only cover storys that is mostly equal from the outset.

"We are simply making a statement that we as Gamers are not going to sit back and ignore the lives that were lost,"

Then fight for Gun Control maybe. People that guilt trip others to feel better is less moral than the person that just don't give a shit.

 

[thenumberthirteen]

I can see how this could be a good idea. Though I fear that the media will strengthen the link between gaming and shootings because of this. Which is a pain.

I probably won't sign up, but then again I haven't played a shooter in a while anyway.

 

[kajinking]

I see no issue with this and will support it.

 

[Baresark]

LoL, it was only a matter of time before someone started yelling gun control. A person wanted to take the lives of these people, and no amount of gun control would have prevented that. He would have used homemade pipebombs, or taken a knife and started killing people. It's a mental health issue more than anything.

No, Why should we not make this about Gun Control? The People over at Fox News aren't talking about "Games & Violence" because They believe one cause the other. They do it becuase they don't want us to talk about Gun Control. I say we hurt them, let it backfire. Make it about Gun Control, make it about the fact that the world would be a better place if that guy had a knife insted. If the US had some bloody Gun Control the nut would not kill as many as he did. This idea that if we can't stop something completely we should not decrease the damage is the idea of someone that will do nothing that matter.

That is ridiculous. The world would only be a better place if he wasn't mentally deranged. I don't know why people insist that if someone gets away with one murder it is so much better than someone getting away with 26 murders. At the risk of sounding too conservative, the difference isn't big enough to ignore the root cause of it. Also, I grew up around guns, I have shot lots of guns and most of my friends are all gun owners. I don't own a gun because I don't like them, but I also don't know a single gun owner that is a murderer. It's just bad policy to let a psychopath determine rules for an entire society. I'm free not to own a gun and I do not feel threatened by people who own guns. It's not about gun control, it's about social and mental health.

 

[Baresark]

The problem is that those are more linked to social issues more than anything. Poor people, drug and sex trade, things like that.

That's been debunked time and again.

To sound cliche, guns don't kill people, people kill people.

But they are made a whole lot easier by guns, which is where that specious statement starts to break down.

Seriously, when is the last time someone used a hammer to directly kill dozens of people? Or, since cars almost inevitably come up, when's the last time someone drove a car into a school or movie theater and used it to kill people? Hell, contrast it to the 22 stabbings at a school in China. Most were not seriously injured, none died.

Besides, why facilitate murderers? The logic of "they're just going to do it anyway" is ridiculous. shouldn't murder be harder? Should we make it easy for someone to kill 27 people?

Do we oppose seatbelts because people are going to die anyway? We even say "seatbelts save lives," even though steabelts don't save people, people save people.

Are we against food safety because some people will invariably get sick?

When a natural disaster happens, do we just shrug and say "what are you going to do?"

It's pretty damn hard to massacre with a hammer. Or a bowling ball. Or even a knife.

I have never seen social issues causing crime and murder debunked. People seem under the impression that if someone has a gun they are going to kill someone. That is simply untrue.

You can't dictate the rules for an entire society because psychopaths exist. Seat belts do save people, just not everyone. And occasionally cause someone to die. My issue is that all the gun control nuts out there say that the world would be better off if guns didn't exist. That is completely true, but they do exist. I'm not saying no gun rules. But he could have had the same "success" in his endeavor if he had a small snub nose pistol. So the type of gun is irrelevant. The ease of killing is not particularly relevant because if someone has the will to do it, then they will do it. No one is against gun safety, but you and I have very different idea of what that actually means. For me it's about education and experience. For the vast majority of people, this is enough. For some people it's about no one being allowed to have them, but criminals will have them, which is the impetus for people who aren't criminals to have them.

 

[Lord Doomhammer]

Fuck these people, not only will they not shut up about how games are the cause of these stupid shootings. But now they have to make it their business to tell us how and when we should enjoy our hobby? FUCK THAT! I was just going to be lazy and drunk on my birthday (12-21), but now I'm going to have to organize a huge lan party just to erect the largest middle finger possible to these people.

 

[Vuavu]

Easy! I can put down my guns for a day. I never play shooters haha. I wonder if a bow and arrows counts though

Also: This 'cease-fire' is a TERRIBLE idea

 

[Fishyash]

Really? Is there even any proof that Adam Lanza even plays video games? Apparently his brother (who was misidentified as the culprit) liked Mass Effect on Facebook or something?

There are about 100 issues that could be raised in regards to violent tragedies that could be put before video games. I don't play shooters anyway, but this is absolute nonsense.

NOTE -WE ARE NOT BLAMING VIDEO GAMES!

Then why are they doing this? To me, this is nothing but a blatant implication that video games are related to violent tragedies, which they clearly aren't.

I really hope as few people as possible support this.

 

[Baresark]

Sorry about that, I didn't mean to post right away, I was going to expand on what I was saying. My hand jumped to the mouse so quick I could barely stop it. It's not a gun control issue. It's a mental health issue. This person wanted to kill and the lack of guns would not have stopped him.

I doubt pretty much everything you're saying. It's hard to kill someone with a knife. It requires effort, and strength. When someone decides "I'm gonna kill everyone in my school", he may very well be stopped short by the notion that he doesn't really have a good enough tool for the job.

A gun is easy. Point; shoot. You don't need more than a sidearm, and a Glock can easily hold 20 or more bullets. One bullet is enough to kill someone. But if you get jumped by 2 or more people, it's pretty hard to take both of them on, even with a melee weapon.

No, it very much is a gun control issue. As long as people will continue to get these urges, it will remain a gun control issue. Guns may be just tools, but they're murder tools.

To illustrate my point: let's take this to the extreme and say someone gives you a button. If you press it, a bomb blows up and you kill 1000 people. Taking the decision to press it is easy, it requires virtually no effort, and if you're a real misanthropist you might even do it. But not even the worst mental health problems will ever enable you to kill 1000 people one at a time.

"We are simply making a statement that we as Gamers are not going to sit back and ignore the lives that were lost,"

Well I as a Gamer most certainly am going to sit back from making a useless, pointless gesture that will help absolutely no one. If I was a victim's relative, I wouldn't want the world to mourn because of me. That would just be selfish.

That is completely untrue. It's very easy to kill someone with a knife, and it doesn't take strength at all. It takes a little knowledge of where to attack, which can be gleaned from very rudimentary depictions of the human body. How is the shooters mental problems an issue for the millions of people in this country that do not use their weapons to commit murder? That is the gun control issue, whether law abiding citizens are allowed to own them. Your idea of restricting gun control will not stop criminals from owning guns and will not stop a psychopath from murdering as many people as they can before either killing themselves or getting stopped by somebody. How is one man's violent and misguided intentions the fault of the 144 Million or so people in America that own guns and do not commit murder with them?

 

[MarsProbe]

No.

But, to give this post some content, I was reading up on an article linked to by former Escapist residents Extra Credits about games not having a link to gun murders when I popped into a newsagent and there, right on the front of UK toilet paper substitute The Daily Record was the headline "Killers Call of Duty Obsession" (or something like that). Did you know that the shooter at Connecticut played the "controversial" game Call of Duty: Black Ops 2? Well, now you do. You also now know why he did it.

Though upon seeing that I was thinking - really, they're still doing this? They could at least try and shake things up a little and blame Little Big Planet or something.

 

[Baresark]

People are free to express their condolences however they wish, but I can't say I'm impressed by this. The decision to "cease" shooter games is completely arbitrary and unwittingly lends credibility to the shoddy, distasteful, and hypocritical reporting on this tragedy.

The problem is that those are more linked to social issues more than anything. Poor people, drug and sex trade, things like that. If people start murdering people with hammers more, no one is going to argue for stronger hammer control. No one is going to deny a carpenter a hammer based on an arbitrary "cool down" period. Guns are the easy go to for this situation, but if you are going to sit there and deny that "astronomical annual gun fatalities" is not a social or mental health issue, you are incorrect. To sound cliche, guns don't kill people, people kill people. I'm not saying that gun control laws are perfect, they clearly need a lot of work. But this didn't happen because he had access to firearms, this happened because he was mentally disturbed. It's easy to sit there and blame guns, but if/when you remove them, people are still gonna die as the result of these plaguing social/mental health issues. Any other reasoning simply denies the existence of the source of the problem in favor of the tool often used.

Guns, unlike the hammers in your god-awful analogy, are instruments specifically designed for killing and they are disturbingly efficient at it. Nobody is arguing that homicides would disappear if guns were more strictly controlled. But would you not agree that the Sandy Hook incident would have been far less deadly had the assailant been armed with a hammer rather than a semi-automatic rifle? How did having firearms just lying around not exacerbate things?

Things were exacerbated by the fact that the shooter was psychotic. I'm not saying his wants and desires did not more easily come to fruition because he had a gun. But the vast majority of people who own guns do not commit murder with them. Some hunt, some compete in competitions with them, some own them because they have small penises. But most people who own guns do not run around shooting people. The analogy is about tools, so it's very appropriate. If I like to target shoot with a gun for fun, then I should not be restricted from it by people killing other people with guns. Every gun shoots different, so the experience had is very different from gun to gun. You want to blame guns, but user reason and accept that guns aren't to blame for this, that there was other underlying issues and the person is to blame. If he had run up in the classroom with a hammer and killed his mother and one six year old, it's still not acceptable to me that it happened. And it shouldn't be OK with anyone if that was all that happened. And, to take it one step further, imagine if one of the adults in the room was allowed to be armed, then it still would have turned out very different and a gun could have saved the day. But no, only murderers own guns right? They are only meant to kill children and innocent people, correct?

 

[Cecilthedarkknight_234]

I mainly play jrpgs, platformers and dating sims <_< . I can feel the hate coming way right about .... now

 

[godofallu]

This is the dumbest idea ever, and it sucks that it is getting attention.

 

[Spartan448]

When I heard about the shooting, I was in the middle of a game of BF3 with some friends. We were barely winning, and any small change could have made us loose the match. I heard the news, and I powered down my controller, walked over to the XBox, and powered it down. My friends lost the match, called to ask what the hell, I told them the news, and now we've all resolved to not touch shooters until the new year.

 

[LordLundar]

This is kinda sad. Come on guys, will not playing shooters for ONE day really be that hard? It's a single stinking day for pity's sake.

On the topic of what the media will say, who cares? They been blaming games since Columbine, and they're still going to no matter what we do. Why do we have to care? They have already tried and failed to get anti-game laws passed, and what makes you think that will be different now?

Yes, this is a pointless gesture. No, it will not change anything. But, it still is a show of respect for the people involved, and to top it off, it requires very little effort. So, just don't play shooters for a single day, do you really have nothing else to play or do?

Oh, and for all those people who actually want to play violent shooters, "out of spite", shame on you. I can understand it if you just don't care enough to participate (I don't like it, but I can understand), but if you want to play a game you wouldn't normally play, like Postal, just to spite the people who actually want to show respect, then you are just being selfish, petty, and obtuse.

Agreed. It's said that a simple request to voluntarily show respect is taken as to mean "OMGWTFTHEYRETAKINGMYSHOOTERSAWAY!!!!"

Grow up people. No one's taking your precious shooter games away nor are they going to ban you from playing it. (see bibblles half assed comment earlier as proof if you're going to say that no one's saying that) Is it a token gesture? Sure it is. But stop acting like this simple request is going to destroy games and gaming in large, because it isn't.