Florida kids 'fight to the death' at Hunger Games-themed camp

[Greymanelor]

So what's the problem? When I was younger, my friends and I used to play guns with one another. The goal was to remain hidden and "kill" each other with our wooden guns when we spotted them. This doesn't sound entirely different than that, just they're playing with flags, not wooden guns. It just seems like a fun childhood game, than anything to get in arms over.

Times are different. I recall reading a story some time ago about a kid who got expelled from school for pointing a chicken nugget at someone and going "Bang bang!" Everyone is paranoid about kids turning violent, to the point where even pretend violence is squelched.

Like you, stuff kids get in trouble for these days is nowhere near the sort of stuff my friends and I would do playing around. More than once that included random actual violence as, for no other reason than because we were boys, we'd abruptly start these huge brawls amongst ourselves or join in on brawls someone else had started. There were some bruises bodies and egos that were usually all better by the next recess and the hall/yard monitors just looked the other way unless someone was shouting for them (which almost no one ever did, because you just didn't live that down). Can't imagine that happening now without police involvement.

 

[Zack Alklazaris]

Now this is my kind of summer camp. Screw capture the flag, I wanna go "capture" some lives. Its been quite a crappy few years and I'm just waiting for a good fight.

And its still a game, though granted they are slightly detached. Cops and Robbers involve fake pistols and handcuffs, capture the flag actually involved rope and dragging people to penalty corners. This is just another game, granted quite violent, but what do you expect its Hunger Games. The kid snuff book of this century.

 

[Jamieson 90]

I don't understand why this is so bad, back when I was a kid in the 90's we used to play all sorts of games, we even had metal cap guns which looked very real and made a cool CRACK when you fired them, and we all pretended we were playing cops and robbers with the aim of the game being to shoot each other, so how is that any different to the elimination aspect of the tournament? They're still pretending to kill right? Never did me and the kids I played with any harm.