Okay so a kid thinks a gun is a toy and shoots themselves. It's happened before, it will happen again. There are plenty of problems with this on a number of levels.
However this is only a big deal because it's being tied to the Wii. Sure we can talk about how this has nothing to do with video games specifically, and how logical our reasoning is, but the problem is that 99% of the people out there will never hear what is said here on The Escapist, especially by users. The same goes for other video game forums that might be commenting on this.
This again gets back to the issue of the game industry sitting back and taking it as opposed to fighting back, and doing what they need to do in order to get impartial coverage of their point of view in newspapers and such. Heck, I haven't checked it out recently, but how many video game companies buy ad space routinely in say The New York Times (despite how much it doubtlessly costs). I mean if nothing else if the industry bought a bunch of space in some of these news periodicals that run "OMG Video Games" articles and did so constantly the management would of course chill things out a bit. Making the dark side of the whole "Kane and Lynch" fiasco work for the good of the game industry as a whole so to speak.
Such are my thoughts.
What's more this girl is like three years old if I remember correctly (I could have that wrong). At that age kids require constant supervision, and honestly I can't see why a three year old would be reaching for a Wii controller on their own anyway.
I also can't help but wonder at a lot of these cases of kids shooting themselves (including some that are older) I tend to get suspicious about that because most guns aren't all that touchy to be honest, and even very young children know what end the bullet comes out of, this being learned from watching TV Cowboys and such (Yosemite Sam anyone?). It takes some doing for a kid, especially a very young one, to manuver a gun into a position where the business end is pointing at them and pull the trigger. Guns aren't as light as many people think (and young children are weak) guns do not typically go off randomly when dropped (it can happen but not that frequently, and really unless it's a ricochet it's hard to believe.
Nothing to do with this case specifically, but a lot of times I can't help but wonder if parents having trouble with child rearing who want an EZ out when they realize what it entails, blow their kids away, and then claim it was an accident of this sort.
To look at this case for example, I'd think all the variables involved in that accident (gun accidently left out in same place as nearly identical looking Wii controller, etc...) are actually far greater than some frustrated parents icing their kid as "unthinkable" as that is (and in this world of child abuse it's becoming a lot less unthinkable). Occam's Razor and all that.
Also while I am rambling part of me thinking this way comes from years of experience with people getting very enraged with children in general, and talking about wanting to kill them and such (ESPECIALLY teachers, day care providers, and parents). One of the reasons why I've often defended "child murder" in games as simply catering to an impulse that everyone feels when dealing with little snots or out of control brats. However in some cases it goes beyond blowing off steam and talking Sh@t while frustrated.
Also smart people realize that the best crimes involve the simplest actions and the least variables. A home firearms accident has an easier chance of getting by with minimal problem for the parents in the long run (key term here) than say belting your kids in the back seat of a car and driving it into a lake, or molesting your daughter, killing her, and then claiming it happened while you weren't home or whatever.
My myriad (and frankly quite disturbing) thoughts.
