Grand Theft Auto IV Blamed In Murder Case

[JamesBr]

of course they're going to blame the video games. we can't have an adult conversation on the place guns have in American Society. we'd hurt the feelings of the NRA and all the Congressmen they bribe contribute to.

eight years old and playing GTA ... eight years old ... makes me glad I moved to Canada

What does any of this have to do with living in Canada? I'm Canadian and have been playing M rated games since I was 8 (they weren't called M rated at the time mind you). Don't you mean "eight years old and playing WITH A HANDGUN...makes me glad I live in Canada" (given we have 1/3 the ownership per capita and very few handguns)?

 

[Ace O'Hagen]

of course they're going to blame the video games. we can't have an adult conversation on the place guns have in American Society. we'd hurt the feelings of the NRA and all the Congressmen they bribe contribute to.

eight years old and playing GTA ... eight years old ... makes me glad I moved to Canada

What does any of this have to do with living in Canada? I'm Canadian and have been playing M rated games since I was 8 (they weren't called M rated at the time mind you). Don't you mean "eight years old and playing WITH A HANDGUN...makes me glad I live in Canada" (given we have 1/3 the ownership per capita and very few handguns)?

yeah, I misspoke on that last part. my bad. There is definitely a culture of irresponsibility in the US when it comes to the handling of firearms compared to the rest of the western world

 

[Thyunda]

Aaaaaalright - 8 years old - playing GTA 4. What's wrong with that picture?

How about we put the parents in jail because they're freaking idiots and should not be allowed to "guide" a child......

Eight years old. With a loaded handgun. That's the picture we should be looking at.

 

[Grabehn]

IT'S DEM GAMES I TELL YA, DEM GAMES! Cuz obviously it's not a question of why a kid that age is playing games like that one. And even though I played a GTA when I was 10, and I've yet to kill anyone, the document says "OBSESSED", and obession means pretty much mental disorder.

Also, why was there a gun? Why was he just able to take it from wherever it was? Why does it say "caregiver"? Does that mean there's a background of some sort of why he doesn't live with his parents? May that refer to a worse case of what I previously mentioned? Because while games won't make a person go nuts, easily-impressed people shouldn't be exposed to that, and while I played lots of this games when I was younger, I never presented any case of mental instability, and knew that games are just games a long time before that.

Sometimes, I just fail to see how these people that accuse games right away, seem to lack any kind of critical thinking or common sense, which really does make the latter seem like a super power nowadays.

 

[rasputin0009]

Hmm. I wonder if simple gun storage laws ever crossed someone's mind in America. Seriously, lock your guns up. Seperate from ammo. Fuck that country is retarded when it comes to guns.

 

[RaikuFA]

"the victim and the juvenile had a normal, loving relationship, and even shared the same bedroom."

Is this kind of thing normal over there? It seems a bit suspicious. Could it be that he was being molested?

I'm thinking this too. If it is true. Then those reporters have a lot of apologies to make.

 

[JamesBr]

Hmm. I wonder if simple gun storage laws ever crossed someone's mind in America. Seriously, lock your guns up. Seperate from ammo. Fuck that country is retarded when it comes to guns.

There are laws regulating the storage of firearms in the US, most are common sense along the lines of "guns and ammo must be store separately; guns can't be stored loaded, etc...", though the specifics change from state to state. Doesn't mean people follow these laws mind you as the biggest argument to this is "what's the point of having a gun to defend yourself if it's locked in a box, unloaded?", but regardless, those laws do exist.

 

[Shanahanapp]

Guns and bad parenting don't kill people, video games do.

This is probably the best example of anti-gaming news ever. It's so unbelievably stupid it would fit in The Onion.

 

[Diablo1099_v1legacy]

"Fox13Now"

Slow day then? At least at Destrucoid they don't stoop to reporting about "OH GOD, SOMEONE SAYS VIDEO GAMES CAUSE VIOLENCE!" every time someone utters it, as though it means something. I hope I'm not the only one who has noticed the decline in news quality on this website.

Well, I think it's topical, what with GTAV coming out next month.
I don't find that the quality here is declining, we've just been seeing a lot of stupid shit recently (Sim-City, X-Bone, etc)

 

[StriderShinryu]

In all honesty, given the situation, I can actually see there being some potential for the child to have been influenced by the game. He's an 8 year old kid who doesn't possibly have the mental state that can disassociate violence in media from violence in the eal world. It's very possible that he was just emulating what he saw (and did) in the game without correlating it with reality. But, and this has already been asked enough in this thread, why was an 8 year old child in a position to have free access to a loaded gun and why was he playing GTA4 in the first place?

 

[Amaror]

why is the being classified as a murder? the child is 8 and doesn't understand the concepts of death, this is most likely an accident, that with more parental oversight could have been prevented.

Why was an 87 year old woman looking after an 8 year old boy? why was he allowed to play a game like GTA IV? and why was there a loaded handgun left unsecured and unsupervised?

those are the real questions that should be asked, and CPS should be involved because someone in that house was clearly negligent.

You cannot claim that. When kids "get" the concept of death depends on a lot of things. For example if a relative dies or something. I have a 3 year old niece that gets death, because the grandmother of one of her friends died and she started asking questions about death then.

But nevertheless this is the kind of thing that happens, when you LEAVE GUNS LYING AROUND. God, i really don't get americas attitude to guns and i will never get it.

You see when i was young i used to fire at my friends with toy guns. Or with our hands, whatever was available. You know, that's the kind of thing young kids do.
Guns don't belong within reach of kids. Guns don't belong in any household period.

 

[nodlimax]

Aaaaaalright - 8 years old - playing GTA 4. What's wrong with that picture?

How about we put the parents in jail because they're freaking idiots and should not be allowed to "guide" a child......

Eight years old. With a loaded handgun. That's the picture we should be looking at.

Well, that's another stupid thing, I definitely agree.....

 

[rasputin0009]

Hmm. I wonder if simple gun storage laws ever crossed someone's mind in America. Seriously, lock your guns up. Seperate from ammo. Fuck that country is retarded when it comes to guns.

There are laws regulating the storage of firearms in the US, most are common sense along the lines of "guns and ammo must be store separately; guns can't be stored loaded, etc...", though the specifics change from state to state. Doesn't mean people follow these laws mind you as the biggest argument to this is "what's the point of having a gun to defend yourself if it's locked in a box, unloaded?", but regardless, those laws do exist.

Those laws only exist in about 28 states with a lot of them only applying to long guns and such (handguns still allowed to be loaded and unlocked). Only about 5 states apply criminal negligence to gun owners when children get ahold of guns. Which is fucking retarded.

 

[Ayay]

The story should be about why a 8 year old have even come close to a loaded gun, but that wont get a splash in the news and it could point a finger at weapons and or bad parenting,,so lets just skip that and go with games are evil huh.

 

[Zer0Saber]

I've read 3 different articles of this story and in NONE of the them has it brought up that an 8 year old should never have had access to a loaded gun. I'm not going to say that the game didn't influence the kid, but everything influences young children. My 5 year old niece watched ParaNorman and thought being dead would be really fun and I explained that it was just a movie and wasn't real. She thinks fairies are responsible for changing seasons. What I'm saying is, Children can be influenced by anything and it's up to parents and care takers to deal with that. I know this is tragic, but having been caring for children for a long time I have to quote Bill Cosby, "Children have brain damage."

 

[RonHiler]

Gee, if only there was some kind of video game rating system so that parents would know what games might not be appropriate for their young children....Oh, wait....

Gee, if only there was some kind of law that insured young kids couldn't get access to guns with live ammunition and shoot them, perhaps some kind of trigger guard.....Oh, wait....

Gee, if only there was some kind of law that required young children to be supervised.....Oh, wait....

Good Gods, this is an epic parenting fail.

 

[Dante dynamite]

I remember a story on CNN where a five year old in Kentucky accidentally shot his 2 year old sister soon after he was gifted his first gun for his birthday the story continued to say that it was normal to introduce guns to young children in that state and there are many incidents of the children accidentally killing family member no one was blamed and the article just asks how young is too young. The gun was also marketed towards young children.


Link:http://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/01/us/kentucky-accidential-shooting

FOX article: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/05/01/5-year-old-shoots-2-year-old-sister-in-kentucky-with-rifle-got-as-gift/
they don't put their opinion into this one.

Also the officer just assumes its GTA 4's fault no evidence just assumes fine police work

 

[cerebus23]

Blame the games not the parents/caregiver for having a loaded gun where and 8 year old can not only find it but "play" with it.

Common sense goes a long way, and it seems to fairly lacking in this story, from the start to letting a 8 year old play gta4 at all, and so on for the rest of it.

Of course the media is looking to blame anything but the root cause bad parenting. And games are higher on the hit list than guns suprisingly.

 

[Eternal Visitor]

am I the only one questioning how the kid managed to arm the weapon? either having the strength to pull the slide back to chamber a round (don't really know how hard this is cause I only have a spring powered BB gun, but those things can be hard to arm) or how they'd even know that that was required (just how accurate are toys these days???)

if that wasn't required, that means that the caregiver kept an ARMED HANDGUN IN EASY REACH OF AN UNSUPERVISED CHILD, and if there wasn't a game in reach, the news would probably be leaping down the throat of that point...

 

[Karhukonna]

For once, I can see how it's plausible that GTA IV affected the kid. But he was never supposed to be playing the game to begin with, it's about as adult as it gets.

I hope the mass media focuses on the whole "small child plays adult games" and "child shooter had free access to a weapon and ammunition" instead of just "Shooter played GTA IV, driven mad by simulated violence".