Grand Theft Auto IV Didn't Drive an 8 Year-Old to Murder

[cerebus23]

We had real guns and i had lots of toy guns, granted growing up i never had gta to play, but i did have the lone ranger, wild wild west, cowboys and indians, star wars and so on.

From very early on it was made clear to me that real guns WERE NOT TOYS, that real guns killed people, that some toys guns could hurt people, bb guns, pellet guns, so on.

My uncle who was an avid sports man kept his guns locked up, not that i could not bypass the lock if i so desired, but i never went after his "toys" to play with, i knew the difference between his toys and mine, but even at that those guns were never loaded where they were stored.

Common sense seems to be lacking, i also find it somewhat odd, that the kid slept in his grandmothers bedroom, but mostly that this child was never told about real guns where real loaded guns were kept, it was a discussion that should have happened, it is COMMON SENSE. You do not need laws to have it, people should have enough of it to do it on their own.

Guns do not kill people, peoples lack of common sense does, people not treating firearms with the proper respect does, in a perfect world everyone would take gun safety, everyone would take the appropriate steps for their house, securing the firearm more the more random chance you have in your home with children, and explaining to them the difference between reality and fantasy, hell you could even argue that gta4 used as a teaching tool can accomplish that, since gta4 is not reality it is a game.

I really loathe that people refuse to think for themselves, and the current state of the mainstream media embodies thats where they make the news they want to or are told to make, this cycle we are demonizing video games, despite the abundence of evidence against video games having any effect, last cycle we demonized guns.

Learn to think for yourselves, question authority.

 

[Agayek]

Just one small point I'd like to make here. Just because he was playing Grand Theft Auto doesn't mean that he was pulling off giant murder sprees or even killing people. The article only says that he was playing it but gives no information about what he was doing in the game.

I know that when my brother was little (9 or 10 I think) he used to play grand theft auto San Andreas on my xbox sometimes. All he would do though is find a cool car/train/helicopter/jet/jetpack and cruise around in it for hours on end. I think he even tried to follow certain traffic laws when he was in a car. I never saw him killing anyone or even having guns. He just drove around for hours and had a blast with it.

Also, kids these days are so inundated with military stuff (cap guns, nerf guns, action movies, video games, etc) that having toy guns around I think is normal. I had a friend growing up (in Canada) who had a veritable arsenal of army soldiers, toy guns, BB guns, cap guns, flak jackets and fake helmets and such. I think it's become somewhat normal at this point and maybe this kid got confused and thought it was a toy. I don't know.

It says in the article that the kid was playing with the gun and it accidentally went off, with the implication that he, for whatever reason, thought it was a toy.

When I read that, my first thought was "Someone's going to link the game to treating the gun as a toy", and I'd like to see how people in general, and Rob in particular, would respond to that. Personally, I find such connections generally tend to be tenuous, but there's merit in the core idea (specifically that media like GTA can convince young children of the... non-lethality of firearms). I know several kids who immediately go out and try to emulate the events of whatever movie or book or whatever they just finished, and I can easily see a kid fiddling with a gun he found after playing GTA.

Mostly, I'm hoping to get an actual response/rebuttal to that idea with more depth than "BUT YOU DON'T KNOW IT WAS THE GAME THAT DID IT!!!1!!1!"

 

[Vrach]

Excellent and well written article, thank you. I'm afraid that GTA might be a tiny bit "responsible" in the way that the boy saw shooting at someone and likely tried to emulate it. But that doesn't mean the game is to blame - guns are.

A side note first that he could've seen a person taking a gun and shooting at someone at just about any daytime TV show, a movie etc. Nearly every TV station (I believe every single one out of the ones who blamed GTA here) has shows that have people shooting guns at people. Hell, the whole aging generation of people who complain about games being violent grew up on Westerns where shooting people was just as prominent as it is in the games and them, their children and their grandchildren likely grew up playing cops and robbers, cowboys and Indians etc. So you can't really blame the idea of 'fake-shooting' someone with a toy gun on media because you'd have to either clear up everything to the point of banality or accept that if you're to blame one medium, you might as well blame them all.

Onto the meat of the matter, as I've said earlier, guns are the issue. Owning a gun is a responsibility, something a lot of Americans don't seem to understand thanks to the 2nd Amendment. if you're gonna go ahead and keep a gun in your house, you need to do a number of things. Pertinent to this case, one of the most important things to do if you have children is to explain to them that guns aren't toys and explain the whole (as you said well in the article) "don't assume it's a toy gun when you're pointing it at someone".

The whole "GTA is age-inappropriate" is reduntant in my opinion. Too much fuss is being thrown around on the whole "age-inappropriate" thing. It's just a way for parents to shift blame from themselves for not being proper parents to their children. I've grown up playing violent video games since I was a child. I've played Commandos, GTA (since the first or the second game, I don't remember), I've played Resident Evil, Mortal Combat and all these games since I was maybe 9 years old or so. I also had a gun in the house, though we only had blanks in it. My parents have shown me the gun and I knew where it was - probably not the wisest idea in general (even with just blanks), but I still never once thought of using it. I knew what a gun was, I knew real guns hurt real people just like fake ones in my games hurt fake people. Except fake people I don't have qualms about shooting, shooting a real person... well the thought of it alone makes me sick and has done since I was a child.

The moral of this whole thing isn't "don't let your kids play age-inappropriate games". No, not even a little in my opinion. The moral is, be a parent to your kids. Explain to them what a gun is, especially if you keep one in the house, doubly so for keeping it loaded. Explain to them that violence is bad and teach them the difference between real life violence and game violence (though I'd say most children understand this intuitively, but still, do your part as a parent). Stop trying to blame something or someone else and take the responsibility of being a parent seriously instead.

 

[rasputin0009]

I was wondering if the Sheriff Department's initial statement was pure incompetence, but then I realized that they were just trying to bring attention to themselves. They knew the media would get a boner from associating a video game with a murder. And the media sure did get a boner. I have a feeling that a lot of the page views and site hits the media gets for posting these "controversial" articles come directly from gamers who want to "defend" their hobby. Stories from America like these make me pity it's citizens for having to deal with what I'm assuming is a constant barrage of stupidity coming from every corner.

 

[Slash2x]

How many children have to be so damaged until people realize guns don't solve problems, they create them.

Guns are used to solve LOTS of problems. Most of them are "oh shit this person wants to kill me!" Yes guns are used to cause problems too but they are BEING USED to do either of these. The fact I am even reading this article is because I have used firearms to stop other people from killing me.

Does a crowbar open a box on its own? NOPE! In that line of thought there has never been a time where a gun killed someone on its own either. Someone loaded it, someone pointed it at the target, and someone did something to make it fire. But what would I know my keyboard did all the typing here it is the source of all these letters and must be to blame for my post on it own.....

Sorry I have to disagree with you on that point. The gun wasn't the actual problem in this case it was blatant negligence I mean letting the child play a 18+ game and leaving the gun LOADED and within a child's reach was the problem.

The gun didn't make the child shoot her and while I personally believe the game didn't make him shoot his grandmother I would be pretty naive to think it was blameless also. I mean to a 8 year old child(Who shouldn't be playing GTA at all) who plays GTA for a few minutes and has no real concept of permanent death when you can get shot in GTA and re spawn, Then finds a real gun he probably thought what happened in the game would happen in real life.

It all could have been avoided if:

A) The gun at the very least was left unloaded or in a lock box.
B) Not letting the boy play a game that is years away from his full comprehension.

So if your going to blame someone, Blame the person who is at fault which was the grandmothers negligence. I mean the article even said she would face a class A felony over it. I say this not as an advocate for guns I mean I'm Irish the closest thing I've seen to a real gun is a water pistol but in this case I believe that guns aren't the problem but the people who own them.

PS, Great article BTW.

^this
I have firearms in my house and I have children. My kids are SCARED of my weapons because we have had MANY EXTENSIVE conversations about what guns are and what they do. They understand that they are not to even LOOK at my weapons. Even with that respectful fear in place I keep my weapons/ammo 10 ft in the air and in a bio-metric locked safe. And my hunting rifles have locks on them, with the keys in the safe.

The ONLY water pistols/toy guns allowed in my house are shaped like animals or obviously Nerf design. I do not let them play with anything that looks like a real gun.

 

[Elyxard]

I "love" the constantly brought up point that you get "points" for killing in GTA. I would like to remind these people that it's the exact opposite; in GTA you are punished for harming innocent bystanders by means of a police force. It is not a good idea to cause mayhem if you want to actually succeed at the game.

But as far as guns go, I don't care how many safes it's locked behind, why would you even invite the possibility of such an accident into your home in the first place? (something infinitely more likely to happen than actually stopping an intruder; that or suicide) Especially with kids in the home; you can never be absolutely certain of the security of a gun with a kid in the house.

 

[Psychobabble]

Yes the child should not have had access to a firearm. I also feel a child that young should not have been playing a game such as GTA as he's too young to understand right from wrong. He also apparently couldn't tell the difference between a lethal weapon and a toy.

Again I agree the biggest contribution to this tragedy was that a child was able to have free access to a lethal weapon. However to completely discount GTA had any influence on his actions I feel is a terrible mistake and a cowardly stance for game players to take. "This has nothing to do with me." Sorry but it does. If the child was aping behavior he was involved in while playing a violent video game, with a real gun thought to be a toy, the game is still a contributing factor, whether you wish to believe it so or not. I'll say it again, Contributing factor, not root cause.

While I feel the biggest lesson to learn from this is don't leave your lethal weapons where they can be accessed by children. Parents and guardians need to do a better job of monitoring their children and keep those who can't yet tell the difference between fiction and reality from having access to violent media that may help provoke very real accidental violence from them.

And frankly shame on you The Escapist for once again trying absolve all blame from violent video games when you should instead be informing parents of the potential danger. If it helps to prevent even one incident of accidental violence I feel the controversy of the idea these games my be a contributing factor is quite worth it.

 

[anteater123]

Yes the child should not have had access to a firearm. I also feel a child that young should not have been playing a game such as GTA as he's too young to understand right from wrong. He also apparently couldn't tell the difference between a lethal weapon and a toy.

Again I agree the biggest contribution to this tragedy was that a child was able to have free access to a lethal weapon. However to completely discount GTA had any influence on his actions I feel is a terrible mistake and a cowardly stance for game players to take. "This has nothing to do with me." Sorry but it does. If the child was aping behavior he was involved in while playing a violent video game, with a real gun thought to be a toy, the game is still a contributing factor, whether you wish to believe it so or not. I'll say it again, Contributing factor, not root cause.

While I feel the biggest lesson to learn from this is don't leave your lethal weapons where they can be accessed by children. Parents and guardians need to do a better job of monitoring their children and keep those who can't yet tell the difference between fiction and reality from having access to violent media that may help provoke very real accidental violence from them.

And frankly shame on you The Escapist for once again trying absolve all blame from violent video games when you should instead be informing parents of the potential danger. If it helps to prevent even one incident of accidental violence I feel the controversy of the idea these games my be a contributing factor is quite worth it.

I love how you completely ignored the part of the article where he said that an eight year old should not have been playing GTA IV, a point that was made repeatedly in several different parts of the article. Way to demonstrate your reading comprehension skills there.

Your argument also seems to imply that the two factors are equally culpable, in other words, that GTA IV is just as responsible for this as the fact that a loaded gun was left in the open with a child. That kind of thinking is precisely the problem: videogames receive way too much blame for this kind of situation. If GTA IV does have any responsibility in this situation, it's 99% the fault of the grandma for having a loaded handgun out and 1% the fact that the child was allowed to play GTA IV.

 

[Psychobabble]

Yes the child should not have had access to a firearm. I also feel a child that young should not have been playing a game such as GTA as he's too young to understand right from wrong. He also apparently couldn't tell the difference between a lethal weapon and a toy.

Again I agree the biggest contribution to this tragedy was that a child was able to have free access to a lethal weapon. However to completely discount GTA had any influence on his actions I feel is a terrible mistake and a cowardly stance for game players to take. "This has nothing to do with me." Sorry but it does. If the child was aping behavior he was involved in while playing a violent video game, with a real gun thought to be a toy, the game is still a contributing factor, whether you wish to believe it so or not. I'll say it again, Contributing factor, not root cause.

While I feel the biggest lesson to learn from this is don't leave your lethal weapons where they can be accessed by children. Parents and guardians need to do a better job of monitoring their children and keep those who can't yet tell the difference between fiction and reality from having access to violent media that may help provoke very real accidental violence from them.

And frankly shame on you The Escapist for once again trying absolve all blame from violent video games when you should instead be informing parents of the potential danger. If it helps to prevent even one incident of accidental violence I feel the controversy of the idea these games my be a contributing factor is quite worth it.

I love how you completely ignored the part of the article where he said that an eight year old should not have been playing GTA IV, a point that was made repeatedly in several different parts of the article. Way to demonstrate your reading comprehension skills there.

Your argument also seems to imply that the two factors are equally culpable, in other words, that GTA IV is just as responsible for this as the fact that a loaded gun was left in the open with a child. That kind of thinking is precisely the problem: videogames receive way too much blame for this kind of situation. If GTA IV does have any responsibility in this situation, it's 99% the fault of the grandma for having a loaded handgun out and 1% the fact that the child was allowed to play GTA IV.

My reading comprehension skills are just fine. However I do have to question yours. I'm quite aware that it was mentioned that a child that young should not be playing GTA. The problem comes from the article also taking the stance that GTA was in no way a factor this tragedy. Let's just take a look at the article title once again. "Grand Theft Auto IV Didn't Drive an 8 Year-Old to Murder". So GTA is blameless in this tragedy. But at the same time don't let your young children play this game! I feel this sends a very bad and confusing message to parents. I.E. "A child that young shouldn't be playing this game. Not that this game can in any way influence anyone's behavior mind you." It has to be one or the other.

And good work misrepresenting my stance on just how much of an impact GTA had in this incident to suit your own argument. I did say the the main factor was the child's access to a lethal weapon, a child who apparently didn't understand it wasn't a toy, a child too young to even be held responsible for his own actions. But I also made the point that if, I'm guessing you missed the IF part, the child was mimicking the actions he'd just committed in a violent video game with a very real gun then the game indeed contributed to his actions. And I feel we as gamers need to address this potential issue instead of just once again sweeping it under the rug as we've so often done.

 

[martyrdrebel27]

Crap really, it's gonna have to be me who says this? Okay, let's do this...

Ms. SMOTHERS in SLAUGHTER, LA got killed and NOBODY saw that coming? You guys don't watch enough Final Destination.

OT: everything I had to say has been said, good article.

 

[Abomination]

The GTA aspect of this is entirely a red herring.

It's entirely possible he could have shot and killed with the gun he never should have had in the first place if he had never seen or played GTA either. Heck, at least GTA might have given him a sense to point the thing away from himself rather than stare down the barrel and fiddle with the trigger.

Only thing worse than a dead caregiver is a dead child.

The child had access to a loaded gun. Everything else is unimportant. The floor could literally have been lava but the fact there was a loaded gun somewhere for him to have access to is worse.

 

[Tanis]

Using LOGIC and FACTS.

That's BEYOND most cable news networks.

 

[Rotten_Karma]

This was a failure of parenting, through and through. If the parents had been responsible and taught the child the 4 rules of gun safety this would not have happened. Though improbable, even a bb gun can kill, so it is important to teach the child safety even if the parents do not own a gun. Remember:

All guns are always loaded.
Never let the muzzle cover anything you are not willing to destroy.
Keep your finger off the trigger until your sights are on the target.
Be sure of your target and what is beyond it.

 

[Haakmed]

This guy is smart. This should be circulated to "Real" new organizations.

 

[seule]

Yeah, tragic as this is, it starts and ends with poor supervision. I have two kids, 7 and 4, I play GTA, I play Crysis, Deus Ex, Borderlands, all sorts of stuff, but I do it when my kids are in bed for the night. Games have ratings for a reason.

Letting an 8 year old near a loaded weapon is a recipe for disaster, sadly it happened, my condolences to the family and friends.

 

[nuttshell]

It should probably be a crime to glorify criminality.

Do you really understand the implications of this sentence and the results you can get when followed? It does help, that you put a "probably" in there, though.

 

[nuttshell]

But to be clear, GTA definitely is glorification...

I live in Germany, where this point of view is widely held. And another view is also trying to get through like, that entertainment has a more severe impact on human behaviour then, say...wage disparity, social status, education, healthcare, cultural and language barriers. Unfortunately, our society is pretty much apathetic, when it comes to any sort of news or political change, so these news pass and laws pass and nobody cares. I firmly believe, that if entertainment can be accused of anything, it can be accused of making it's audience gradually more uninterested with anything else except itself. That's why over the years, the news in the western media contain more entertainment and have less journalistic value.

 

[Kahani]

In other news, the boy was reported to have been breathing air mere seconds before the incident took place. Psychiatrist Dr McExpert says this is something he has in common with nearly 100% of people involved in shootings. There are also unconfirmed reports that he may have consumed food and/or drink as recently as hours, or even minutes, earlier as well. Research by scientists at NASA has found that removing all air from the vicinity of the Earth could have a huge impact on crime rates.