Actually video games have been a scapegoat since shortly after Pong. Maybe you're too young to remember.. but I'm not.

Crazy people DO get their ideas from something. But if it wasn't a video game, it would be Music or TV or Comedy or Catcher in the Rye. So can a video game give a crazy person ideas on how and why to kill people? Of course. Could it be the thing that puts them over the edge? You bet. Does it actually CAUSE the average person to do anything bad? Of course not. If it did, we'd all already be dead. The video/computer game industry is larger than the film industry.

I do think video games do deaden our response to violence in the same way movies and tv and the evening news showing bodies does. It's like Porn. 10 minutes of it and you want to have sex right away.. but have someone force you to watch 10 straight hours of it and you never want to have sex again. We've been exposed to the "10 straight hours" of this type of stuff and we're all just numb to it.

But I don't believe for a second that it causes the average person without serious mental illness to do anything bad. Neither does Gangsta Rap or Metal Music or James Bond movies. Someone like this sick guy would have found SOMETHING (in his case wasn't it religion?) to push him over the edge. Didn't he compare himself to Jesus? As I said, anything can put a sociopath over the edge.

Brian

Brian Austin Whitney
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