Another shooting involving those filthy dirty violent games that corrupt all youths.

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Sarcasm aside, this is getting ridiculous.

Not even bad enough that the crime was committed, its the massive bias in the article that annoys me. They are inches away from coming out and saying that the game picked up the gun and shot the parents...

(I apologise if this was posted back when it happened)

 

A computer game shouldn't get all the blame. But. It might have driven this kid, who bordered on insanity, over the edge. I've always found people who enjoy playing such First Person Shooters to be rather dimwitted, 'Petric' is one of the most extreme cases. Such people will seek out the product that most encourage the tendencies already present in them, if it wasn't Halo 3, then another FPS game would've been used. Microsoft can't be blamed for catering to a market.

There's no point in banning violent video games either, because 'Petric' would've just found another outlet for his violent urges, like rap videos, gangs, martial arts, weapons, the options are limitless.

And just to be clear: I AM glad that the judge didn't see him as insane.

 

Thanks a lot, it's always nice to be called a dimwit with my morning coffee!

Games are always going to get the blame, society wants a scape goat and instead of looking to see why kids hide in games and then go crazy, ie, looking at society's problems, they blame whatever is easiest

 

Yep, they are getting somewhat biased here. Just who decided if the kid is, for example, addicted? I thought you needed more than a journalism degree to diagnosticize mental conditions... Though imo shooting your own freaking parents over a game is a pretty sure sign you're not completely sane. Not that this should make him any less responsible for what he did. The only thing I can accept in his defense is that he should have been tried as a juvenile - doesn't the law have sentence for heavy crimes committed by people under 18?

Actually, there's something else that bugged me in this article - why was the game in the same place as a handgun?

 

The Supreme Court has ruled that you cannot receive the death penalty if you are under 18 when the crime took place. Other than that... not really.

Well, the article said they took the game away from him. Maybe they hid in a place they didn't think he'd look?

 

I can promise you right now there was a lot more to this than the kid losing his game. Whether it was borderline insanity, ongoing abuse of some kind, or something else I don't know, but there was more going on. From the sound of things, he may even have antisocial personality disorder.

 

Aww, I didn't mean you, dear. I wasn't very precise about what I meant. Since you find the time to post on a forum, you can't be a true Halo 3 addict, which means you're not the kind of stereotype I was referring to. Posting counts as an intellectual pursuit, IMO, so any 'damage' done by that FPS is undone by some human interaction. You'd have to be really socially and intellectually isolated for the game to be able to affect you, which I don't think is possible from your position.

I am of the opinion that Halo 3 is a dimwitted game, and I do hold people who play FPS games in lower regard, but it's just my personal opinion. Of course respectable people can play it - I'm just constantly aware that it also caters to the dimwits.

 

If you look at the picture, he does look like a bit of nut job, doesn't he?

 

Kind of over the top, especially considering that he used his parents' trust to shoot them in the head. I'm shocked.

The lesson: thank god that there are games that keep these psychos occupied with shooting virtual people, where they could've killed people on the streets. But the uncertainty remains: what IS the causal order? A mystery. I believe, like someone said, the psychological urge precedes the actual decision to shoot someone for real. It might've been the urge that caused him to play games like this. I play Halo sometimes, but I don't feel like killing people. What's the difference here? It'll either be caused by wrong nurturing, or by a biological fault in his DNA that makes him unfit for society.

What is for sure is that the guy knew he was ending the life of his parents (no one is that retarded). Maybe they were too harsh and took the game away indefinately. You should go from playing 'all the time' to 'a few hours a day' to 'a few days a week'. So was it the game? Maybe, maybe not. That aside, it remains a tragic story, like M$ says.

 

NOG has hit it on the head -- millions of people play these games (I'm not one of them, I get dizzy and nauseous playing first person shooters) and don't go out and actually shoot someone. Ergo, it is something else that was the primary factor in this kid's crime.

Defense teams have been stretching as far as possible to come up with creative defenses for their clients. Luckily this judge didn't fall for it -- usually they don't but on the rare cases they do people who want justice get a little hostile.

 

Coin, I understand what you're saying, and even agree to a certain extent, but I think you're missing a basic part. FPS games are inherrantly not mentally challenging. They're not 'dimwitted' and they don't make you dumb, they just don't require much smarts to play. This means that lots of not-so-smart people play them. That doesn't mean there's anything wrong with smart people playing them, too, but it's far less common, because we have so many other games we can play (BG2, Fallout, etc.). Even with these, though, sometimes I just like a little mindless action for a change. It's not often, maybe once every few years, but I do occasionally buy fps and fighter games as well. What you're talking about with your stereotype is the majority of the fps players (which is how most stereotypes start anyway), but Silvery is obviously one of the exceptions.

 

Damn Skippy I'm an exception!

 

In most of the stuff I've read, the game is being promoted as a catalyst, not a cause. Still the overall impression I'm getting is the "What has happened to increase killings over minor things?" Followed by "Is there really an increase in the number of killings, or has the reporting of them gotten more efficient?"

Both relevant questions, and one without easy answers.

 

Not to try to derail the thread but notice that anything blamed on something that people like is hyped up but some crimes that make the system look bad gets buried.
http://xavierthoughts.blogspot.com/2009/01/new-year-blood-in-new-orleans.html
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/01/09/new.orleans.shooting/
http://neworleans.indymedia.org/news/2009/01/13509.php

brief synopsis:
9 members of a plainclothes drug task force approached Adolf Grimes at 3am on a darkened street & shoot him 14 times, 12 of those in the back. There were 48 shell casings recovered at the scene.
He was said to be there to pick up a cousin(i guess he was getting off from work, probably at a bar as 3am is usually when most bars employees leave).

later this was amended to

Being a cop is a very difficult job yet these guys appear to have failed to even used basic protocols.
As for him being armed, he had a CCW permit that allowed him to carry legally

 

Grimes is a fake name, to refer to someone who died. The Simpsons had an episode with a 'Frank Grimes' who died in the end, essentially for being too 'Frank'

 

What are you implying coin?
Please note that one of the links is a cnn link. I really don't think this is fake.

 

Purely anecdotal - no implication intended.
For whatever reason, the victim's real name wasn't released.

 

Adolf Grimes does seem like a bit of a piss-take name.

 

Yes, this past fall there were a few incidents with cops in the local area that never made more than the local news. People died. Including one old woman reading a book in her home.

As to why there are more youths killing parents, siblings and the like these days (and I believe there are), I thoroughly believe it's because so few parents actually know anything about raising a child these days. Just walking through the mall I can see 90% of the kids there are either the most spoiled rotten kids ever, or are willing to do anything, anything for just a bit of attention. It's no surprise these kids misbehave when they become teens, or that some of them misbehave badly.

 

none of us are privy to enough information, the media keeps us readng what they want us to read, for what ever reason they concoct.

obviously this goes deeper.