All the World's Wrongs: Games At Fault!

[Daragon]

Don't think there's anything that DOESN'T give a person cancer these days by the sound of it.

Only a matter of time before we see reports of drinking water doing it!

[Dogg Thang]

Weird that few journalists seem to pick up on the fact that these points all apply to reading a book too. Where are the "reading craze" headlines?

[ETC]

http://m.computerandvideogames.com/3...ng-kids-cancer

Well we're all buggered. According to the Mirror games give children cancer

Wonder if they will put warnings on the game boxes like cigarettes.. Idiots

I usually just loose my temper and have a pint if I loose at a game I didn't know the penalty was cancer, I daren't play Mario again

[dataDave]

Video games may not make kids violent, but that's not the only reason to stop them playing them. I don't believe watching Robocop or Texas Chainsaw Massacre will make anyone violent either, but you'd have to have brain damage to think it's a good idea to show them to children.

I watched Robocop when I was 7, and glad I did. I would have watched TCM as well had I been into horror films.

[noobish hat]

Yeah so did I, but it doesn't mean it's a good idea.

[dataDave]

I don't know, it's pretty tame. I never once believed anything I was watching was real.

I was a lot more disturbed by Poltergeist when I was a kid, and wasn't that a PG? It's not until the past ten years where I've accepted 100% that I don't believe in the supernatural, but back then I was wide open to theories and ideas. Of course I knew it was a movie all along, even at six years old, but it's just the possibility tat that could happen to someone, somewhere, that put me off.

[noobish hat]

Well Robocop is interesting because the violence is so over the top it can be funny (depending which edit you're watching), but a kid wouldn't understand that subtle difference. Seeing a guy being machine gunned literally to pieces isn't something I'd want a kid of my own to see.

Horror films are definitely a much more obvious example of something a sane parent shouldn't let their kids watch.

[MartyG]

Guess we'll find out soon enough given Obama is calling to spend $10 Million on it

[charlesr]

Fantastic idea for increased safety: bring guns INTO the schools

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-21722377

[Mayhem]

A number of my American friends support this. I can certainly see the positive aspects, as long as the teachers are vetted. My only concern is waiting for the first example of an armed teacher running riot...

[charlesr]

Or a kid taking a gun off a teacher and blowing them away.

It's basically teaching kids that people that are really clever (teachers) carry guns, and that they are the best way of resolving disputes (because teachers have them). Which is of course nonsense.

[wakka]

Seriously though, teachers with guns? We should've had this idea years ago. Who else can we arm up? Train conductors maybe. Oh and definitely cinema employees. They can also waste people who talk and fiddle about on their phones, when they're not conducting crack anti-terrorism operations.

The only real solution to gun violence is more guns, how hard is that to understand?

On a serious note, the downsides are so overwhelming as to completely obliterate any 'positive aspect' - the only one of which I can see is that if a madman does run amok in the school with a gun, the teachers MIGHT be able to take him down before he slaughters too many innocent kiddies. And that's a very big might.

A completely backward way of approaching the issue of American gun culture, which would only serve to root instant lethal force further in the national psyche as a necessary protection and a valid way of resolving problems. Normalising the idea of guns in children's minds from a very young age, as Charles points out.

'School Sentinels' is a lame piece of branding as well.

[Brad]

Skool Daze HD is needed now!

[Party boy]

Mental, they seem to have forgotten that it was a teachers guns that were used at Sandy Hook in the first place. And she was shot dead before it happened.

[Mayhem]

Guns weren't on the school grounds, and the person in question had access to them because they belonged to his mother. Somewhat different circumstances there.

While I don't believe a total gun ban would help the US in any way, what I believe is that there should be tighter regulations about how weapons are stored and kept on properties. The majority of mass killings in the last 20 years carried out with legal firearms were not done by the people who owned the firearms in question.