All the World's Wrongs: Games At Fault!

[dataDave]

[MENTION=10111]QualityChimp[/MENTION]: my daughter and her friend asked for a good horror to watch so I let them watch "John Carpenters: The Thing"! As soon as the dog turned out a bit alien(!!), they switched off!

I first watched this when I was around 2 or 3. My mum explained that it's all special effects and puppets but I still found the noises very unsettling.

I used to be able to watch all of this stuff knowing that it's just rubber and red goop, however after I grew up a bit I couldn't watch anything that involved bone breaking/crunching. Even to this day I have to turn away when someone like Steven Seagal snaps a wrist or ankle. I even stopped watching UFC after that Weidman/Silva fight nearly made me vomit.

Thanks for the tip QC, Aliens is going to be great to watch with James when he gets a bit older. I think stuff like this is great for teaching kids how NOT to act in life. I remember my nan tutting at the first scene where they all get bummed and saying "that's what they get for being so cocky!".

[dataDave]

With that said I actually find the way characters act in quite a lot of the Pixar/Disney stuff to be more unsettling and obnoxious. A lot of the good guys are dickheads.

[QualityChimp]

As a teen, I used to love guns and military stuff, as most boys do.

I remember loving Commando and the bloodless domino soldiers Arnie knocks over.

Then I saw Reservoir Dogs, which was criticised for its violence, and I saw the repercussions of gun use and I saw them in a different light.

They're cool in movies, but not in real life.

I wonder how much gun crime stats would really alter if violent imagery was banned but not access to guns.
Nowhere near the difference if it was the guns that were banned.

I watched this video on bump stocks and although it's terrifying that it converts a semi-automatic into the speed of an automatic, I still don't fancy anyone's chances against a stock AR-15:

[gIzzE]

I wonder how much gun crime stats would really alter if violent imagery was banned but not access to guns.
Nowhere near the difference if it was the guns that were banned.]

Of course.

Although only 11% of gun crime was committed by gun owners in 2017. 89% was committed by people who got their weapons elsewhere.


And this is what you are up against, the percentage of people who commit gun offences who have guns for shooting ranges, hunting etc. etc. is so, so, so small they can't see why they have to give up guns, a hobby, for a handful of nutcases.


I guess to put it into some kind of perspective that people may understand on here is asking the following.....


Would you give up your right to play violent video games if it could help stop violent crimes from the odd person who is influenced by them?

Would you give up your right to play violent movies and TV if it could help stop violent crimes from the odd person who is influenced by them?

Would you give up your right to own a gun if it could help stop violent crimes from the odd person who is influenced by them?



Maybe they seem like ridiculous comparisons to us, but in the States so does having to give up your right to own a gun.

But it is the same thing really, are you prepared to give up something you enjoy for the greater good?
If you answer "No" then I don't think that person has a right to judge the guy who goes to the gun range who doesn't want to give up his gun either.


Also, unless there is an amnesty where all guns are confiscated overnight (which could never happen) many simply won't give up the gun in their bedside drawer that they feel is their only protection against the guy who breaks in with a gun.

[charlesr]

Yeah, the commonsense media site is great. Use it all the time.

[QualityChimp]

[MENTION=988]gIzzE[/MENTION], you should go back and read this thread from the start.

Would you give up your right to play violent video games if it could help stop violent crimes from the odd person who is influenced by them?

Would you give up your right to play violent movies and TV if it could help stop violent crimes from the odd person who is influenced by them?

Would you give up your right to own a gun if it could help stop violent crimes from the odd person who is influenced by them?

Maybe they seem like ridiculous comparisons to us, but in the States so does having to give up your right to own a gun.

But it is the same thing really, are you prepared to give up something you enjoy for the greater good?
If you answer "No" then I don't think that person has a right to judge the guy who goes to the gun range who doesn't want to give up his gun either.

Which leads me back round to thinking if the majority should be restricted because of the actions of the few?

I was going to talk about movie censorship a bit, but I guess movies, games, music and even art are subject to censorship in some form.

One of the things I can't comprehend is how the parents of the victims are feeling. Their worlds must be falling apart. If this had happened to my son, I don't know how I'd get up in the morning. I can't imagine life would be worth living.

So we're all keen to jump up and shout at The Sun and their scare-mongering.
We're all happy to point the finger at the NRA and say "things have got to change".

...but none of us seem to consider that maybe we should reconsider the gun culture in games.

There, I said it.

If you'd have asked me a week ago if I thought violent games should be addressed, I'd have laughed at you.
Now I'm thinking if there really is evidence that excessive exposure to violent videogames genuinely did affect Lanza and is even a slight factor behind the events at Sandy Hook, would I be willing to accept a change in content in future games?

If I knew it could possibly prevent another Sandy Hook, I'd probably say "yes".

The Sandy Hook massacre knocked me for six.
All sorts of things can make people snap but there's usually a revenge motive, however the killer murdered children and I couldn't (and still can't) comprehend how the parents must feel.

So I asked myself if I would give up violent games if they were a factor in these mass shootings, to which I would like to think I would say "yes".

The problem is that, all these years later, the blame is constantly being shifted onto anything other than easy access to powerful weapons. We can have a stat-off, where you say 89% of shootings were with unregistered guns and I can counter with 80 of all mass shootings were obtained legally:

https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/san-bernardino-shooting/more-80-percent-guns-used-mass-shootings-obtained-legally-n474441

Basically, I'd make sacrifices to save lives, but I don't think gun owners do.
I'm losing interest, because people don't seem to make the correlation that automatic weapons = more mass shootings.

If you want to upset yourself, read some of the comments in this YouTube video:

->Open Spoiler<-

[Dogg Thang]

Also there are twice as many suicides by firearms than there are homicides in the US and I can't imagine a lot of those are illegally obtained. I don't think the stats are going to come out all that favourably when it comes to legal gun ownership.

[dataDave]

What happens if they ban all guns and then people start stabbing folk with knives at school instead? Ban knives too? I think banning guns is just trying to sweep the real issues under the rug.

Kids can be irredeemably stupid at times, especially American kids for whatever reason. That's just the way it is. I don't think guns are that particular reason.

[JazzFunk]

You can pry my violent videogames from my cold, dead hands.

[Dogg Thang]

What happens if they ban all guns and then people start stabbing folk with knives at school instead?

Also what happens if you let one immigrant in and they let in their whole extended family? What happens if you let homosexuals marry and then a brother can marry his donkey sister? This is Daily Mail logic.

Or maybe they can ban all guns and see if it stops whole classes of kids getting mowed down and find out if they all move on to assault knives afterwards.

[gunrock]

[MENTION=1482]dataDave[/MENTION]: Terrible whataboutery. Knives (especially in London for the last 5-10 years) are a problem, but whilst one determined guy with a knife can take out a few people, but he's less lethal than a bloke with firearms and a ****load of ammo.
[MENTION=10111]QualityChimp[/MENTION]: I think we should tone down the violence in games a tad, and I agree that the Sniper Elite killcam (as cool as it is - the first five times) is way OTT and not in keeping with the setting. The old adage, just because we can..., comes to mind.

@Everybody else: why do we assume that we take away all the guns tomorrow? Just ban the creation and sale of new ones. The positive effects of lowered gun ownership may take decades to realise (more mass shootings), but they will eventually happen. Same with uber violent videogames, publishers will soon stop making them if it means they can't be sold and find other ways to entertain us or they will scale down the violence to slightly lower than gratuitous and graphic (hopefully).

Legal guns in circulation will eventually become too expensive, as supply and demand take affect and get priced out of most folks range. This might not work with videogames (we can digitally copy them), but the pace of technology might eventually make today's violent games unpalatable to all but the most ardent: PCE Splatterhouse has a pretty niche audience, right?

[gIzzE]

The whole gun thing is taking away from the real problems in America imho.

You have a generation of young men with no father figures in their lives, they are also being told it wrong to be boy, young men are falling into depression traps and then getting put on some seriously ****ed up meds to try and help them cope with this, which in reality does the exact opposite and turn them into paranoid wrecks.


Of course guns are part of the problem, but there is a much bigger underlying issue that is being swept under the carpet.

Fare easier to blame the guns rather than the real issues.

[Dogg Thang]

I totally agree with your point in that in the perpetrators the gun violence is a symptom of far greater issues including all the ones you've identified - those absolutely need to be addressed. However, it's a symptom that kills a lot of people (when it comes to those killed, the cause is: the gun violence) and, I guess like a medical thing, you can look for the cause but if the symptom is going to kill your patient you should treat that first. Get assault rifles out of the hands of kids first because it will prevent many deaths and then look at all those other things. Like QC quoted earlier, I probably said it better back in 2012:

But I keep thinking of toddlers, because maybe that's what we're dealing with when considering society as a whole. If a toddler kept stabbing people with a fork, you'd have to look at maybe implementing the naughty step, or reducing their sugar or finding what factors are contributing to their behavior and you could probably improve things.

But the very first step? That's simple - you prevent them getting to the forks.

[dataDave]

Imagine if homosexuals could breed.

[Family Fry]

Now, a study based on data from 2012 to 2014 suggests that, on average, 5,790 children in the United States receive medical treatment in an emergency room each year for a gun-related injury. About 21% of those injuries are unintentional, similar to the third-grader's case.

From 2012 to 2014, on average, 1,297 children died annually from a gun-related injury in the US, according to the study, published in the journal Pediatrics on Monday.

Got love all those kids with father figures in their lives.