I've been playing violent games since age 5, and I was blasting away strippers in Duke Nukem at age 9. It's funny because I come from a very conservative family to the point my parents never let me watch Titanic because of the boobies, yet they never had a problem with the content of my video games. Regardless, I never got in trouble (never disciplined in school), and I still have a clean record at age 25, so I find it hard to argue that two decades of murdering people in games is somehow going to make a person violent. I guess with no role models or discipline, then it may have an effect, but getting rid of violent games isn't going to solve that problem.
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8-Year-Old Kills Caregiver After Playing Grand Theft Auto IV
- Thread starter CommanderFrank
- Start date
I don't know about that, maybe BF3 or something...but GTA is just mindless, no goal of 'the good guys win' morality, in fact, that game has no morality.
BladeVenom
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Something is wrong with that kid. Lots of kids have access to guns and knives, and don't murder anyone.
To add to that, I gre up in a house full of guns. They were all loaded and we all knew that, it was a rule: If a gun was in the house, it better be loaded and ready to go. One was usually under the couch cushion, one under the edge of the bed, one on the refrigerator, a few more in the closets, then one under the seat in the car and truck...etc... Funny thing is we never got shot or shot anyone. Gun violence was not even heard of in our whole (small) town. If dad got caught driving home from the bar drunk, mom went to the impound lot to get the car and the gun. It was no big deal.
But...I digress. Today, a gun in sight is a monster.
#1 the shooting was an accident
#2 the caregiver let an 8 year old play GTA4
#3 the caregiver apparently left a deadly loaded weapon laying around where an 8 year old could get to it
#4 according the article GTA is realistic, yea ok, next time I get shot I will eat a hamburger to heal
#2 the caregiver let an 8 year old play GTA4
#3 the caregiver apparently left a deadly loaded weapon laying around where an 8 year old could get to it
#4 according the article GTA is realistic, yea ok, next time I get shot I will eat a hamburger to heal
D
Deleted whining member 223597
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All boils down to failed parenting. First of all, teaching kids reality vs. video games and right from wrong is the most important. Then, you don't leave guns unsecured if you have kids.
I generally wasn't allowed to play certain video games or watch certain movies when I was younger, but when I did I never once thought of killing someone because of a game. Why, because my parents actually did their job as parents.
I generally wasn't allowed to play certain video games or watch certain movies when I was younger, but when I did I never once thought of killing someone because of a game. Why, because my parents actually did their job as parents.
Godmachine
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If you leave a gun freely available to anyone who knows where it is then its your fucking fault for being incredibly irresponsible. Blaming the video game is absurd. If the gun was properly secured and its location not known to the 8 year old then it would have been impossible for him to shoot his caregiver in the head.
Kids have been playing some version of cops and robbers and/or cowboy's and indian's for practically since the beginning of civilization. Being irresponsible takes a seat right next to ignorance. Keeping a loaded weapon in an insecure place where a child can get at it is a recipe for disaster. How many times have we heard in the news about some child finding a loaded weapon and shooting a friend/family/neighbor with it and killing them? I'm afraid all to often.
Its a terrible tragedy and now more fuel for the ignorant to blame video games for it which is absolutely absurd. I've never heard a video game leaving a loaded weapon somewhere they can take it and kill someone with.
BloodDonor
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Shitty gun safety imo... parents should be prosecuted
Twisted Kidney
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These video games are a curse for our species.
An eight year old should know how to PLAY WITH A FUCKING GUN safely.
Too bad the NRA doesn't bribe everyone and their monkey in defence of video games.
An eight year old should know how to PLAY WITH A FUCKING GUN safely.
Too bad the NRA doesn't bribe everyone and their monkey in defence of video games.
michael.pa2
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Anyone using this to target videogames is pathetic. The whole incident is like a perfect storm of social failings combining to create tragedy. An 87 year old grandmother trying to take care of an 8 year old? A loaded weapon left were the child could get his hands on it? The level of irresponsibility in this story boggles the mind.
Gorankar
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Again, a game, like a gun, is an inanimate item. It is not possible to lay blame on some thing, only some one. Sometimes, there is no one to blame.
This is the result of a culmination of events caused by human beings fucking up.
EA, Sony, Activision, Rockstar, etc. certainly have the money to bribe in everyone and their monkey in defense of video games whoever they want. Why aren't they? The NRA are only barely able to limit the erosion of our second amendment rights as is. Adding video games to their plate is prolly a bit much.
Quicksilver_
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I saw two kids the other day with their dad and they were looking at their recently purchased games, GTA4 and MW2 respectively. I was going to complain about "kids these days" then I remembered most people I knew growing up had access to Doom, Duke Nukem 3D and later on Goldeneye and Soldier of Fortune. It's a case of a lack of education and responsibility on the parents behalf.
silk186
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stupid shit. This only made news because of the GTA. Many kids shoot family members with guns. Kids like toy guns and don't know the difference between a toy and a real one. Or what death is. If you leave guns around small children there is a very good chance they will shoot themselves or someone else.
StewieTheGreat
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As far as I know,a kid should not be playing with a gun,period,they are not toys.
I don't think you have a clue what your even talking about.
My family happens to be hunters.
Just like you, I grew up at grandparents' houses with loaded guns (mom went through more marriages by my 18th birthday then I had fingers and toes so I really WAS raised by my grandparents). Every one of us grandkids KNEW if we even looked at those guns wrong we'd get the shit knocked out of us. 15+ grandkids and not one single firearm accident in any of the houses and over a dozen responsible hunters among us.
The sad fact is that too many parents are too f#cking lazy anymore, they'll do anything to get out of watching their kids. Back when I was a child parents stuck their kids in front of the tv and just left them there, then blamed the programs they watched for any violent outbreaks or inappropriate behavior. The teens' parents blamed Dungeons and Dragons and violent movies. Now a days parents just stick a controller in their kids hands and blame the games when something goes wrong. No one takes responsibility for what they contributed to the problem. Face it, its become a "not my fault/ problem world.
Point is, my mom shoved me off on my grandparents and THEY raised me right, THEY knocked the snot out of me when I screwed up and I turned out fine.
And after raising my nephew (brother's) for 10 years and nephew and niece (sister's) for 2 years and children services and their "no physical discipline" policy I want no part of kids of my own.
The kid probably shouldn't have been playing the video game either, but he was. He probably should have had better supervision, but he did not. The gun probably should have been unloaded and locked up, But it wasn't, the kid probably should have had parents that taught him gun safety at eight or seven, or even six, because we all know that once you're taught gun safety, you couldn't ever possibly do something like this. Oh wait, I seen police and military personnel have incidents and shoot others.
There is a reason games like these are used for training service men, terrorists (yes I went there), and others, because it does an effective job of desensitization. It certainly. Is not the sole reason of blame here, but it is a contributor.
Yea... I'm gonna have to disagree. I doubt anyone use games like GTA for training.
This is just a case of idiocy. No gun, no problem. The game may have contributed it, because it shows gun shooting... probably as much or maybe a little bit more than a gang movie. And of course, parents should be teaching their kids about such things... obviously was lacking. <--- Key point.
Nah, They just jump off a building when they get an A- in "Piano for Moms Ego."
My thoughts EXACTLY. Sure, a 8 year old shouldn't have access to a gun or a M rated game, but still even at 8 kids shouldn't be killing people. I played GTA3 when I was 5, never shot anybody.
So basically what you're saying is that if he picked up a plastic spoon instead, he would have blown her brains out across the the living room anyway.
NKDietrich
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Maybe when some actual evidence that stands up to scientific scrutiny appears? Violent crime is decreasing. Violent media is increasing. Credible studies trying to discover if there is a link have thus far failed to show that.
Nah... he'd probably have shoved it up her nose or ears and caused mental retardation. Interestingly enough, I guess that proves your point, she'd be alive if it weren't for the gun! Practically brain-dead, but alive!
But no, seriously... even without a gun then, he'd probably get a hold of something else if he wasn't raised properly to realize death is permanent and all that stuff, or if it had progressed without this showing up, he could have ran into school with a weapon and killed a bunch of people when he's older and more capable. However, it's hard to tell if that really would happen, as it's all speculation til it happens in any case.
That's not an accurate description about violence in the US.
yes it is
http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/23/justice/random-killings/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
yes i know cnn still
sounds like its going down to me
The national rate has been going down for the past ten years. But that doesn't take into account local areas where crime has gone up by 4-20x the national rate.
If you want to verify what I'm saying look at the murder rate for places like Chicago, Detroit, and New Orleans.
it's also important to note that even though national violent crime rates have fallen in the past ten years, they are only falling relative to the off the charts high rates of the early 90's. Before the 90's violent spike our violent crime was still considered high in comparison to the rest of the developed world.
In a couple of my courses where I teach about crime statistics and violence in particular, I discuss a metric called the Gini coefficient. The Gini index is a measure of income inequality. We rank near the top of the list of inequality and that list corresponds to violence in the other nations scoring high on the inequality scale.
If we look at places like Irvine, CA, where there were is no murder rate (has been that way for I think the 9nth consecutive year) vs. the city next to it, Santa Ana, with 13 murders last year, or say Santa Clara (stanford U.) vs. palo alto (where you have no murders and violence in one jurisdiction but literally across the street numerous murders and violence) the situation is much more complex than saying violence is on the decrease in the US.
In a couple of my courses where I teach about crime statistics and violence in particular, I discuss a metric called the Gini coefficient. The Gini index is a measure of income inequality. We rank near the top of the list of inequality and that list corresponds to violence in the other nations scoring high on the inequality scale.
If we look at places like Irvine, CA, where there were is no murder rate (has been that way for I think the 9nth consecutive year) vs. the city next to it, Santa Ana, with 13 murders last year, or say Santa Clara (stanford U.) vs. palo alto (where you have no murders and violence in one jurisdiction but literally across the street numerous murders and violence) the situation is much more complex than saying violence is on the decrease in the US.
Deadly Ramon
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You don't see how fucking nuts that is, freaking out over an armed household in which no violence (justified or otherwise) actually took place?
So... the national rate is down, but the local rate is up? Explain.
Seriously, if I read that right, wouldn't that still mean, it's down? But instead of it being down everywhere, it's just shifted to more localized areas? I have no idea about the Gini index, and most of this stuff is over my head, but that's what it sounds like. And if that is true, its still a win of crime rate being down.
Here's how I view it from your post, and correct me if I'm wrong.
Before - City 1 Crime Rate = 100
Before - City 2 Crime Rate = 100
After - City 1 Crime Rate = 10
After - City 2 Crime Rate = 150
So, it increased in some areas, and decrease in others disproportionally.
you're kind of on the path to figuring out what I was writing but there are some important clarifications that need to be made
the simple answer to the question of averages is that the FBI data (that cnn and others often cite) is based off our UCR (uniform crime reporting). That takes data from all over the US and averages incidents across our total population. unfortunately we do this at the state level, too. the main problem is it masks local hotspots.
violent crime wasn't spread all over the place to begin with, it's always been concentrated in some areas and not others. but if we do agree that some areas are dropping in violent crime and others are rising disproportionately (you're correct in that aspect) then it's only a "win" for the people living in fairly affluent, violent crime-free areas. for the people growing up in those low income cities that were already racked by violent crime, dilapidated schools, and and increasingly worse job prospects, seeing the murder rate jump from 10% to 60% would be a very bad thing...so bad in fact that it means in some places in the US if you're young and male you have less than a 50/50 chance of making it out of your 20's alive.
there is no rational way to explain that as a "win"
now for big problems: the crime statistics are compiled in a variety of ways
we get the UCR -- that's data from local police. except for murder (where we have a body we have to deal with), police agencies have been found to under-report some crimes and over-report others. In a process called "downgrading" some agencies will write certain offenses as lessors to fiddle with the crime rates in their districts for political or funding reasons.
we also use the NVCS - that's the victim survey. where we ask victims of crimes what people did to them over the past year. it's actually a pretty good way of gathering data except for some big problems: it's a household survey
so if you have people who are homeless, or incarcerated, or really poor living in other people's homes, then you won't capture them in the data sample. and those are the most susceptible populations to violent crime. this is actually a big issue in pretty much all the data we try to collect on social problems -- the design of the surveys can't really tap into the population we need to find out about. one other thing to consider is that a lot of people are not using landlines anymore. so even middle class populations are increasingly left out of this data collection.
the third chunk of data comes from self reporting. we ask criminals what they've done :|
the last chunk of survey data is a fairly new one that some of us researchers have been promoting the use of because it's a really good metric: hospital visits. because regardless of whether you want to call the police (calling the police happens a lot when we're talking about burglaries and car jackings because of insurance claims, but beyond that we don't get as much reporting as we'd like about rapes, robberies, and assaults) you generally want to get patched up when you've been hurt.
but here's the kicker: in regards to homicide rate in the past ten years. a recent study by a team of Harvard doctors argued that our homicide rate hasn't actually gone down in the past decade. what has happened is that our medical technology (largely a function of inner city surgeons training our military in treating war wounds and then those techniques being refined over the past decade of us being at war) has progressed to the point where a lot of people who would have died back then end up living now. if we account for those "saves" we find that our homicide rate would be pretty much where it's been historically (rising and outpacing the rest of the world -- which it's doing even while it's "dropping" but as I wrote earlier it seems to be coming down from a peak).
StewieTheGreat
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Thank you for taking my post out of context and using it to support your twisted argument,even though I quoted the post I was replying to,here it is again.
What is the most disturbing thing about that quote? I happen to think its the line that says and eight year old should "know how to PLAY WITH A FUCKING GUN safely".
That is what I was addressing in my post.
But according to you,if the kid had not been playing the game,had better supervision,had been taught about firearm safety and the gun was unloaded it would be ok that he was playing with it?
If you think its ok for a kid to play with a gun,then your logic is flawed.
Eh, you can rationally say its a win when you put it in the view of the "greater good" that people spout a lot. As for under reporting, I would gather that that's been in play for years, maybe even decade, so I don't think that is something to really consider in a change of the rates, unless there is a suspect in udner reporting increasing.
As for your kicker, it makes a lot of sense. But at the same time, I find it very hard to believe that it's just that. It could, of course, be a large part or just a little part. Hard to tell without absolute facts which we'll never get. Do they differentiate homocides and homocide attempts?
As for your kicker, it makes a lot of sense. But at the same time, I find it very hard to believe that it's just that. It could, of course, be a large part or just a little part. Hard to tell without absolute facts which we'll never get. Do they differentiate homocides and homocide attempts?
Games like could include quite a few violent video games. I wouldn't come right out and make the claim GTA is a training video, but it tends to be in that violent video game classification, unfortunately it could be quite a broad spectrum in games.
Call me a tin foil hat wearer, but it is amazing that violent video games seem to be a theme. Percentage might be low at this point, but I am not willing to accept their studies as the final word.
I'll go ahead and go out in a limb here and say I pretty much fuckered that one up. I stopped reading way to early, and just went on a rant. My apologies on that.
we don't differentiate between homicides and homicide attempts when we're using emergency room admissions but that's not the point. it's not "crime" data like the other types of surveys.
when we use hospital data to supplement other crime statistics we're looking at incidents of violence. we can separate out assaults (like broken bones, bruises, abrasions) from near fatal/fatal wounds (gunshots and stabbings, for example). The Harvard team of doctors didn't "oh look here are homicide attempts and here are homicides." they calculated the near fatal admissions and controlled for medical technique that saved them to arrive at how many of those people would have died over the past decade.
not sure what you mean by hard to tell without absolute facts which you'll never get. it's not complicated. ten years ago we couldn't save people's lives when they sustained certain types of wounds. now we can. now someone can be shot with a shotgun, have his spine severed, and live in a wheelchair the rest of his life. ten years ago it would have been much more difficult to save his life. our doctors didn't have a lot of experience and technique for saving trauma wounds from large caliber weapons over a decade ago. they didn't really need to. then inner city hospitals starting seeing patients with large bullet holes in their bodies...so they had to learn how to save their lives. those same kinds of tactics account for why we don't have very many deaths in our foreign wars anymore...but we have a tremendous amount of veterans maimed for life. during the previous wars those soldiers never made it home.
if you think that under-reporting could be an issue for the last decade then put that together with the article cited saying violent crime has been declining for the past decade.
can't really respond to your first point. it's non-sensical to me. if you want to believe we're in a better state than we were ten years ago then the facts I'm presenting to you aren't going to change your perception. I took the time out of my day to explain some complex things to you that you didn't know before. if you want to argue about the information I don't have time or patience to continue.
when we use hospital data to supplement other crime statistics we're looking at incidents of violence. we can separate out assaults (like broken bones, bruises, abrasions) from near fatal/fatal wounds (gunshots and stabbings, for example). The Harvard team of doctors didn't "oh look here are homicide attempts and here are homicides." they calculated the near fatal admissions and controlled for medical technique that saved them to arrive at how many of those people would have died over the past decade.
not sure what you mean by hard to tell without absolute facts which you'll never get. it's not complicated. ten years ago we couldn't save people's lives when they sustained certain types of wounds. now we can. now someone can be shot with a shotgun, have his spine severed, and live in a wheelchair the rest of his life. ten years ago it would have been much more difficult to save his life. our doctors didn't have a lot of experience and technique for saving trauma wounds from large caliber weapons over a decade ago. they didn't really need to. then inner city hospitals starting seeing patients with large bullet holes in their bodies...so they had to learn how to save their lives. those same kinds of tactics account for why we don't have very many deaths in our foreign wars anymore...but we have a tremendous amount of veterans maimed for life. during the previous wars those soldiers never made it home.
if you think that under-reporting could be an issue for the last decade then put that together with the article cited saying violent crime has been declining for the past decade.
can't really respond to your first point. it's non-sensical to me. if you want to believe we're in a better state than we were ten years ago then the facts I'm presenting to you aren't going to change your perception. I took the time out of my day to explain some complex things to you that you didn't know before. if you want to argue about the information I don't have time or patience to continue.