8-Year-Old Kills Caregiver After Playing Grand Theft Auto IV

hold on.. not to be cynical.. BUT
what IF
the baebae (baby), just had enough and the caretaker deserved it :O

but on a serious note, goodness gracious. what can we do but hope for fortune from misfortunes?
 
And teach kids about the dangers of picking one up and "playing" with it early.

Even if you are anti gun, basic knowledge of firearms is not a bad idea.

But lack of facts, research, rational thinking, and ignorance are what makes up the anti-gun arsenal. Without those they'd be extinct.
 
something tells me a lot of the people who posted in this thread haven't seen an 8 year old in person in years, based on the posts i'm reading

by the age of EIGHT, you have the ability to use critical thinking, and know what's socially accepted as right and wrong. you know what death and life is, and you know the difference between make believe and reality

if a videogame is a factor in determining why an EIGHT year old kills someone, then the kid already has severe psychological problems to begin with.
 
hold on.. not to be cynical.. BUT
what IF
the baebae (baby), just had enough and the caretaker deserved it :O

but on a serious note, goodness gracious. what can we do but hope for fortune from misfortunes?

Uh...better parenting? Parenting in general?
 
Guns, like games, are blameless objects. How they are used, and by whom is the issue. Loaded gun in reach of an eight year old whose only education regarding guns is GTA IV? Yeah, bad idea

It is not the game, it is not the guns, it is the lack of proper education, upbringing, and supervision.
Well said! :D
 
He's right, you guys are whining about violence in video games. Its not the games. Its everything from movies, tv shows, games, music, etc that influence kids.

I have kids, and at that age, they really don't know the difference, unless they are told the difference, and even then they need to be reminded sternly on a regular basis, to respect life, and their elders, and their peers. It needs to be re-inforced to never use a gun on a person, that it can kill a person, and dead means dead. Kids do not get that, unless we teach them the difference.

When I was a kid, it was cops and robbers, or cowboys and indians. We used fake guns back then to 'shoot' at, and to catch each other. Its ingrained in our minds as kids, because its FUN to role-play. Just like girls love to dress up, and play house, and play with dolls. AND THERES NOTHING WRONG WITH IT. But we need to teach our kids the difference between life and death, and what respect with guns means, and obviously this boy was not taught the difference. This is bad parenting plain and simple.
 
tNkT9JH_Who_shot_Mr_Burns____Car_by_Tusaara.jpg
 
Possibly off topic, but I find it slightly ironic that a family, clearly living with limited means, somehow managed to be able to afford a $300-400 dollar gaming console. Priorities! o_O
 
Again though, everyone is ignoring that these games aren't made for kids, aren't marketed to kids, aren't sold to kids, and have warning labels all over them.

The game isn't the problem here, anymore than a bottle of whiskey is to blame if an 8-year old drinks it.

And the gun also isn't made for, marketed to, or sold to kids, and also isn't to blame for this.

THe parents are to blame for allowing unsupervised access, plain and simple. Yet in our ever increasingly socialist society, there is no such thing as personal accountability, and we have to ban more inanimate objects.. that seems to be the trend anyway. "ERMERGERD! Ban violent video games and guns, gawl, Praise Obama". :rolleyes:

Lastly, as was already pointed out violent crime has been consistently falling every year, but of course in the information age, when you have a group of 314,000,057 people you should expect to hear crazy stories daily.
Nah, They just jump off a building when they get an A- in "Piano for Moms Ego."
I'd rather see one of a thousand kids failing in their reach for the stars devastated now and then than a bunch of hood rats bursting into violence every time they feel "disrespected" that end up attracted to crime since they developed no other useful marketable skills.
 
something tells me a lot of the people who posted in this thread haven't seen an 8 year old in person in years, based on the posts i'm reading

by the age of EIGHT, you have the ability to use critical thinking, and know what's socially accepted as right and wrong. you know what death and life is, and you know the difference between make believe and reality

if a videogame is a factor in determining why an EIGHT year old kills someone, then the kid already has severe psychological problems to begin with.

Not necessarily. This kid could still be learning right from wrong, and that killing is wrong. Kids are all very different, and all of them whine and toss a fit about something and become violent, or a brat in some sense when they become excited. This happens to all different degrees with kids. Kids are not adults, while they 'might' be able to rationalize something, it doesn't mean they do when it matters such as in this case.

Obviously you think just because somebody has the ability to use critical thinking, that they 'automatically' know right from wrong, and when to use restraint, and when not too. Do you not think that when an adult commits a murder, they don't have the ability to realize the difference of right and wrong? 8 years old is not an adult, that's why there are laws that he cannot be charged as an adult. Kids are curious about guns, if they are not taught about guns, they think all guns are toys they can 'play' with.
 
When I was a kid, it was cops and robbers, or cowboys and indians. We used fake guns back then to 'shoot' at, and to catch each other. Its ingrained in our minds as kids, because its FUN to role-play. Just like girls love to dress up, and play house, and play with dolls. AND THERES NOTHING WRONG WITH IT. But we need to teach our kids the difference between life and death, and what respect with guns means, and obviously this boy was not taught the difference. This is bad parenting plain and simple.

I totally agree, this is bad parenting. However I disagree that there is "nothing wrong" with the glamorization of guns in our society, even as toys. I grew up in a family that hunted, and I have been around and/or used guns since I was old enough to hold one. My parents never wanted us to confuse the premise behind the use of guns, so we never had gun toys as a child except squirt guns (like super soakers). We were always taught respect for firearms and proper gun safety. It is ingrained in us, and when shooting with my 14 year old son I am adamant about proper handling. And yes, at this point my son plays a lot of first person shooting games, and what not. But I did not let him play those types of games until he was old enough to understand the consequences of mishandling real firearms.

My son spent a lot of time playing games (almost always WITH me), just like any other child of the modern age but it was mostly car games, side-scrollers, or third person type RPGs. At its very worst we played medieval monster hack and slash games. I didn't avoid shooters because I felt that it would somehow contribute to my son shooting up a school or something, but rather because I just felt that at an impressionable young age that less violent, slower paced, intellectually stimulating games where better for healthy mental development. And I certainly didn't just stick him in front of a game and walk away, in fact for probably the first 8 years of his life he never touched a game where I was not playing with him.

Now to my point, if there is one; I wouldn't go so far as to blame any sort of toys or video games for gun incidents or violence involving children, however you simply cannot deny that the activities involved in raising a child can and will contribute in some way to their cognitive development. Video games or not, if you glamorize firearms before a child understands the consequences of their use, the chances of an incident will be MUCH greater. This you simply cannot deny. However, with proper and attentive parenting, the risks of any such incidents can be nearly eliminated. In short, yes video games may have been are likely a SMALL contributing factor, however I believe this only to be the case when adequate parenting has been miserably lacking. However, if you could analyze the patterns of the human brain; for every one link you would find to video games I have no doubt you would find a hundred more that are related to other things.
 
Many factors involved. For once, it may be true that the game was a contributing factor. You don't let an 8 year old play that kind of game and you don't leave a gun lying around.... Clearly nobody educated the child about the difference between games and reality either.

Educated? I didn't need anyone to tell me at 8 not to jump into plumbing tubes.

The kid is an imbecile, and a psychopath.
 
Not necessarily. This kid could still be learning right from wrong, and that killing is wrong. Kids are all very different, and all of them whine and toss a fit about something and become violent, or a brat in some sense when they become excited. This happens to all different degrees with kids. Kids are not adults, while they 'might' be able to rationalize something, it doesn't mean they do when it matters such as in this case.

Obviously you think just because somebody has the ability to use critical thinking, that they 'automatically' know right from wrong, and when to use restraint, and when not too. Do you not think that when an adult commits a murder, they don't have the ability to realize the difference of right and wrong? 8 years old is not an adult, that's why there are laws that he cannot be charged as an adult. Kids are curious about guns, if they are not taught about guns, they think all guns are toys they can 'play' with.

I'm going to boil that down to "stupid kid."

Makes the adults even more stupid for leaving a gun lying around.
 
That said, the kid was 8. At that age, having access to a gun is dangerous under any circumstance.

No it's not, this is bullshit.

I grew up for age one with guns in the house and same with my two sisters. No locks, they sat in the gun rack and we didn't touch them until Dad said it was time for us to learn about them. We all learned real early that when Mom and Dad said don't touch, you don't touch.

It's is no different then teaching a kid not to stick his hands up onto the oven or to grab the handles. You teach them. If you don't teach them then theis stupid shit happens. And if you don't have guns in your house what about when your kid goes to someone else's house with you? You might think you know other people but they might have guns too and they might not tell you about it. What happens if your kid sees a gun and no one has taught him/her not to play with them and WHY. You must demonstrate why, they really are not too young to learn these things.
 
The old lady wouldn't have had a loaded gun around unless she thought she might need one. She's old, so if she does need it she has to be able to get to it quick which means it must be convienient, and..... she has to remember where it is :rolleyes:

I agree an 8 year old shouldn't be playing this game. But the kid should have been taught not to play with guns as well.
 
Possibly off topic, but I find it slightly ironic that a family, clearly living with limited means, somehow managed to be able to afford a $300-400 dollar gaming console. Priorities! o_O

ZenDragon, that's half of america. Witin a few years of retiring from the Army I bought my first home, a wrote a check for it. At that time my wife and I had saved and invested and we had just over $200,000 and we bought that sucker outright. At that time someone at the bank told us that less then 1/3 of 1% of Americans actually own their own home without a mortgage hanging over it.

America's financial system has been corupted into this debt model where people are supposed to do two things;
#1 Have all their wants, not their needs, just their wants.
#2 Live in debt their entire life.

College Grads with $40,000 student loans, and they have never worked a job in their life in many cases.
High School kids, Mom, Dad, you should at least get them a credit card so they can learn how to manage debt, of course, cause we are going to keep them in debt their entire life.

It's not enough to sell you a home at interest rates and prices that will have them paying for it for 30 years, we are going to keep you in debt much longer cause we will get you to refinance and such so you can help the kids with those student loans, and don't worry. If you ever do pay off that huvel, we will let you do a reverse mortgage so we slowly buy it back from you at a terrific rate"
 
Great point.

Heck yea it's a great point, how many kids have shot each other while they were visiting someone else's home and the kids just were not taught to not play with guns.

Look guys, most any of us would teach our kids not to grab at things on the stove or to poke objects into the electrical outlets. We do have to cover the outlets cause the toddlers are just too young to get it yet.

Guns are no different and even if they aren't in your house they often are in someone else's house.

Teach them; show them what a gun is.
Teach them; show them what a gun does, (the noise and a watermellon make an impression).
Teach them; explain that they will get to learn to shoot guns later when they are older.
Teach them so you don't have to bury them, or have them deal their entire life with having killed someone else by age 8.
 
You don't see how fucking nuts that is? Gun violence unheard of yet your house is armed like a drug dealers?

Apparantly you are drinking the kool-aid or you are too young to speak. The kids were all fine, I was fine, we all knew what a gun was, what it could do, how to shoot it (if we were big enough to be able to hold it, we went shooting with pops and learned it).

We weren't a society of mind weak whimps and pushovers, like you are. Face it: You are a product of pussification. You should never even see a real gun in person, for your own sake.
 
Oh, Disposed, just a little more history: When I was in high school, probably years before you were born, the kids who drove to school hit a changing point: The principle came out of the blue and made a policy under pressure of some nag's, that policy was this: "If you are a student, and you have a hunting rifle or shotgun in your car when you park on the school lot, please be sure to hide it behind the seat or otherwise out of view if you are not otherwise taking it into class for show and tell"

Yeah, we came a long way. One thing is for sure: We never had a school shooting. No one was dumb enough to even think about trying it. Even the dumb kids were smart enough to know better.

So, how far has society really taken us and for what means?
 
I'm a gun advocate, have a bunch of powerful and weird (5.56×45mm NATO "pistol" to .50 caliber DEagle), but I think it should be considered criminal negligence to have firearms in the home that are not locked, unless they are not fully assembled and just for display purposes.

1) You can't count on everyone visiting the home to know about and practice firearm safety
2) Children are still children, and while I was taught firearm safety I didn't know the lock combination and was always supervised.
3) It just puts more guns on the blackmarket for criminals since it makes home invasions that much more lucrative.

I would have no problem with a law that says all firearms have to be locked. They have plenty of spring loaded super fast open safes available, and if you're THAT paranoid that the two seconds would matter, you can have it on your person on a holster but when you take it off it needs to go in a safe.
 
I have been criticized for showing my then 10 year old how my (competition) shotgun works, its safety features, how to handle it, how to secure it. "Making my son a gun nut" was the phrase thrown around.

I'm pretty liberal in general, but this sort of mentality is insane. Showing my son safe use of real things in the real world is being a "nut" now? It isn't clear how this is being less safe than pretending guns don't exist, then dealing with the fallout of a child playing with something they don't understand if one falls in their hands.

I also show him to cut away from his hands when helping in the kitchen, to wear glasses when using power tools, and wash his hands before handling food.

This makes me a knife nut, a tool nut, and maybe a soap nut.

sigh.
 
Apparantly you are drinking the kool-aid or you are too young to speak. The kids were all fine, I was fine, we all knew what a gun was, what it could do, how to shoot it (if we were big enough to be able to hold it, we went shooting with pops and learned it).

We weren't a society of mind weak whimps and pushovers, like you are. Face it: You are a product of pussification. You should never even see a real gun in person, for your own sake.


Lol, +++ BBA

I lived out in the country and when I was done with home work I would just get on my motorcycle and drive down the country roads with a .22 rifle on my back and get some Jack Rabbit shooting in or shoot a bird. Those birds went to feed my Boa Constrictor. Farmers were happy cause Jack Rabbits eat crops. I never shot at anything I wasn't supposed to shoot at. I was never stopped by anyone and people never thought that I was doing something wrong.

This is no longer the country we live in and the people who do live here seem to think that there was something wrong with this if they even acknowldge that people did lived this way or that it was normal.
 
You mean like the NRA's Eddie Eagle? They put out a lot of info, not sure if they still do. Parents should be teaching the kids these things, but if they need a mascot, Eddie Eagle is there. My parents taught me if I saw a gun - don't touch it. The only time I saw a gun at home was when my Dad brought it out (aside from the display ones on the wall that didn't work). Other than that, they were locked up. I do the same thing now that I have kids.




Heck yea it's a great point, how many kids have shot each other while they were visiting someone else's home and the kids just were not taught to not play with guns.

Guns are no different and even if they aren't in your house they often are in someone else's house.

Teach them; show them what a gun is.
Teach them; show them what a gun does, (the noise and a watermellon make an impression).
Teach them; explain that they will get to learn to shoot guns later when they are older.
Teach them so you don't have to bury them, or have them deal their entire life with having killed someone else by age 8.
 
Yeah, we came a long way. One thing is for sure: We never had a school shooting. No one was dumb enough to even think about trying it. Even the dumb kids were smart enough to know better.

So, how far has society really taken us and for what means?

Again BBA, right on. My Ag Teacher, (Agriculture ;) ), kept a shotgun and a rifle in the gun rack, back window of his pickup truck every day at school. His truck was parked right there in the parking lot in his parking space, the same un-fenced parking lot all us kids parked in. No one dared to touch his truck or his guns, his guns were never stolen, I doubt it was even locked. No kids ever got shot accidently or otherwise.

Like BBA says, so much for progress. Parents need to re-learn how to parent, parents need to trust schools with their kids and back the school officials up not look for excuses to sue them. Schools need to step up.

Oh, and we need to get rid of about 300,000 lawyers :D
 
Many factors involved. For once, it may be true that the game was a contributing factor. You don't let an 8 year old play that kind of game and you don't leave a gun lying around.... Clearly nobody educated the child about the difference between games and reality either.
I let my niece play GTA 3 and Vice City on my phone and she likes it a lot.She talks about runing people over,killing them to get the money,but she is aware its just a game and not to be taken seriously.She is also 6 not 8.Again this crap how the game is to blame?Maybe the stupid/crazy parents who keep a gun around in the house and gave that child a bad education are to blame...
 
8 year old kid with access to guns and ammo. Story could have ended there. I nearly got shot in the face when I was about that old while playing at a friend's grandparents house. We were playing quickdraw/cowboys and indians with a loaded revolver. Nintendos hadn't even been invented yet.
 
...I think it should be considered criminal negligence to have firearms in the home that are not locked, unless they are not fully assembled and just for display purposes.
...

I would have no problem with a law that says all firearms have to be locked. ... you can have it on your person on a holster but when you take it off it needs to go in a safe.

Read DC vs. Heller. Good stuff.

Spoiler alert. The government lost.
 
Okay why has an eight year old got access to an 18 rated game, and a f#@*ing gun?

I also like how they brought up Adam Lanza (again), yet fail to mention mentally, he had a few problems, that his mum didn't want anyone to know about, acknowledge that he was a potential problem, and bought him the guns he used to kill her, and the 26 victims.
 
I have been criticized for showing my then 10 year old how my (competition) shotgun works, its safety features, how to handle it, how to secure it. "Making my son a gun nut" was the phrase thrown around.

I'm pretty liberal in general, but this sort of mentality is insane. Showing my son safe use of real things in the real world is being a "nut" now? It isn't clear how this is being less safe than pretending guns don't exist, then dealing with the fallout of a child playing with something they don't understand if one falls in their hands.

I also show him to cut away from his hands when helping in the kitchen, to wear glasses when using power tools, and wash his hands before handling food.

This makes me a knife nut, a tool nut, and maybe a soap nut.

sigh.

I can't believe someone could be so brash and rude (and stupid, for that matter) as to tell you that. It's no one else's business how you raise your kids.
 
It's no one else's business how you raise your kids.

And therein lies much of the problem because the people who do tell you how you should raise your kids actually believe they are correct in doing so. They think that they have this right to meddle in your life if you don't live your life to their standards.
 
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