If The School Shooting Today Is Blamed or Linked To FPS Games.....

[Zthun]

Telling my family to "f off" is your solution? My grandmother is 97 years old. I help take care of her. I think a better solution is for the media as a whole to stop jumping to conclusions about the cause(s) of these events. I do mean that across the board - they'll take anything they can and throw it under the microscope - games, gun laws, the media itself, access to mental health resources, etc. Autism is getting thrown under the bus in this case because a family member of the shooter claimed he was autistic. No one seems to want to point the finger at the person who committed the crime and be willing to say, "This guy was a jerk" - like they're almost afraid of offending his family or friends by saying he was a bad person who did a bad thing.

Yeah, you are supposed to tell your family to 'f' off. Your grandmother is dependent on you to take care of her, something you are not obligated to do. She is not a minor - she is still an adult, and disrespecting you and your children is unacceptable. I understand that you won't be able to do this because of the emotional attachment, but you really need to put her in her place and tell her that your hobby is yours and if you want to expose your children to video games, that's your decision as a parent. 97 or 22, doesn't matter. They're your kids, and you're the one responsible for raising them. Not grandma. The media will never stop doing this. They will post what sells - not what people want to hear, and what sells in controversy. You can't expect the entire world to change because of personal problems.

One of the things we deal with, when it comes to the issue of game violence, is a generation gap. People like my grandmother, or my daughter's great aunt, are from a generation to whom gaming is almost foreign. They aren't stupid, but it's simply something that they don't "get" and as such, when the media throws it under the bus, it's easy for people to latch on and scapegoat it. Of course, one of the problems is that the people throwing it under the bus in the media seem to come from the same generation. My only hope (after the hope that we can find a way to stop this senseless garbage from happening) is that the whole concept of blaming the game culture dies off as the older generation that perpetrates those beliefs shifts out of power.

Just a little while ago I saw a guy claiming on CNN that the shooter must have learned how to reload one of the weapons from playing video games. Wut? Yeah, and I can go drive a race car because I'm awesome at Gran Turismo. I can also go start a band because I'm good at Guitar Hero. I had no idea. Clicking the reload button in a game has to be a lot different from actually reloading a weapon.

This entire thread is nothing but one big bout of insecurity. Honestly, people can blame whatever they want. I'm never going to stop playing games, and if people have a problem with that, including any members of my family, then those people can go 'f' themselves. I am who I am, and nobody is going to stop me from being a gamer. If you have any bout of self-respect, you wouldn't care who the media blames. People that don't accept you for being you aren't worth associating with. If tomorrow, all of my friends told me that they couldn't be my friend anymore because I play games, then I would dump my entire social circle and find another one that accepted me. Again, hardest thing to do - but you're better off and happier in the long run.

And another thing...regardless of what is blamed in the long run, video games or not, the real problem here is that some nut job that didn't belong in society went into a school and blasted up a bunch of kids. This guy was not innocent, not right in the head, and was the ultimate bastard douchebag regardless of what is blamed or scapegoated.