Of course - the most sane, safe, and logical answer
 

Comes from the NRA :P

They want to volunteer their 11,000 trainers to prep an entirely volunteer police force with the goal of putting an armed "police officer" in every school in the country.

But somehow, all this altruism requires that Congress immediately ”appropriate whatever is necessary to put armed police officers in every school in this nation.”

Aside from being every shade of red over the stupidity this clown for continuing to blame video games for mass shootings, color me utterly confused over the need for appropriations to support an all-volunteer "police force" patrolling our schools.

That and terrified at the prospect of giving anything that even hints at a nod towards legitimizing a free-range militia tasked with determining what is and isn't a threat.

Getcher new-age militia plan here!

So you don't believe that the super violent video games that this shooter reportedly spent a lot of time with are a factor in his crime?

No more a factor than spending time at a gun range with his mother was.

Both are perfectly normal, safe, healthy activities. When participated in by normal, sane, healthy humans.

Banning violent video games makes no more sense than banning guns.

I would bet that this NRA-trained police force would be responsible for more schoolchildren deaths per year through gun accidents and intentional shootings than the mass murderers that they would be employed to deter.

how about better restrictions on both?

Better age restrictions on certain games maybe?

It seems silly to me that games could have an effect, but on the other hand, the last time I played a video game closely and for extended periods, was super mariokart on a super nintendo. I did have several mariokart dreams related to it.

That was a long time ago, and the technological improvement in game realism and intensity is amazing.

Age restrictions are a joke - for guns or video games. Parents, friends, etc - are going to make games/guns available to "underage" people based on their own values/beliefs/levels of actual parenting/etc.

I am not "pro-gun" any more than I am "anti-gun" or pro/anti video games. What I am is saddened by the fact that everybody keeps trying to find whys to legislate their way into controlling behavior rather than deal with what is, in my humble opinion, a failure of our society to recognize and effectively deal with the root causes associated with antisocial behavior.

Exactly. The 3 or so threads on this event have all devolved into "your solution sucks, only MINE will work", and fall into two categories - armed presence on school grounds, or more restrictions on guns - IMHO simplisitic feel good quick fixes that will do NOTHING to prevent this from happening AGAIN - perhaps only reduce the body count.

Well, you have no argument from me on this. However, i feel there could definitely be a connection between anti-social behavior, entertainment glorification of violence, ready access to weapons, and failure to alter either of the second and third factors in recognition of the first that could be leading to these mass shootings.

Well stated. I agree that behavior is the root cause, and would like to see resources tasked towards getting assistance to those that need it.

However, this hydra is many headed, and I don't believe a single answer is available. Some of the move to legislate against certain weapons I believe to be long overdue, and that the answer is going to have to be federally mandated. Some states just will not allow any commonsense in their gun laws, which completely undermines the neighboring states which do.
The posts regarding DC and NYC are excellent examples of laws being circumvented with a short drive.

The video games is a little more murky.... Last one I played for any length of time was GTA3. That is definitely a violent game, and I think it has the ability to get into the players head and assist on the road to antisocial behavior.
The answer is to not play so much, but there is no way to do that. I know kids who spend hours every day playing their x-boxes and PS3
How do you reach these parents and get them to take an active role in their children's lives?
If they are too lazy or preoccupied to bother teaching their kids, they will never attend parenting classes or parent meetings at school.

I gotta say, the NRA is an organ of the gun industry so it should be no surprise that their solution to every problem is to provide more people with guns.

Ironically, this was not always true-

The Secret History of Guns - Adam Winkler - The Atlantic

"In the 1920s and ’30s, the NRA was at the forefront of legislative efforts to enact gun control. The organization’s president at the time was Karl T. Frederick, a Princeton- and Harvard-educated lawyer known as “the best shot in America”—a title he earned by winning three gold medals in pistol-shooting at the 1920 Summer Olympic Games. As a special consultant to the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, Frederick helped draft the Uniform Firearms Act, a model of state-level gun-control legislation. (Since the turn of the century, lawyers and public officials had increasingly sought to standardize the patchwork of state laws. The new measure imposed more order—and, in most cases, far more restrictions.)
Frederick’s model law had three basic elements. The first required that no one carry a concealed handgun in public without a permit from the local police. A permit would be granted only to a “suitable” person with a “proper reason for carrying” a firearm. Second, the law required gun dealers to report to law enforcement every sale of a handgun, in essence creating a registry of small arms. Finally, the law imposed a two-day waiting period on handgun sales.
The NRA today condemns every one of these provisions as a burdensome and ineffective infringement on the right to bear arms. Frederick, however, said in 1934 that he did “not believe in the general promiscuous toting of guns. I think it should be sharply restricted and only under licenses.” The NRA’s executive vice president at the time, Milton A. Reckord, told a congressional committee that his organization was “absolutely favorable to reasonable legislation.” According to Frederick, the NRA “sponsored” the Uniform Firearms Act and promoted it nationwide. Highlighting the political strength of the NRA even back then, a 1932 Virginia Law Review article reported that laws requiring a license to carry a concealed weapon were already “in effect in practically every jurisdiction.”

Agreed - in their quest to protect their interpretation of the 2nd, the NRA is willing to write-off the 1st amendment. Compromise does not exist in the NRA's vocab.

Video games have nothing to do with the first amendment.

- Peter.

I'm not trying to be argumentative. I am REALLY not. That said, I would recommend that you read a little of what Lt. Col. David Grossman has to say about it. Should be able to google him up very easily.

I don't like video games and consider them a waste of daylight, but the research on whether they cause these sorts of events is inconclusive at best.
As for the NRA, no surprise at their response. Buncha nutballs in charge of that little club.

How old was the shooter in Connecticutt? How many years older do you think he would have to be in order to not to have been affected by the video games?

Lots of articles discuss Lanza's practice of sitting in the basement focusing on violent video games for extended periods, but these are articles that quote people like the plumber who came to his house, his barber, ect. Not sure I trust those sources as how would they really know?

Im not sure such a question on video game limiting would have had an effect on this guy, but still, it seems if you take the accounts we hear at face value, was a huge part of his life. Did it have an effect? who knows, seems like it could have to me though. The only person who could answer that question would be Lanza.

The only way I see age restrictions on video games working is with the help of parents doing the restricting. And the benefit I see to that would be that it allows kids to develop other interests as well in formative years, without necessarily having those interests developed FOR them, as the entertainment industry definitely does.

I don't see it as stopping people from being suggested to, I see it as allowing someone to become more of a complete person first.

I know from personal experience, that as child I was banned from TV or games until homework and chores were finished and only on certain days could I watch or play anyway. I wasn't necessarily banned from running about outside, and other activities. Just those two types of recreation were off limits, the others were frowned upon if I hadn't finished my requirements, but I could sell the idea of a bike ride, or kite flying and homework later to them.
(this may have been based on the fact that I was a butterball, and the parents were worried about me becoming a obese gamer the second I got into them, but there were other good side effects)

Subsequently, gaming culture and TV did not make up much of my childhood, which allowed me to expand other interests first, and by the time I had unrestricted access to gaming culture, I didn't become overly obsessed, and fall deeply into those worlds. I was able to enjoy them normally, and then quickly lost huge interest in them.

The allure of some of these gaming worlds is simply amazing to me considering the march of technology and complication in todays games. Have you ever met anyone who was addicted to World or Warcraft? Thats their reality, its appalling.

Whether you realize it or not, your post gets into a LOT of what is causing problems today. You had good and savvy parents that laid down a good set of rules and raised you themselves. Unlike your parents, too many parents expect the schools to raise their kids. The video games and the TV work great for such parents because it gives them a baby sitter.

It's very likely that YOU or I could have been allowed to sit in our rooms all the time playing the nastiest video games in the world and wouldn't turn into serial killers. Couple someone like the Lanza kid with the same stuff and it turns out to be a disaster. Who's to know if Lanza would have had the same upbringing as you or I, he would have still turned out with the same problems? For my money, if he would have been raised differently, it very well might have turned out for the better.

My $0.02,

In the old days old farts blamed Rock & Roll and Presley's hips to all the misery and now it's video games... :rolleyes:

so the sexual revolution didn't happen? :D

Those old farts didn't like where the world was going, led or perhaps more accurately, demonstrated by presleys hips and rock and roll, but in those directions it definitely went!

NRA membership : 4.3 million
Guns in private hands in the U.S.: 310 million non-military.

The NRA presumes to speak for gun owners in the U.S. Either the average gun owner in this country owns 72 firearms, or the NRA isn't the voice of firearms that it (not to mention it's detractors) would have us believe.

+1

Hmm... I don't remember them coming to my house to count my weopons?:confused:

So you saying the old farts are right and the next generation will shoot each other up...:eek:

Very well stated. That is why my wife quit her job to be a mom first. She only went back to work when her schedule could work with thte kids being in school.

im thinking they were kinda right in how outside influence can share partial blame. Put it this way, old farts then objected to the idea of timmy and tammy humping their brains out listening to "a big hunk O' love" without the accepted social precedents all lined up back then.

Well, their objection IMO was silly, but if timmy and tammy humping resulted in dozens of people killed, then id say we might look closer at just how much influence "big hunk O' love" actually had.

On one hand, we can accept that runs on the bank for completely engineered through media situations as the NEED to have a tickle me elmo, or a furby, are facts of the modern world. Look at how Mcd's ruthlessly controls the popularity of the mcrib, a sandwich made of crap as another example, yet people froth at the mouth to eat them.

I just think that gaming environments that are so real, so complex, and so self sustaining can definitely have a negative impact on the right mind when the overall message is that carnage is cool, violence is good, and pursuit of both has its rewards.

The whole asbergers syndrome scenario is still pretty new. They really don't know for sure what it is and what causes it. My daughter the pediatrician works with asberger and autistic kids as a specialty. she is a firm believer that much of our health problems are diet related. Much of our food is raised with too much pesticide and so forth, plus all the hormones in beef and on and on. We have abundant and cheap food in this country but it is not without a severe price.

She only eats organic food now and has come up with regimens of suppliments and vitamins which help the autistic and asberger kids.

She said this danza kid probably would have benefited if his mom had not allowed him to withdraw from society and concentrate on his bloodthirsty video games.

My uncle probably owns twice that. It's just one of his many hobbies, collecting and shooting guns at his private range out in the woods. All of them are locked up in gun safes or have trigger locks and most of the time he has no ammo in his house save for his CCW, and if he does have ammo, its in a separate gun case. He usually just goes out and buys ammo at Walmart the day he wants to go shooting (sometimes in the thousands of dollars worth). He owns everything from .22 revolvers to 30-06 scoped rifles to glocks to a P90 semi-auto carbine with 50 round clip. Although he has enough guns to arm a small militia, he is not a violent person and has never shot anyone. He works in a really bad section of Atlanta, which is the reason for his CCW. I can sorta see why he likes guns so much, they can be incredibly fun to shoot but they are not cheap to own and maintain.

I don't know how many of you have ever watched/played some of those video games but some of them are absolute trash in my opinion. Walk around busting ppl up to win points to buy weapons, running around stealing cars and shooting ppl and doing drug deals. I can see how an easily influenced young mind could think it is "normal". If ya'll have never seen it check out the latest rendition of Grand Theft Auto sometimes. The ex wife could not get to the store fast enough to purchase these games for my boys.

I agree with this^.

Gee, for all the violent video games I play and have played for hours (yes, I'm a geek) you'd think I would have gone and performed some heinous crime by now. Or maybe some of my friends who also play online with me. Some of those racing games would have put me into a tree by now too right?

There is no way to prove it one way or another, but my guess is the kid had schizophrenia pop up. Age 18-24 is when symptoms arise in most schizophrenics so in many many cases there are no previously documented symptoms. Pair that with Aspergers (or at least frustration from it) and probably depression and there you go. I could see someone with Aspergers have a lot of trouble trying to bring that up with others which would just compound it.

Same old story after every shooting. With Columbine, they did it because they played too much Doom II. http://static.zenimax.com/bethblog/o...M_II_SP_02.jpg

Went to a screening of "Apocalypto" with Mel Gibson presence for a Q&A last night and I to my knowledge no one in the audience went on to Hollywood Blvd and started to chop of some heads. I don't buy the correlation between movies, video games and mass killings.

On the other hand the correlation between watching Fox-news and violence is obvious to me: "Man Who Set Fire to Ohio Mosque Claims He Got ‘Riled Up’ Watching Fox News" :D

screw the hooker, then when she gets out, beat her to death and take her money...

what kind of wrong message is in that?;)

You appear to have missed the point.

Imagine....

That is what I'm talking about:eek:.

Any parent who lets their child play a game where you steal cars, beat people, shoot people, and do drug deals is a defective unit. My kids are absolutely forbidden to play any game where you shoot people, and are also not allowed to go to friends houses where those games are played. I will not entrust the care of my child to someone who is not involved enough to oversee what the kids are up to. It defies logic to think that anything other than bad could happen from allowing your kids to "play" these violent games. That being said, I don't want to ban these video games, or even try to regulate them, as I believe it is up to the parents to determine how they wish to raise their kids.

Just found out its Counter-Strike that the guy played. No robbing, stealing cars, or doing drug deals in that. Primary objective is to kill terrorists and disarm a bomb or rescue hostages. Happened to be one of my favorite games in college. And who's stopping a 20 year old from buying and playing games like that?

But guns, games and movies are evil. They must be controlled er, regulated.


iPhone 4

Could very well happen. Same way that guns in the home kill a family member about 4 times more often than an armed intruder.

A metaphorical reference to how the IRS routinely deals with small businesses and average working people.

You are aware, aren't you that a program very similar to what has been proposed was implemented by Clinton in 2000?? It was called the COPS in School program.

It was a dumb idea then as it's now. Creating a police state to keep your "liberties", where does it stop?

Its not a police state at football games, airports and the white house to have security.
Why do you go to the extreme and say that its a police state? Is it to stop an opposing viewpoint?


iPhone 4

Because that's how I see it and do you really think it will make a difference?

A difference? Depends on how it is implemented. A swarm of cops would create some security at the expense of a prison environment. A few plain clothes officers (like air marshals) could work better. They would be harder to predict and the students intimidation factor would be lower.

A legitimate discussion could reveal better ideas instead of the posturing and name calling currently being utilized.

I haven't heard a better idea coming from the 0Bama admin. which is not surprising. If you're going to need to be prepared for a gun fight, it may make sense to be armed with adequate firepower. Wouldn't it? I don't see any alternative.

Some people have no issue with trampling your liberties in an effort to preserve their own.... even if their liberties are already infringing on others.

This is a misleading statement (if not intentionally so).

How does one infringe on the others?

Putting kids daily into an environment where armed guards are necessary tells them (and ourselves) that we have given up trying to build a better and kinder world for them.