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Now, without getting into the menusha of weapons, gun-control, California and other details...I have an admission to make...

I have had some time here recently to spend time with my nephew, obviously a good kid, smart, innovative, home-schooled (with plenty of down time because he gets his school work done)...

He is 12 years old and loves to do his rodeo stuff, he's been doing this since he could sit up in the saddle...He also loves to play video games...

Since I am his favorite uncle, I spent some $$$ and purchased anXbox machine, got an online account and he (nephew) and I immerse ourselves for a few hours in this fantasy world...I think he (nephew) has a good perspective on what is real and what is not real and is able to process the differences clearly and without any problems, I think he is able to turn off the "rush" very easily and not be constantly obsessed with the gamer culture...

Sad to say, and from experience just watching and interacting with some of the gamer community, adults in there included, that there are some serious psychotic people out there, young and old...

I truely believe that some people who immerse themselves into this sub-culture are not as adept as others are at being able to process, much less be able to turn off fantasy and get back to reality...In addition we have seen, and heard, 7-10 year old playing these first person shooter games more times than I care to admit...The irrevereance, the lack of civility, maturity and overall personalities we have encountered borders on a serious deficiency in the ability to discriminate reality from fantasy, thus we have seen instances (increased) in these types of rampages by what I can safely say are imbalanced, developed/conditioned psychosis in younger people these days...

I do not believe banning these "games" will stop anyone who is so caught up in these things to keep them from acting out violently...I personally don't believe there is a template/solution that can be applied to someone who is somehow determined to be a little "off" and subjected/immersed into these video games that depict such violence, much less regulate any better the sale and use of such items...Parents just buy these things regardless of the rating system...

These same parent probably play them with their kids and then get away from it after short while...Just a theory...

I do believe this is important for our gun owning community to know that some of these gamers in that community are serious mentally imbalanced kids, for lack of a better term, and that we, as law abiding citizens need to pay close attention to this issue asa it is illuded to in many of these events as some sort of revelation to the informationally challenged public...

The multi-pronged attack on our Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms IS being challenged by such unsubstanciated mental conditions such as the influence of these violent video games...We've known this for years, but I have seen/heard the psychosis first hand...

And even though I know a lot of you have already put this all together from years of seeing this happen time after time after time, the corrolation is being used as a weapon against all of us regardless if we are involved in the gamer community or not...

That's why I reject this overall net/blanket being prepared to be thrown over ALL of us as some sort of litmus test to determine if any of us are mentally stable to own, much less possess, firearms for any lawful purpose, just because of our involvement, however deep you may or may not be into this gamer community...

My nephew does not, and is not allowed (My and my sister's decision) to play online with these folks unsupervised...And when things get a little heated, and they do, I back us out and we go do something more productive of course...The problem is we do not see many other adults this involved with their own kids who do this very much...And there lies the problem...Where we used to be put in front of TV's as babysitters, which was fairly non-interactive, these games these days are extremely adept at maksing reality and damaging the psychological balance kids start out with before they are immersed into this culture...

So when we hear measures being proposed about what healthcare professionals can ask you about your home environment, you can certainly see the risk of accepting that intrusion as the new norm...The ability to corrolate the admission of ownership of guns and some in your family who play these video games is yet just another potential step in giving the opposition more ammunition to be used against us in some way, shape or form...

Just thought I would share this with y'all this morning...

Regards...

You are spot on about this. Unfortunately, none of this matters to those who want to disarm the populace so that they can have COMPLETE CONTROL. If I were truly cynical, which I'm not; I'd suggest that the government and their gun grabber lackeys actually embrace those on the margin for their ability to provide the next "gun-induced incident", to prove the point that only the police and government should have guns.....

Generally speaking people are not as crazy as you think. The internet grants a level of anonymity that divorces people from the consequences of their words. As a result people will say even the most criminal of things

psijac wrote:Generally speaking people are not as crazy as you think. The internet grants a level of anonymity that divorces people from the consequences of their words. As a result people will say even the most criminal of things

I'm not a gamer, but I was just about to post the same thing about online anonymity when I saw your post. People feel free to say (and do) the most outlandish things because they know they are never going to get called on it outside the context of the game. There is an episode of "Big Bang Theory" in which Sheldon Cooper goes on the warpath because someone in an online game has robbed him of his virtual spoils of war, and he tracks the guy down in real life to his home in Orange County and demands the return of his "stolen" items. Of course, the other kid is just as geeky as Sheldon, but he lacks any moral filters in real life too, so he steals Sheldon's Klingon Bat Lith, which he had brought along as a "weapon."

In another episode, Penny, who is not a gamer, becomes addicted to an online game based on the world of Conan the Barbarian and gives herself over completely to it. In the end, she comes to her senses when she realizes that she is about to have virtual sex with Howard Wolowitz.

It's easy to laugh this stuff off and say, "that's just TV, not real life," but the fact is that there are games that actually encourage players to do things that (we hope) they would never do in real life. When "Grand Theft Auto" enables male players to rape their female victims, there is something seriously broken in the moral compass of the people who wrote the game, and there is something seriously broken in the moral compass of people who perform virtual rape—because as any psychologist/psychiatrist will tell you, rape is not about sexual pleasure for the predator. Rather, it is about some deep seated need to punish, humiliate, and abuse the rape victim. There is NEVER any scenario in which rape is entertainment. And yet, that is fundamentally what computer gaming, online or not, is all about: entertainment, and by making rape into entertainment, the game's designers are inviting players to partake of a serious social taboo, without real world consequences.

Sure, people don't have to let their gaming lives cross over into their real lives, but sadly, we know for a fact that some people do, and we get Columbine, Aurora, and Sandy Hook as a result. I have no solution. I merely observe and report the facts.

Interesting posts this owning Stevie and TAM. I think I'll just stick to wii bowling......however, even there I like slinging the ball backwards and watching everyone creek out.

The Dallas Morning News had a "Talking Point" this morning about Joe Buffoon, er, Biden making that remark.

My answer, which I would like to see published:

Unfortunately for most of us hoi polloi, the Vice President's suggestion that we could scare away bad guys by firing a shotgun into the air is just plain dangerous, and in almost every jurisdiction, criminal.

Which would make the suggestion clownishly funny if it wasn't for the fact that he should know better.

Jim Longley

The Annoyed Man wrote: Sure, people don't have to let their gaming lives cross over into their real lives, but sadly, we know for a fact that some people do, and we get Columbine, Aurora, and Sandy Hook as a result. I have no solution. I merely observe and report the facts.

I'm not convinced of this at all. One did not cause the other, there was a human in the loop. Just like with guns, _millions_ of people play video games every day and don't cause crimes (and most of us here remember when the pen-and-paper "Dungeons and Dragons" game was being blamed for criminal behavior). Just like with guns, the mere possession or legal use of a video game doesn't turn us into criminals. It's VERY true that we can identify aggressive behavior in some gamers, much more easily than with guns because of the (supposed) anonymity the internet grants them (as TAM properly points out). But the behavior gets turned off when the game is turned off (for 99.99% of folks). Some people become too emotionally invested in the game and become extremely abusive. If you think this is limited to "Call of Duty" or "Grand Theft Auto" games, I would like to invite you to see some of the chat logs from my wife's online Euchre games.

Let me repeat that: Euchre.

We all know something is distinctly _different_ with the world than it was 50 or 60 years ago. We struggle to find a reason (violent video games, poor education systems, poor diets, lack of morals, long hair, filthy music, hair dryers, etc.). We live in a world now that is far more complicated, far more connected, and far more forgiving of impolite behavior. We want to find a demon. We NEED to find a demon. We can't though, because the whole system has too many complexities. Picking "guns" or "video games" as the demons just helps us find a little peace in a chaotic world, but doesn't yield a real answer.

We must be careful, collectively, of demonizing a thing that really has no _direct and significant_ causality to the criminal behavior we want to prevent, yet this is _precisely_ what we see Demo(n)crats doing now, and aggressively so.

jimlongley wrote:The Dallas Morning News had a "Talking Point" this morning about Joe Buffoon, er, Biden making that remark.

My answer, which I would like to see published:

Unfortunately for most of us hoi polloi, the Vice President's suggestion that we could scare away bad guys by firing a shotgun into the air is just plain dangerous, and in almost every jurisdiction, criminal.

Which would make the suggestion clownishly funny if it wasn't for the fact that he should know better.

Jim Longley

What makes it worse is that he may well know better and is deliberately providing irresponsible misinformation to the throngs of Obamanauts with flatline EEG's who will gobble it up as gospel and repeat it ad nauseam as if it had real credibility.

OldCannon wrote:

The Annoyed Man wrote: Sure, people don't have to let their gaming lives cross over into their real lives, but sadly, we know for a fact that some people do, and we get Columbine, Aurora, and Sandy Hook as a result. I have no solution. I merely observe and report the facts.

I'm not convinced of this at all. One did not cause the other, there was a human in the loop. Just like with guns, _millions_ of people play video games every day and don't cause crimes (and most of us here remember when the pen-and-paper "Dungeons and Dragons" game was being blamed for criminal behavior). Just like with guns, the mere possession or legal use of a video game doesn't turn us into criminals. It's VERY true that we can identify aggressive behavior in some gamers, much more easily than with guns because of the (supposed) anonymity the internet grants them (as TAM properly points out). But the behavior gets turned off when the game is turned off (for 99.99% of folks). Some people become too emotionally invested in the game and become extremely abusive. If you think this is limited to "Call of Duty" or "Grand Theft Auto" games, I would like to invite you to see some of the chat logs from my wife's online Euchre games.

Let me repeat that: Euchre.

We all know something is distinctly _different_ with the world than it was 50 or 60 years ago. We struggle to find a reason (violent video games, poor education systems, poor diets, lack of morals, long hair, filthy music, hair dryers, etc.). We live in a world now that is far more complicated, far more connected, and far more forgiving of impolite behavior. We want to find a demon. We NEED to find a demon. We can't though, because the whole system has too many complexities. Picking "guns" or "video games" as the demons just helps us find a little peace in a chaotic world, but doesn't yield a real answer.

We must be careful, collectively, of demonizing a thing that really has no _direct and significant_ causality to the criminal behavior we want to prevent, yet this is _precisely_ what we see Demo(n)crats doing now, and aggressively so.

I would agree that healthy minds can make the distinction between violent fantasy and reality pretty easily. Unfortunately, unhealthy minds don't seem to do this as well, and the tactics and reflexes learned in the games do have applicability in the real world.

I do not favor killing the First Amendment to try to solve the problems the nation faces from turning away from God. That's not gonna work. However, I would consider real concern followed by parental intervention to be the reasonable response to seeing a child immersing himself in violent games to the exclusion of healthy real world activities. No good will ever come from that.

I remember getting a lot of laughs before my patrol shift started. I would hole up in a parking garage on grand theft auto and see how long I could hold out against the endless horde of cops.

Considering I spent the last two nights playing violent shooter video games with a big group of men and women from 35 years old all the way up to 60, I'm going to say it's a parenting problem that we don't have a solution for. If little Jimmy doesn't have his video game to keep him occupied, there are always street gangs to join.

Also, I own every console on the market. All of them have a mute function and I use it frequently.

Excaliber wrote: I would agree that healthy minds can make the distinction between violent fantasy and reality pretty easily. Unfortunately, unhealthy minds don't see to do this as well, and the tactics and reflexes learned in the games do have applicability in the real world.

No they don't. This is a dangerous connection you're claiming. Grand Theft Auto doesn't teach you to drive, Call of Duty doesn't teach you to shoot a gun, IL-2 Sturmovik doesn't teach you to fly fighter planes, and Angry Birds doesn't do a darned thing to teach you about slingshots.

If you want to make the claim, then it extends just as well to movies and TV, including historical documentaries like on the History channel (indeed, I would say moreso, since many films depict actual events, rather than a kid juiced on Red Bull charging headfirst into a bunch of enemies in Battlefield 3).

Again, we must be VERY careful about oversimplifying the problems.

Take a look at this...

http://townhall.com/columnists/brentboz ... ampaign=nl" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Even though some of us agree that there IS a problem with this particular aspect of the culture in this country, I would believe we should not accept ANY solution (some arbitrarily defined scrutiny/intrusive inquiry) that somehow throws that blanket over ANY american that buys, plays these games, and the fact that they might own some guns in their homes...

Just know that I have a gut feeling that this is exactly where they would like to go with the "reasonable discussion" the liberals/Fabian socialists desire...

The dialog they want to have is designed to invent corrolations between the two issues, one, violent video games, and two, the fact that most people who are involved with these games have access to firearms...Therefore, their conclusion will add this critical scrutiny towards any of us who own/posess guns...

Plain and simple, and at that time, it WILL be accepted by the informationally challenged population without any question...

I would say I am prepared for this potential outcome, I don't like how it might be perceived by both sides of the issue, but I believe we are destined to have things like this hit some of us fairly hard...A part of me tells me to treat this possibility with the same rejection I do most things that are nonsense...Ignore it, don't defend it by commenting on it if it comes to fruition...Who knows, I'd almost like to be wrong on this and welcome it...

Those that know me, understand I like to think outside the box, throw things out there that might be just nonsense to begin with...

I guess we need to wait and see...

OldCannon wrote: We all know something is distinctly _different_ with the world than it was 50 or 60 years ago. We struggle to find a reason (violent video games, poor education systems, poor diets, lack of morals, long hair, filthy music, hair dryers, etc.). We live in a world now that is far more complicated, far more connected, and far more forgiving of impolite behavior. We want to find a demon.

I just want to add to this that my 96 y/o grandma says that people have been saying this for 100 of years. Her parents used to think that the double ought were so messed up with electricity and gas buggies turning the world evil and grandma thought the 50s were so bad.... as the times change, people look at what they used to have and mostly, not what they have gained.

OldCannon wrote:

Excaliber wrote: I would agree that healthy minds can make the distinction between violent fantasy and reality pretty easily. Unfortunately, unhealthy minds don't see to do this as well, and the tactics and reflexes learned in the games do have applicability in the real world.

No they don't. This is a dangerous connection you're claiming. Grand Theft Auto doesn't teach you to drive, Call of Duty doesn't teach you to shoot a gun, IL-2 Sturmovik doesn't teach you to fly fighter planes, and Angry Birds doesn't do a darned thing to teach you about slingshots.

If you want to make the claim, then it extends just as well to movies and TV, including historical documentaries like on the History channel (indeed, I would say moreso, since many films depict actual events, rather than a kid juiced on Red Bull charging headfirst into a bunch of enemies in Battlefield 3).

Again, we must be VERY careful about oversimplifying the problems.

I think you may be misinterpreting what I said.

Use of video games does not cause violent behavior. However, excessive use of them by individuals who have mental health issues to start with can indeed desensitize them to the suffering caused by real violence. Furthermore, the games can help develop perceptual skills, tactical decision making, and hand / eye coordination that has application in real world environments. The military uses this medium for exactly these purposes, so I'm pretty sure it works as stated.

Before discounting this as unfounded, you may want to review what combat psychologist Col. Dave Grossman has to say on this subject in his very well regarded book On Combat.

Video games are also sharply different than movies or TV because they involve active decision making and physical action which impacts the outcome. This is a critical distinction between those media.

Excaliber wrote:

OldCannon wrote:

Excaliber wrote: I would agree that healthy minds can make the distinction between violent fantasy and reality pretty easily. Unfortunately, unhealthy minds don't see to do this as well, and the tactics and reflexes learned in the games do have applicability in the real world.

No they don't. This is a dangerous connection you're claiming. Grand Theft Auto doesn't teach you to drive, Call of Duty doesn't teach you to shoot a gun, IL-2 Sturmovik doesn't teach you to fly fighter planes, and Angry Birds doesn't do a darned thing to teach you about slingshots.

If you want to make the claim, then it extends just as well to movies and TV, including historical documentaries like on the History channel (indeed, I would say moreso, since many films depict actual events, rather than a kid juiced on Red Bull charging headfirst into a bunch of enemies in Battlefield 3).

Again, we must be VERY careful about oversimplifying the problems.

I think you may be misinterpreting what I said.

Use of video games does not cause violent behavior. However, excessive use of them by individuals who have mental health issues to start with can indeed desensitize them to the suffering caused by real violence. Furthermore, the games can help develop perceptual skills, tactical decision making, and hand / eye coordination that has application in real world environments. The military uses this medium for exactly these purposes, so I'm pretty sure it works as stated.

Before discounting this as unfounded, you may want to review what combat psychologist Col. Dave Grossman has to say on this subject in his very well regarded book On Combat.

Video games are also sharply different than movies or TV because they involve active decision making and physical action which impacts the outcome. This is a critical distinction between those media.

MILLIONS of Americans play video games that include quasi-realistic violence. An infinitesimal number of those people do significantly violent acts to others. Considering the number of firearms in this nation, and the number of those who play "shooter" type games, there SHOULD be "blood running in the streets", but there is not. Most of the violence is committed by a small, distinct group of thugs and crooks who tend to violence again, and again, as long as they are allowed to do so. Our society has had standards against such actions for quite a while now, and MOST people still follow the standards. I believe we are seeing an uptick in the level of isolated violence as the standards in this nation have been degraded overall. Nature abhors a vacuum. When the standards, which were based on Christian beliefs, are removed, new standards will be applied. Note that I am NOT claiming everyone was a constant church-goer in the past, nor that everyone truly believed, just that the beliefs provided a framework for daily behavior that operated at a level more generalized than "the law". The political left has worked ceaselessly to erode any religious standards held by "the people" because such standards have stood in the way of their goals. If we want to blame violence on something, blame it on the base nature of human beings in the absence of a standard, which is generally taught by family, that keeps them from following such impulses as killing for fun or profit.