The Senseless Murders, the Reaction to It, and the Question of Guns.

    With the senseless murder of twenty children people who mean well and those who don’t now move to limit the God given rights of self defense. The truth here can not be ignored while a great tragedy this move against the rights of the people is the wrong one. Many who now think because twenty children were murdered in cold blood it means that the problem is a thing made of plastic and metal, but they fail to realized that thing made of plastic and metal have saved more lives then murdered senselessly. The fact is an inanimate object has the same power in the hands of a good man as a bad. We should not let the actions of the bad man that are horrible allow us to strike down our rights, think of it what if some Neo-Nazi got a crowd of sympathetic thugs to commit a horrible unspeakable crime and these same people demanding the limitation of your gun rights started say it was time to reign in free speech as the people no longer need it as it
causes to much damage.

    With freedom comes responsibilities and with those responsibilities there are consequences if you drop the ball. For years now many have left the education of their kid’s knowledge of guns come from Hollywood and games like grand theft auto which glorifies the violence of being a criminal. For years parents have bought their kids what ever they wanted not even caring what the game was about. Not even thinking of the disturbing nature that some games and films can contain in them, that they themselves would never watch. Worse still some will completely ignore warning signs that something is wrong with their child. Now don’t get me wrong I hold the person responsible for their actions, which is one of the things being left out of
this conversation on a whole.

    And as someone who played Doom and a few other games with violence blaming another inanimate object this time made up of bets and bits instead of plastic and metal is just as bad. I’m also going to tell you straight out the problem lies with the parents not those who made some film or game, after all the parents are the gate keepers to their children. If anyone should be held responsible for horrible actions  Those who prefer to be the best friend then the parent should be the ones held responsible when the children they allowed to get away with anything commit wrong. 

    Lastly for those who still believe the problem is the inanimate object made of plastic and metal. As a aspiring writer I offer you this alternate universe version of what could have happened;

On Friday Adam Lanza drove his mother’s car, which he had packed with explosives made from common household chemicals, into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. taking his own life and killing twenty children and six adults.

Or how about this one;

On Friday Adam Lanza drove his mother’s car to Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. using handmade smoke grenades packed with common household chemicals that became a deadly lethal gas when broken managed to kill twenty children and six adults and take his own life in the precess.

    Now tell me if we lived in those universes should we ban the car or the household chemicals or both? The truth is disturbed people, mentally ill people, and evil people will always take actions we can not understand, like, and desire to stop from happening again. But you need to ask yourself this question, “If there is a Devil, would he prefer the people be vulnerable to the criminals who commit violence or be armed against them and capable to defend themselves?“ It should also be noted that criminals still break the very laws that say they can’t own or posses a firearm just as drug users and dealers break the very laws that say they can’t posses crystal meth, heroin, cocaine, PCP, or LSD. Again a question should be asked here “If there is a being that personifies evil would it advocate the following of laws or the break of those laws, and if it advocate's the breaking of laws those who fallows that impulse would they be a danger to those who follow the law?”

Solomon.

The twelve-year old killer

While going through my saved political cartoons I found this one and thought it would be perfect for this story, Adult Trial for Boy in Death of Pa. Woman, Fetus.
I don't exactly remember what it was about a few years ago but ironically it might fit for some recent stories in the news.

And as to the issue of trying the boy as an adult, he took a gun and !warning possible disturbing imagery!, blow her head off with a shotgun! I have a hard time wanting to be soft on this boy blowing someone's head off with a shotgun isn't something a normal person would do even when in a violent situation defending themselves.

Solomon.

P.S. by the way blowing someones head off with a shotgun is usually reserved for use ageist zombies and use by the occasional crazy killer, which, the latter may apply to the boy in the story if he is disturbed.

Violence, Lies, & Video Games

I want to talk about something that irks me, the view that violence in video games is a problem, its not. Both the left and the right have gone after video games on violence, now I am sure that most have good intentions about this but we all know the saying about where good intentions lead. Now the common argument for banning or regulating games with violence originated with the Columbine High School Massacre and the game Doom, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were allegedly obsessed with it, also there are/were rumors that they had made a level mimicking the school layout, but there is no evidence of this. Starting with Doom, I had played it, more accurately its sequel Doom II, in the early 90s while I was in high school and I
was bullied also during that time period so much so that I eventually dropped out, and there were guns in my home that I could have easily used to strike back, but I didn’t, it was wrong even if they were tormenting me I would have been no better then them if I had done such a thing. Ironically I have played plenty of violent games from the RPGs like the Final Fantasy, Dragon Warrior now know by its Japanese title Dragon Quest, Legend of Mana, the Legend of Zelda series of games where the player is fighting against monsters and evil humans, the action games like Mega Man series, games based on movies like Predator and Rambo, Contra, a NES game called Commando, & the Castlevania series, I could go on with more games at least a page or
two of games, but I think you get the point. A lot of kids played similar games and more but if you look at the symbols that they hold up as why violent games need to be banned or regulated they had their own problems and instead of finding help they chose to take a different corse.
Let me put things in an even better way of looking at it, with numbers. If you look at the estimated number of people who played Doom or Doom 2, at least 15 million people then look at the number of incidents that were in the media, only a had full that I know of, the argument falls flat on the evidence, 15 million verses less then ten. Also an additional point about the Doom series I want to make to some is, while the game has satanic imagery in it, the player is fighting against the forces of Hell, which if one thinks of it such imagery would be expected in such a
game.
Ironically there is one violent game series that I don’t like, Grand Theft Auto, I don’t see the fun in playing a thug or glorifying thugs and criminals, I’ve heard all of the excuses used to defend the game and I don’t find them even remotely credible, but I don’t want to see it banned.
Now I want to go into two types of violent video games, first some of
the most violent games, which you have never heard of being linked to an incident, survival horror games, the two title series most well known are Resident Evil and Silent Hill each is quite violent and with plenty of gore to go around, Resident Evil is based in science fiction with a twist on the old zombie theme and Silent Hill takes the supernatural theme with the player dealing with the consequences of others messing in the occult, Silent Hill is the more gory game dealing with some of the darkest nature of evil. Now there are no incidents related to those games, and if
any game was to cause violence it would those games. And on the other hand are the series of games based on war such as the popular Metal of Honor and Call of Duty lines set during WWII or modern conflicts. There is one incident involving a Call of Duty game but it isn’t what you might expect. In October 2008, 15 year old Brandon Crisp from Ontario, Canada ran away from home on his mountain bike after his parents confiscated his Xbox 360 following an argument regarding the time he spent playing Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare. His body, which had fallen
from a tree, was found on November 5, 2008 by some local hunters.
Now there have been plenty of incidents involving many other games computer based and video game that have been either blamed for the incident or claimed to have been the cause of the persons problems, but as I said earlier most of these individuals already had either a problem or an underlining problem that might have been brought out by something else. To finish this off I want to list some things to everyone first some fairytales with some violent scenes, Hansel & Gristle with the pushing of the witch in the oven, Little Red Riding Hood with the wolf eating Red and her grandmother and the hunter cutting the wolf open and saving the two, the more
resent classics of last two hundred years such as John Steinbeck's of mice and men, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Jules Verne's books, Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia, and many more authors who have violence through out their works. Many of us would fight tooth and nail if the same critics were wanting to ban or regulate these works. The difference between written, audio, and visual mediums are different but similar, while a written story may only be words our minds will create the images in our heads, the same is with audio only the words spoken and sound effects may be included, while visual is a combination of
all three only someone else interprets what the story on the screen will look like and who fills those roles. If violence could truly be caused by seeing it after World War II there should have been a run on violence, but their wasn’t. Most Vets of WWII didn't even talk to others in general about their war experences until documentaries.
Finally on the critics of violence in video and computer games, most of them I question their intentions while the politicians may have good intentions, I question the intentions of critics like Lt. Col. David Grossman, Jack Thompson, and Craig A. Anderson, when the science show’s otherwise, when a child is raised in a good home and with good morals the “killing” of creatures made up of pixels on a screen will not mean a thing. As former Surgeon General David Satcher said in 1999, "We clearly associate media violence to aggressive behavior. But the impact was
very small compared to other things. Some may not be happy with that, but that's where the science is.” There are many studies showing exactly that, such as a US Secret Service study found that only 12 percent of those involved in school shootings were attracted to violent video games, while 24 percent read violent books and 27 percent were attracted to violent films, and an Australian study found that only children already predisposed to violence were affected by violent games. While the studies on the other side try to prove their points with exaggerated definitions of violence like pushing, shoving, and raised voices as being caused by violent games. It is also worth noting that violent crime rates in the USA have declined dramatically since the early 1990s, among both juveniles and adults even as sales of violent video games exploded and such games became increasingly graphic over time.
In the end the best advice if you are a parent and your child wants a game no matter what the ESRB rating is look for independent reviews from others, parents and players, to decide whether a game is right for your child, you may even want to play it yourself before letting them play it. But in general if you have rased your children right they will be fine.

By Solomon the Wise.