Florida School Shooting

[KingsGambit]

This isn't a thing. If it was I would be a remorseless psychopath by now, simply because of the amount of hours I've put in to playing "violent video games" in my life.

As I've made clear elsewhere, I think such games are a net negative for society, but trying to blame specific shootings on video games has always provided fruitless. It happened after Columbine, and after Sandy Hook, the leader of the NRA tried to blame a specific obscure shooter game without any proof the shooter had ever played it. She's definitely overstating her case.

[Mountain Man]

The CDC's agenda is to protect public health and safety. What's the NRA's agenda?

The NRA's agena is to protect the 2nd Amendment and promote responsible gun ownership.

It's just that the CDC has released flawed, biased, and misleading anti-gun studies in the past which got their funding curtailed in 1996, and they've steered clear of the subject since then. It was a mistake to ever treat gun violence like it was a disease in the first place.

[Mountain Man]

As I've made clear elsewhere, I think such games are a net negative for society, but trying to blame specific shootings on video games has always provided fruitless. It happened after Columbine, and after Sandy Hook, the leader of the NRA tried to blame a specific obscure shooter game without any proof the shooter had ever played it. She's definitely overstating her case.

Pretty sure the game was Doom, and I heard rumors that they had created their own levels modelled after their school, but I don't know if it's true.

[KingsGambit]

Pretty sure the game was Doom, and I heard rumors that they had created their own levels modelled after their school, but I don't know if it's true.

With which one? Columbine? That sounds right.

With Sandy Hook the one that got blamed was some game where you actually shoot kindergarten kids. Obviously that's in really bad taste but it was so obscure that nobody really played it (for good reason).

[JonathanL]

Pretty sure the game was Doom, and I heard rumors that they had created their own levels modelled after their school, but I don't know if it's true.

And even if it was true it wouldn't prove anything.

[JonathanL]

As I've made clear elsewhere, I think such games are a net negative for society

I'm not sure how you would be able to measure something like that.

[KingsGambit]

I'm not sure how you would be able to measure something like that.

Obviously it's not quantifiable. I just mean I think society would be better off without them, subjectively.

[JonathanL]

Obviously it's not quantifiable. I just mean I think society would be better off without them, subjectively.

I'm not sure it would make a difference. I do think they can be detrimental to you if you spend too much time playing them. But that's not because they're inherently bad, but because they take away time from other, more important things.

[Mountain Man]

And even if it was true it wouldn't prove anything.

I'm not citing it as proof of anything. Just stating something I had heard.

[Jedidiah]

Eventually...inevitably...Americans will tire of the claim that the epidemic level of gun deaths in the U.S. has nothing to do with guns. Perhaps that tide is already turning. Perhaps it will take another few hundred thousand deaths. But eventually, we will become fed up with seeing our children, spouses, and other loved ones gunned down at the rate of over 100 per day....

Not only not reasonable, but not honest.

[Jedidiah]

What exactly is "defunded"? You have studies done by the NRA and "gun rights" people, and they pay for those. They are "funded". What's keeping the anti-gun (or, probably from your perspective, the "sane people") from funding studies. If it's important enough, they'll cough up the money.

There are plenty of very rich anti-gun liberals who could fund all kinds of research.

I think the problem, though, is "who funded the study" becomes a reason to dismiss it. Just as any study I cited that was funded by a gun rights organization would be discounted.

He wants the government to pay for biased research.

[Adrift]

Obviously it's not quantifiable. I just mean I think society would be better off without them, subjectively.

There's been plenty of papers suggesting links between violent video games and aggressive behavior,

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/...467-9280.00366
http://psycnet.apa.org/buy/2000-08135-012
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/...0.2005.01632.x
https://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...22103101915021
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02110997
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/1.../ab.10042/full
https://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...40197103000976

It's not like these findings should be very surprising though. Like film, music, literature, etc., what you put into your head affects you. You can't fill your body with a constant supply of junk food and think it's not going to have an effect, and the same is true with your mind. But you don't have to play video games for that to happen. You could spend all day watching the 24 hour news cycle and get the same effect. I don't think video games are responsible for creating school shooters, there's obviously a deeper root cause there. But a lifestyle of mentally ingesting negativity isn't going to be healthy for anyone, and for those already prone, for those already suffering from a deeper root cause, negative media consumption can be a contributing factor. The answer isn't to get rid of violent video games (which misses the point), and if you were to get rid of video games, you'd also have to get rid of any other form of negative stimuli, and where will that end?

[Sparko]

There's been plenty of papers suggesting links between violent video games and aggressive behavior,

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/...467-9280.00366
http://psycnet.apa.org/buy/2000-08135-012
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/...0.2005.01632.x
https://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...22103101915021
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02110997
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/1.../ab.10042/full
https://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...40197103000976

It's not like these findings should be very surprising though. Like film, music, literature, etc., what you put into your head affects you. You can't fill your body with a constant supply of junk food and think it's not going to have an effect, and the same is true with your mind. But you don't have to play video games for that to happen. You could spend all day watching the 24 hour news cycle and get the same effect. I don't think video games are responsible for creating school shooters, there's obviously a deeper root cause there. But a lifestyle of mentally ingesting negativity isn't going to be healthy for anyone, and for those already prone, for those already suffering from a deeper root cause, negative media consumption can be a contributing factor. The answer isn't to get rid of violent video games (which misses the point), and if you were to get rid of video games, you'd also have to get rid of any other form of negative stimuli, and where will that end?

The games and movies and TV shows teach us that the heroes all solve their problems with guns and violence. That revenge is satisfying. This is beat into their heads from the time they can watch TV or pick up a computer mouse.

[Jedidiah]

The NRA's agena is to protect the 2nd Amendment and promote responsible gun ownership.

It's just that the CDC has released flawed, biased, and misleading anti-gun studies in the past which got their funding curtailed in 1996, and they've steered clear of the subject since then. It was a mistake to ever treat gun violence like it was a disease in the first place.

50 years ago I worked for the Post Office during Christmas rush in San Francisco. My first day on the job as a mail sorter, I and other temporary workers, were taken aside by regular employees and told exactly how to get away with doing the least amount of work. Not all the PO employees were like this but most were. Later I ended up in the APO and the very first day I was introduced to the job, I observed one man hauling a large hand truck of mail up and down the aisle stopping to visit along the way. He looked busy but did nothing. I drove a parcel delivery truck for about 3 weeks. My orientation included the best way to load a truck so that you would finish early and have time for a second trip which would end up giving you overtime. This was my introduction to government employment.

I do not trust any information that comes from, or is funded by, the government.

[Cow Poke]

50 years ago I worked for the Post Office during Christmas rush in San Francisco. My first day on the job as a mail sorter, I and other temporary workers, were taken aside by regular employees and told exactly how to get away with doing the least amount of work. Not all the PO employees were like this but most were. Later I ended up in the APO and the very first day I was introduced to the job, I observed one man hauling a large hand truck of mail up and down the aisle stopping to visit along the way. He looked busy but did nothing. I drove a parcel delivery truck for about 3 weeks. My orientation included the best way to load a truck so that you would finish early and have time for a second trip which would end up giving you overtime. This was my introduction to government employment.

I do not trust any information that comes from, or is funded by, the government.

And that's sad. Not that you don't trust the government, but that you have reason not to.