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bdickens wrote:

bagman45 wrote: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.....

I am that cynical and that is exactly what the enemies of liberty do.

Notice how the latest round of gun control attempts got unveiled even before the bodies in Connecticut were even cold? That stuff was already written and this country's domestic enemies were just waiting for the right incident to unfold so they could use it to whip the public into a frenzy and drum up popular support.

The Left is hell-bent on depriving the American People of their liberties and assuming control over everyone's lives and if they have to kill your wife and children to do so, then so be it.

Now that is a statement I fully support (what I highlighted in red).

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.