Let's blame the holocaust on video games!

[trebuchet]

I just youtubed a very silly man named Jack Thompson who thinks that he can "connect the dots" from the massively popular video game Counter-Strike to the shootings at Virginia Tech. Apparently Cho spent copious amounts of time in front of his home computer playing (or as Jackass Thompson likes to put it "training with") Counter-Strike, an online Terrorist/Counter-terrorist shooting game. For those of you who aren't familiar with the game, it's basically a team-oriented game where one side tries to eliminate the other through simulated gunfire. Thompson loses his argument on several points:

1) a video game industry professional calls people of his ilk (Jackass Thompson, et al.) "massacre chasers" as in ambulance chasers, and he counters with an asinine analogy about 911 and how that would be like calling people who tried to warn about the attack "terrorist-chasers." Huh??? Wha??? Are you a colossal moron? YES!

2) he tries to "connect the dots" from columbine, to some school shootings in Germany, to Cho. He tries to say that among the many things that they had in common was a love for Counter-Strike (which isn't entirely true because the 2 boys who committed the Columbine massacre actually loved a video game called Doom, and yes it is the same Doom that the recent movie was based on -- which speaks volumes for how ludicrous Thompson's reasoning is, I mean, come on! that movie starred The Rock!). That would be the equivalent of saying, "Look, we've just busted 3 heavy duty drug users and among their odds and ends they had several things in common: a syringe, heroine, and boxes of Captain Crunch in their cupboard. Clearly, we can connect the dots from Captain Crunch to heavy drug use.

3) his understanding of Counter-Strike is laughable at best. He describes it as "a game where the object is to shoot as many enemies as possible in the shortest amount of time with as many weapons as possible." Having wasted ridiculous amounts of time on the game myself I can tell you that the point of the game is to win the match for your team by either completing the set goals of the match (which include hostage rescue, set/diffuse explosives, etc.) or by eliminating all members of the opposing team. That's it. There are no neo-nazi manifestos or NRA memberships included with every purchase.

In the end, I suppose, there will always be idiots, ranting and raving about their cumbersome and often-times absurd theories on why this or that happened. Should we ban seemingly inocuous video games like Flight Simulator because terrorists used it to practice crashing airplanes into buildings? What if the next string of psychopaths happened to collect Pokemon cards, should we ban these nefarious little pocket monsters from shoolyards because we can "connect the dots" from Picachu to mass murder? Jack Thompson said that he was "about saving lives." Yeah, right. He's a lawyer.
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Conan! What is best in life?

To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women!"

[Dave]

Wait... does that mean I'm gonna run out and bust some heads because I like fighting games?

Oh, OH! I know! I'm gonna gather a party of friends to seek out evil doers like in all them RPGs I've played.

Maybe I'll take sword and shield (and boomerang, hooks, bombs, and faeries in bottles) and save a princess who never gives it up because I play the Zelda series.

[Dan]

The last two don't really sound like bad ideas. Let's get the whole squishy group together and seek out some evildoers.

[Zeke]

Spammers count?
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Anyone who says money can't buy happiness doesn't have enough money.

[Dave]

They're the worst

[James]

See... Dave you just described gangs... A group of young people armed and breaking into houses and taking the riches, food, and weapons from innocent peoples houses to thwart the other "evil" gang's plans of world domination. Not to mention the defacing of public property that happens in those games.

I must say... I played with GI Joe and many other toys with weapons in them and I always pretended to shoot things looooonnnnnngggg before people even imagined a video game that would be better than Joust. This guy is full of crap.... Just like the rest of them. I own guns and have played counter strike before... I guess I must be different because I don't run around school killing things.

All I can say about this guy is he is a moron.

The guy that shot the people in Virgina was autistic and was picked on his entire life. His parents brought him here because he was completely rejected by not only his peers but the rest of his family... I think he went wacko for many reasons... but not counter strike. I hate lawyers.*

*(some lawyers are cool, but there are most which I don't like... but I don't wanna get sued by the ones I do like, thus this disclaimer)
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Monkey of the technical type.

[Zeke]

Lesse here, playing video games leads to people becoming efficient killers eh? Hmmm, lemme think...ummm no. Bottom line; he had a 9mm and a .22 caliber, granted he had the extended 30 round magazines which can be thought of as more lethal, but if he were trully trained by video games like counter strike at the very least it would've been a .40 caliber round for the handguns. Also those pictures that were taken of hollow point 9mm rounds that are supposed to be more lethal, ummm a .45 cal standard slug without the hollow point is far more lethal. The killer was described as calm and calculating, I some how don't think that's true with the number of shell casings that police found after the shooting, over 200 was what I had seen. 200 rounds and only 32 deaths, not my idea of calm and efficient like the media made it out to be, but what do I know? I've only got around 10 years of practice with actual firearms, which isn't nearly as much practice as you can get with a video game right?
P.S. It's not more gun laws we need, it's better enforcement of the ones we already have on the books that are needed.
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Anyone who says money can't buy happiness doesn't have enough money.

[James]

I just think we need to stop taking the guns away from the law abiding citizens and start taking them away from the criminals... that may not have stopped this, but it is still my opinion.
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Monkey of the technical type.

[Zeke]

Support the right to keep and arm bears!
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Anyone who says money can't buy happiness doesn't have enough money.

[Dave]

Within a well-regulated militia!

... Ooo, Regimented bears with rifles and helmets!

[Zeke]

Do they really need helmets? I mean their skulls can already stop a 44 mag.
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Anyone who says money can't buy happiness doesn't have enough money.

[jynexia]

All I have to say is...Captain Crunch made me do drugs!

Clearly I need take no blame at all.

(Disclaimer: In reality I don't do drugs at all. Please dont arrest me.)
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~jynx~
I need to go to my Happy place, but I accidentally blew it up, so now I have to find a new one...

[Dan]

Of course you don't do drugs. I know how good of a Morman you are.

[trebuchet]

[Steve]

i think they just get mad at him for just not calling