I have been playing computer games since I can remember, as is the case in the above post. Since the Nintendo 64 I've been able to shoot people in a relatively realistic way. I'm now 26, so I've spent at least 10-15 years doing this. I've 'killed endless amounts of nazis, bond villains, terrorists, drug lords etc etc.

I can safely say I have no temptation or need to go outside and murder loads of people. Super realistic games may play a part, but there has to be some serious underlying mental problem for it to manifest. And let's not forget Hollywood have been punting out mass murders for decades with far more 'realistic'.visual media and more accessible.

I'll be the first to admit that as a kid I played war-games and the like and I most certainly was not an angel. However being a military brat ( Dad was 20+ year Jarhead ) and later joining up in the USAF-(SAC) I pretty much wanted nothing to do with semi or automatic firearms once I got out.
As well as pretend games. Yes I do have a Play-station but 99% percent of the games are either Formula I or sports like Tennis/Skiing/Surfing. I do have 1 war-game DVDwhich I should throw away since I attempted to play it once long ago and couldn't wrap my brain around the theme...

I also have had the unfortunate experience of two of my friends taking their own lives with firearms, both very much intentional. One was a sad ending to a long standing domestic tragedy where he decided that not only him but his also daughter as she slept in her bed.. Following tying up his long ago ex-partners boyfriend at the North Rock and having her present while he shot himself and the daughter.
The other was again another domestic issue where to prove a point the living room facing Water Street was the perfect canvas.

Ironically this was not in an urban ghetto, but rather in a small seaside resort town where everyone knows you by first name and property values are well above the median income. $600,000 is about bottom line property values and that is either for a totally decrepit house or an undeveloped sublot...
No one place is immune to this kind of senseless absurdity, which is why I truly believe it is long past the time of neighbor and neighbor having serious civil discussions about where we seem to be headed.
It is everyone's problem and passing it off as an unlikely event by a nut case is seriously dismissing the constant data proving otherwise.

So thank You Doc for bringing up this subject....

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"C'est parti mon Kiki "

yep I think the word is "Sociopath" the guy is just a NUT I am sure if he had not been exposed to games and television he would still be a NUT. This stuff was not present in the past when people murdered for no reason, this is just something else to blame it on. did jack the ripper ever play grand theft auto?
the man has probably been a killer at heart his whole life and something just made him stop weighing the consequences.

the dates are scattered all over the place in this list
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rampage_killers

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@Moochy: I did observe that the gaming media cited in your first paragraph would be feeding a psychosociopathological mind set. Step back one and ask yourself, as I have often done, what is taking place in the minds of the game creators that they consistently have to resort to the kinds of scenarios you've mentioned in the creation of games. They are obviously part of the same human condition and need, as the players they are creating product for and selling for profit. Titillating and satisfying to the subconscious mind, no doubt, and far,far safer by all means, than being a member of the ground troops in the Middle East.

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"Another day in paradise!"

6 pages about a preventable atrocity.
How does a young man with an above average mental capacity not have close friends?
How do all of the other adults in his life not notice and then try to help him?
Why would some one become so possessed by a character in a comic book that they would imitate that characters fictional behavior?
I don't have answers to those questions, but, some one should have cared enough to ask him why he dyed his hair red at the very least.

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you can save the world with your guitar one love song at a time it's just better, more fun, easier with a fender solid body electric guitar or electric bass guitar.

because he is not mentally stable and probably really good at hiding his feelings. just like the link i posted previously shows, there have been people like this all over the world even before television.
I am starting to think the only reason it seems more common now is because of the increase in population, there is simply more of them around

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But you have just illustrated the underlying point....
It is not even remotely close to reality or relatively realistic as you describe it..
There is no actual pain involved, if you lose a challenge, you don't actually have an appendage removed or there is not any sufferance other than the adrenaline rush and consequent let down of having not reached your numbers....It is a game...a well constructed fantasy game but no way does it mimic real life....This is where the distinction has become so blurred yet it is a razor sharp wake up call when reality sets back in....

I don't think, actually I know Nazi's are not just a boogeyman from the past...They were all too real to my Mom, Aunt and Grandmother when the SS stormed thru their house, commandeered it and all the personal belongings. Fortunately they were able to escape Merrielle ( suburb of Paris ) with only the clothes on their backs.
As for the Drug Lords, let's take Mexico's, the reports from there are anything but play like.

The point is that these games as well as the media's / entertainment have completely or at least to a disturbing degree desensitized a large number of people from actual reality and atrocities...Bosnia, Herzegovinia was not so long ago, yet today Syria and Sudan ( still going on ) seems to be something that we just watch and casually comment upon.
Were I to drive down to Bridgeport CT and hang out in it's underbelly sections tonight, it would not take long before someone would releive me of my Audi and I'm sure not pleasantly yet in worst case scenario, i would be lucky to make more than a passing two lines in the morning's paper... if that...

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"C'est parti mon Kiki "

You may ask, amigo.....but this individual is functioning on a name, rank and serial number basis......and has said nothing at all.

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"Another day in paradise!"

Hi T2: just checking in. 'Fraid I've got a bit lost amidst all the RCB-CA-USA stuff on this thread. I'm not quite sure what you've read right or wrong? I've certainly said nothing on this thread for or against the death penalty, or for or against gun control. So whoever you're arguing with over that it's not with me.

ZZDoc started the thread suggesting it shouldn't be about gun control, and that sounds like a good plan.

I'm much more interested in hearing other people's views here than speaking my own, especially as the tragic event is not in my country and I don't feel qualified to comment directly.

But just for the record I'll give my own position, so's it's clear. My sympathies begin and end with the victims of terrible crimes such as this one. All of my concern is with those who's lives have been torn apart by it, one way and another - those killed and wounded, and their families and loved ones for whom the damage will probably last a lifetime.

By the time we're talking about how to punish people for doing these things it's already too late. I want a world where fewer people get hurt in the first place. So I'm listening to everyone's views, but especially interested to hear from anyone who has ideas about how to make these things happen less often.

As I said before, I have questions, not answers.

Listening up - C

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I meant before he lost comprehension of reality Doc. I've had the opportunity twice to stop a person bent on shooting up a nightclub where they thought they'd been mistreated and stopped three suicides one male and two females. In all of the afore mentioned incidents I had to make a concentrated effort to help, that and luck is what helped to prevent those disasters, that they were all friends that had looked in on me in the past brought me soup or brandy (I much preferred the brandy back then) if I was out of sorts they knew it and wanted to help if they could. Where was the jokers back-up? That is what I was trying to refer to, apparently no one who knew him tried to breakthrough to him.
I would guess that Mr Joker is lost in this phase of his death wish, probably thinking to get out of custody to do more damage.

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you can save the world with your guitar one love song at a time it's just better, more fun, easier with a fender solid body electric guitar or electric bass guitar.

@53 Magnatone: Yep...we played 'cowboys and indians' and 'soldier' micking Saturday matinee films and early TV westerns. The good guys' hat was always white [except for Hopalong Cassidy]and it never fell off in a fight. His guns were always silver plate. The baddies had gunmetal blue and never shaved. They fired an indeterminable number of rounds from a six-shooter. The Lone Ranger's bullets were silver, and Cassidy used 44.40's Those who were wounded never bled, and hardly ever died. The way the evil protagonist got his was usually falling off a cliff or drowing in quicksand. But this wasn't good enough for the titillated masses. Eventually the need for reality, true blood and gore, had to make its way to the silver screen and to the video games. Take from me, amigos, even the TV series ER didn't come close to the day to day events of a Level I trauma center. Absent in the sterility of the TV screen, are the real world sounds, and smells of the blood, vomit, urine, feces, and the screams of pain of the individual who has been hit by a train, whose clothes your cutting him out of. The classic din and stench of a busy emergency dept going full tilt boogie on the wrong night. The kind of night and very havoc that played out in that theatre last week. Even images of those victims in their beds, terrible as they appear, are sterile, because you don't hear, or smell what eminates from that environment.
Been there done, that. Movies and video games are pu--y compared to what I and many others among us have seen. A shotgun does a very impressive job on someone in the movies or in a video game, but when your in the OR, with a oromaxillofacial/head and neck team, trying to reassemble a face that's been partially blown away with one, that's the real deal.

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"Another day in paradise!"

Following up on Ceri's reply, I would venture to say that not enough of us adults...
By that I mean those of us over 30 ( I can't seem to remember when that was ) are not hands on with younger people... I mean I used to coach 10 to 15 year olds Alpine Ski Racing and Junior Cycling and there was often times issues which to me as an adult were completely frivolous but... to a 12 or 14 year old were very much serious and seemed like the entire world was about to crash in.
It often made for comic relief ( I coached both boys and girls ) but point is that today's world of " I Expected This Completed Yesterday " leaves very little time for being involved, which is actually a pity since I discovered that coaching was a two way street learning experience... I do have tentative plans to return to it this off season....
But this is I believe a slice of the pie that is missing. We don't have as much personal/face to face interaction with kids as in the past generations.....
This Forum is most certainly not a Face to Face ....Though I still do plan In sharing a Pint with Doc and Ceri someday...( missed the last rencontre )

I do recall as a kid having conversations with coaches and other adults where I was able to put the brakes on and think a bit rationally instead of instant reaction to a situation....
This would probably go a long way in all of us having a hand or more to the point, being plugged in real time to what is actually happening...

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"C'est parti mon Kiki "

When I said games were realistic, I didn't mean in that when I crash my video game Ferrari I get whiplash, I meant in a visual way. The graphics and physics of games now are what I was referring to, they produce a realistic idea of whatever they try to portray. Back in the day when I was playing the original doom, you didn't know whether you'd shot something or thrown a jar of tomato sauce at it. Very easy to pass off as just an unrealistic game.

Hi 53: that post is good, constructive thinking. It sets the mind a-working in a positive direction.

Way to go - C

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Ceri...maybe your right, it was getting hard to track who said what with the whole RCB-CA-USA...too many quotes inside quotes, maybe I thought it was a quote from you but since you said it wasn't, my apologies to you.

I think 53Magnatone pointed out something that I believe is quite true...kids do seem to have a lack of face to face interaction now with all the media...wouldn't call it "Social Media" as that is a misnomer IMHO...Kids need to spend some actual time outside playing so they learn what is acceptable and what is not. There should most definately be some supervision of said kids to make sure they actually learn some of those lessons.

I also think our schools have abdicated thier piece of the responbility reinforcing what it means to be a good citizen in this country. They are so worried about being sued by some dumbazz parent who thinks thier child is an angel when they are actually an evil little turd! Seen this too many times. We need to force the schools to get back to educating not indoctrinating our children to the political correctness that has taken them over.

FWIW

T2

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What time is it? It's Fender Time.