A man was sitting at home playing games with a couple of his buddies at 2 a.m. in Dayton, Ohio
when someone barged into his home and opened fire, hitting him once in the groin, once below his left arm.
Unfortunately the news report doesn't let us know if they were playing DDR at top volume in the wee hours of the
morning, in which case one might understand an his neighbor's annoyance.
Is this yet more proof that video games cause violence? Of course not, just a little reminder that games don't kill people, guns kill people. (That statement is not to be taken at face value.)
This reminds us of the following lyrics from The Streets song "The Irony of It All" in which a thug and a geek take turns rapping about their various hobbies. Here's the first stanza of the geek's rap:
My name's Tim and I'm a criminal
In the eyes of society I need to be in jail
For the choice of herbs I inhale
This ain't no wholesale operation
Just a few eighths and some PlayStation's my vocation
I pose a threat to the nation
The irony here is that the victims of this news report are gamers and that the criminals are people who use guns for violent means, though the current crop of opportunistic politicians actually seems to confuse these two groups, choosing instead to write legislation to limit the rights of gamers while choosing to ignore the real perpetrators of violent crime.
This story is an allegory for the current political climate in which peaceful gamers are targeted for abuse by a maurauding band of ne'erdowells.
But I'm certain that these subtleties will be lost in translation, so here are some keywords so that Hillary Clinton staffers pick up and clip this item for "ammo" against the industry: games, Columbine, guns, shooting, violence, arrest, blood, youth, sex, drugs, rock-and-roll, Tolkien.
[Updated to make the point much less subtle, as a few knee-jerk reactions below make it clear to me that the allegory was not at all obvious.]
