Video games 'linked' to NIU shooting; ECA issues response

As per usual, we all need to find someone or something else to blame.

I'm sure the dude being on psycho-meds and then cutting them off had NOTHING to do with this. I'm sure the fact that he had mental problems was not the problem. Clearly, video games did this. Clearly.

What's wrong with you people. Why can't you see this it's so obvious!1!!5

(my eyes are rolling out of my f*cking head right now)

Maybe selling guns to mentally unstable individuals such as Cho and Kazmierczak is the REAL issue.
Let's make a simple new rule: if you take psychological medication...YOU CAN'T OWN A GODDAMN GUN.

I blame human nature. Trying to suggest people who see no violent acts are unable to perform them is unrealistic. Are we not the same species was watching tigers eat people 2000+ years ago? I wonder if people in Rome colyseums(misspell)blamed the violence they were seeing for the violence in real life? Also...insanity. Insanity + guns = dead people. Why can't people do the math?

Remember, Illinois was one of those states where they tried to pass one of those "illegal to sell adult video games to children" bills, only to have it quickly struck down as unconstitutional. I wonder if this will bring it back up?

Do people STILL play CS? Not trying to offend here, but honestly. Who still gets excited about that game?

If only Rupert Murdoch would buy a video game company, then he wouldn't let his news companies attack them...

Condolences to the friends and the famalies of those lost someone.

Maybe, and this is just a guess, but I think that selling guns to some crazy-a$$ psyco, who happens to play video games, might not, and this is just speculation, be very smart to do...

possibly.

So, in Jack Thompson's logic any crime can be blamed on games. After all, if having played (POSSIBLY AND UNPROVEDLY) Doom years ago makes you a killer, then even if a 90 year old janitor gets of his meds and kills people he "might have played those desensitizing murder simulators" when they were first invented.

I think the biggest contributing factor was that the shooter stopping taking his anti-depression medication 3 weeks ago. The guy sounded like a normal and happy dude. Hearing JT on FOX News saying "I wish I weren't here" almost made me puke. You're on TV for one reason: to get your name in the press. Surprisingly, the top notch journalists at FOX News didn't ask him a question regarding his potential loss of practicing law in Florida. Imagine that.

Sigh, I am, for one, sick of this 'Games did it' blame game.

First and foremost, let's start with this line. Yes, you can blame games, TV, books, movies, and all sort of mass media, if and only if, one or 2 of these are the sole influence in your life. Given how many parents treat their kids as if they were some sort of part time side job, it's not far off the mark. Most parents do not properly raise or interact with their child; they tend to rely on the elctronic babysitter instead of sitting down with their kids and do their homework with them, play that video game with them, read that book with them, or watch that movie with them.

Most parents go off and do their own thing while their kids sit in front of a TV or monitor.

Sure, I played Nintendo and Super Nintendo growning up. Either by myself, or with my dad. He played a few of the games with me. I also read alot of books. I watched some TV (sniff, I miss after Animaniacs amd Pinky and the Brain).

Again, because one form of media dominates a child's (and the subsequently an adult's life), and their is no or very little, or improper social and/or parental interactions; yeah, there might be problems.

To put it simply, if video games are the sole social, parental, and environmental influence and interactions in one's life; there's gonna be something amiss upstairs. But is it fair to blame electronic media? Or do we have to look deeper at society? At parents? We have to look deeper; at the root of the problem. We all have secrets, and skeletons, and defining moments in our lives that define us that we all keep to ourselves. Obviously there was something(s) in this young man's life that caused him to 'snap' and do this. He needed someone to talk to; a shoulder to cry on; someone to lean on. Unfortunately, we live in a society where many of us just don't have someone like this in our lives.

But too many times, we either choose or have no choice but to turn to video games, to TV, to movies; etc. How many kids and then young adults are so detached from their parents that they don't even talk to them? Because, again, many parents don't raise and interact with their children. And what happens when those children have children? The cycle feeds and perpetuates itself.

Blaming video games for acts of violence of this magnitude is just plan unadulterated sloppy laziness. The problem lies in bits and pieces here and there. Parents, society, and people and all our interations with one another.

IF video games, violent media, or anything similar were to blame, he would have shot up UofI. Instead, he drove nearly 200 miles across the state to kill at the college he just recently left. It's fairly obvious that this was premeditated and that it was playing out some revenge scheme or something.

I can't believe people trivialize school shootings with these discussions.

With the way these kinds of things keep happening over and over again, I'm beginning to wonder whether or not there's really any way to stop the insanity. You can argue "gun control" or whatever, but seriously, would any of that governmental regulation really put a damper on this kind of thing? I really don't think so. Simply put, "Where there's a will, there's a way." If someone wants to shoot up a school and lose their own life in the process, there's little standing in their way to keep them from doing it. You can put up metal detectors, anti-gun laws, anti-medication laws, give EVERYONE guns, etc., and these things will still wind up happening. Our society likes to put everything in neat little boxes, so of course, we have to find SOMETHING to blame this incident on. It's too much to ask of ourselves to blame this on the shooter's mental instability. Why? Because it doesn't get to the so-called "root" of the problem. So, we'll keep on digging and digging until we finally find the right scapegoat to blame this on, only to have another school shooting stir us from our collective dreamworld.

Let's face it. If there's a kid out there willing to kill others while losing his own life in the process, there's no amount of government regulation that'll do anything to stop them. Plain and simple. The only thing we can do when faced with that situation is practice kissing our own ass goodbye. Sad thought, but, that's the real deal.

This whole search for a cause or trigger metality stems from the desire to make the perpetrator a victim. "He did it because of ____, poor guy"

Well he's not a victim. He was a killer, and his suicide saved the courts hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees and upkeep for trial and punishment.

It may seem callous. The man was a human being. He had a family, maybe a girlfriend or a wife. But that does not diminish the fact that he became a monster, and because of that, the world is better off without him.

Please society, stop trying to turn every criminal into a victim. Sometimes, people are just crazy.

How is what this guy did worse than the holocaust? What video games did Hitler play? What video games did Jim Jones play? Until video games have the same body count as government and religion people should relax.

Well, that's always comforting. I used to go to NIU. I was there for for about two and a half years and had at least one class a semester in the building the shootings happened in.

I'm a reporter for the Northern Star, the student newspaper at NIU, and I was at the scene of the shooting three minutes after it happened. Our staff broke the majority of the news you saw on CNN and every other news outlet. I saw five of the people who were shot.

I was also around with the stringer broke the news about the shooter being a frequent counter-strike player. I brought the reporter up to speed on the HL/CS series and informed him that it sold over 15 million copies and ONE person who did attacked an auditorium of people.

I feel terrible that the mainstream news is omitting that information and just points the blame on video games. Video games had nothing to do with this.

Don't blame video games, blame online gun dealers and our politicians who don't have the balls to take on death-promoting organizations like the NRA, that prevent any kind of legislation to lock down the out-of-control sales of guns in our country. Why is it that death via guns is cheap and easy, while smokescreen targets of outrage like marijuana is the embodiment of evil? Until people get serious and hold politicians responsible for making access to guns so easy, nothing will be accomplished, and thousands more will lose their lives. Also, gun dealers need to be targeted and harrassed.

Stop guns. Video games don't kill people, guns do.

So Andrew Kehoe and Walt Whitman played video games too?

Was the guy REALLY mentally challenged? He wrote award winning papers for crying out loud.

The only coincidence was that this tragedy happened on Valentine's Day.

$50 next week they link a rape to Mass Effect.

To all the scapegoaters who wish to blame video games for school shootings, all I have to say is this: The number one, most accurate and realistic first person shooter which trains you on how to fire a real gun is America's Army, which is developed and offered free by the United States Army.