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US Senator says games are a bigger problem than guns

93 points by Swifty 14y ago

jussij 14y ago
Yet another excuse to not get tough on gun control, all thanks to a badly worded Second Amendment. The reality is without serious gun control the massacres in the US will continue.
rikacomet 14y ago
There is a famous saying here, for such people: " If someone tells you to jump in a well, would you? " Voilent games can also be seen as a punching bag to vent out your anger, without hurting somebody in actual. It is not always the case that kids turn voilent in real life because of them. Parental guidance is needed at every step of life, blame poor parenting if you have to :?
- OGinparadise 14y ago
  There is a famous saying here, for such people: " If someone tells you to jump in a well, would you? " Bad example: I wouldn't but a lot of kids are easily influenced. And no, I don't support a ban or censorship of games. I see this and guns as part of life, bad stuff happens some times, like when you cross the street and a car or a lightning might hit you.
  - rikacomet 14y ago
    True, the games should be in moderation as well, but I have seen numerous instances of negligence on part of parents. Your kid is 12, why let him play PG-13 games? A lot of people, need to be strict in this case. this is indeed a very complex situation, like a algorithm, for which we know one of the 'possible answers' but not the answer as of yet. On a second thought, I do think thats not the best possible example :/
- neumann_alfred 14y ago
  Voilent games can also be seen as a punching bag to vent out your anger, without hurting somebody in actual. It can also be seen as "practice" for people that are addicted to cruelty and dominance. I don't know about you, but when I play online I am often amazed at how low people can go, and how some never tire of being mean. And I'm not "raging" either, I can usually hold my own and generally care zilch about winning or loosing random pub games; but compared to how fun it is to play with "normal people", those sociopaths really do stick out, and it's obvious they live in a world where they have everything and all the peers they could want, and nothing that reminds them of the fact they have a problem - games and gamers don't do that usually, they're the silent accomplices. But sure, if it keeps them from abusing animals or whatever, I'm all for it. But there's just no way of telling if it does that, or if it just grows a hunger for something more real. I don't feel comfortable shrugging it off. None of this can or should be solved with laws, it's all about debate and culture. It should be legal, but I frown upon it, and I want to be explicit and vocal about it and step on people's toes. Just because some got used to it, just because so many people do it, doesn't mean it's not fucking pathetic. But so are other things, movies for example. Not picking on violent video games, or violence... more the shallow display and glorification of it.
fotoblur 14y ago
In my research I came across what I think is the best explanation for the cause for violence in our society. I believe video games are just another symptom but not the cause and effect. "Of all crimes, those involving violence are most closely related to high levels of inequality." - http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/mar/13/the-spirit-level http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/mar/13/the-spirit-level
- newbie12 14y ago
  That doesn't explain the mass rampage murders, which have been all committed by wealthy or upper-middle class perpetrators. Plus, violent crime in America is decreasing even while poverty is increasing.
  - pekk 14y ago
    Violent crime is decreasing, period. It is spurious (if not intentionally misleading) to suggest that this correlates in a meaningful way with changes in poverty.
    - JoeAltmaier 14y ago
      Yes, recently an article was posted here (WSJ) that correlated unleaded gasoline with violent crime. That's actually believable.
      - morpher 14y ago
        IIRC, Freakanomics had a section correlating legalized abortion with a drop in crime ~18 years later. Also plausible. But, of course, not necessarily causal.
stackcollision 14y ago
Parenting is the real issue here. If you can't teach your kids the difference between reality and fantasy, you have failed. I had caring parents who love video games. I have been playing violent games since my dad got Doom for our N64. I am a well-adjusted individual with a good job, a happy relationship, a stable living condition, and plenty of friends. Why didn't video games turn me violent? It's probably because while my parents love games, they didn't let me sit in front of them 24/7. They made sure I did my work, had an after-school job, was involved in clubs, etc. The same applies for any other medium, like TV. Everything in moderation.It's not the job of the video game industry to make sure kids are only playing x-hours per day, it is the parents'.
- tunesmith 14y ago
  It might also be because video games have a poor correlation towards gun violence in general. Video games exist in other countries that don't have our style of gun violence. Of course, I suppose it's possible that those other countries have superior parenting, as well.
- OGinparadise 14y ago
  Why didn't video games turn me violent? It's probably because while my parents love games, they didn't let me sit in front of them 24/7. They made sure I did my work, had an after-school job, was involved in clubs, etc.... I agree with what you are saying but compare apples to apples. The Senator tried to blame (maybe also blame) games for the shootings when many are calling for limiting gun /gun variety ownership. So to be fair, we should mention that not everyone with a gun shoots his classmates either.
- pekk 14y ago
  There is no evidence that sufficient experience playing (say) Doom deathmatch will turn anyone into a mass killer. 'Moderation' is probably a red herring.
  - Firehed 14y ago
    Indeed. I think the best correlation may be that if someone is already inclined to commit mass violence, they may be able to improve their technique for practicing murder with a violent video game by studying various reactions by human and computer players. This, of course, is equally true for watching any violent movie, and even just the news these days. But don't let that get in the way of some good sensationalism.
noonespecial 14y ago
I think video games is a bigger problem than guns, because video games affect people. But the First Amendment limits what we can do about video games and the Second Amendment to the Constitution limits what we can do about guns. Wow. He's managed to combine "they say the darndedst things" with "that pesky constitution, always in the way of the best ideas". I'm sympathetic to the cause of limiting the power of weapons available to average citizens, but with this guy on my side, I'm not sure the opposition has much work to do. By dragging another amendment that people are passionate about into it, he effectively makes his case impossible to argue.
_delirium 14y ago
It's interesting that "violent games" and "violent music" often get blamed (often by the same people), but "violent films" or "violent novels" less often. I would guess demographics are a big part of it: lots of people who don't think of themselves as potential killers like horror films, but they think of video games, or black metal, as something only weird obsessives are into, because people in their circles aren't into them. I'm personally rather more disturbed that people actually enjoy watching the Saw series of films, than I am by people playing Call of Duty or buying Dimmu Borgir albums, but ymmv. edit: That isn't to say that I think violent films should be banned, either. But I'm more weirded out by the fact that some really gory stuff is really popular, than I am by anything that comes out of the game or music industries.
- DanBC 14y ago
  I said it before (and other people made useful rebuttals) but I find it interesting that people are quick to condemn pro-anna and thinsperation type imagery, but they'll also defend violent video games. If someone really wanted to get a law on the books they'd take an existing game, re-skin it to be full of children, "Jews" and "blacks", and build some levels in schools and shopping malls, release it anonymously, and then tip-off the most vocal press. And I find it a bit confusing that people spend billions on influencing others, but that we never refer to the research when discussing this.
  - jff 14y ago
    People did this quite a bit back when Doom was big, and it caused some controversy, but I don't know of any laws that arose from it.
  - mistercow 14y ago
    >I said it before (and other people made useful rebuttals) but I find it interesting that people are quick to condemn pro-anna and thinsperation type imagery, but they'll also defend violent video games. You're sort of right about that being interesting, and the fact is that condemnation and censorship of pro-ana and thinspo material is generally misguided. But it's sort of different. Pro-ana and thinspo imagery are generally promoted by people with the very mental illness that those movements are blamed for, and should be viewed as a symptom, not a cause.
newbie12 14y ago
The article ignores the real issue-- the impact of violent video games and movie content on children. There's no First Amendment right for kids to access violent content.
- esrauch 14y ago
  I disagree with your assertion. Some violent depictions can trivially be political speech, and "think of what the children will do" is simply not a compelling reason for the government to limit any political speech, especially when there is such a tenuous scientific link between viewing that content and long term health impact. Consider The Bully Project film from 2 years ago; the MPAA rated it R because they consider it to be too violent, even though it is literally actual footage of bullying in schools. I find it difficult to accept that 15 and 16 year olds should be legally forbidden from watching something that has direct and important relevancy on their lives and could, from a reasonably objective view, actually improve the lives of bullied kids. Just because you are 16 shouldn't mean you have no rights.
  - JoeAltmaier 14y ago
    Yeah pretty much just because you aren't 21 you have few rights. Its strange - by legislating a number (legal age) we can disenfranchise, economically marginalize, and socially stigmatize whole groups of people. And no constitutional protection helps.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
    - esrauch 14y ago
      Being able to speak freely is utterly pointless if no one else is allowed to listen. I am positing that it is immoral to legally limit the consumption of political speech by any person. At no age is it currently illegal to own a violent game or R rated film. Film ratings are enforced voluntarily by private actors and not by the force of the law. There is no reason for that to change for any medium without extremely strong reasons considering the free speech implications of giving the might of law to arbitrarily restrict content at their individual whim. It seems to me there are not even weak reasons currently, only absurd reactionary politics that always follow tragedy.
ahallock 14y ago
Statists are always looking to point to people's freedoms as being the problem. The vast majority of gun violence is actually State-driven: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9bRDNgd6E4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9bRDNgd6E4
- cadlin 14y ago
  That guy in the video is a crank. I watched the first eight minute (until he brings out a poverty graph). He a)leaves out the massive reduction of poverty in the US in the first half of the twentieth century and b) brushes off Social Security's massive success in reducing the elderly's poverty rate.
  - ahallock 14y ago
    You stopped watching when he brought out a poverty graph? Did you think the data was wrong? He wasn't arguing about the elderly's poverty rate. It's not relevant to the video.
tunesmith 14y ago
I've been reading about bayesian stats and likelihood ratios lately. So, a likelihood ratio is P(X|A) / P(X|~A) . If you define X as "likely to commit gun violence", then A would be the way to identify X. Here, he's saying that A="plays violent video games". The problem is that not only is there a poorly correlated relationship between gun violence and video games, there's also plenty of gun violence by people who don't play violent video games. So the likelihood ratio isn't great. It's the same with "is mentally ill". Even if you screen for mental illness, you're going to get a lot of false positives and false negatives. The problem is that people keep trying to identify "A", and I suspect there isn't even a root cause. To me it seems like it's more a matter of multiple contributory causes that reach tipping points. System dynamics, if you will. For instance, if you reduce the allure of "preparing for the end of the world", that could have a system-level impact. Or, if guns looked feminine, that would probably do it too.
- stephengillie 14y ago
  Is mentally ill doesn't have binary outcomes. Mental issues are set on spectrums (spectra?), usually from normal to extreme or extremely low to extremely high, normal in middle, and each human has an analog value on each spectrum for each disorder. With the latter, we expect a Poisson distribution.
  - _delirium 14y ago
    A particularly tricky aspect for the purposes of this discussion is that the positions on those spectra are somewhat circularly defined when looking at outcomes, at least as defined in the DSM, the most common U.S. diagnostic manual. Many of the conditions have outcome-related diagnostic factors right in the definitions: whether the person is experiencing significant distress in their life, conflict with others or their surroundings, inability to work a job, etc. The pragmatic goal is to avoid over-diagnosing things that aren't actually causing people problems, but as a result it's tricky to isolate causal factors. Even worse if you're diagnosing people in retrospect: of course someone who went on a shooting rampage is going to meet all those criteria, after the fact.
  - tunesmith 14y ago
dobbsbob 14y ago
Didn't James Holmes dress up like the riddler/joker, record an insane voicemail greeting in joker character, cover his apartment in batman posters, and shoot up a theatre playing batman? Clearly it was call of duty and gaia that made him do it At least this senator could've found some sort of phony empirical evidence before scapegoating. Guess the violent movies are the root of all evil card is played out
impendia 14y ago
I have heard speculation that violent video games are inversely correlated with actual violence, in light of the fact that violent crime is way down over the past thirty years or so. The reasoning is, people who are predisposed to violence can get their kicks from violent video games, in their own homes, rather than going out and shooting people. It is just a theory, but it is no less plausible than the opposite theory.
- russell 14y ago
  And I remember reading that the drop in crime was correlated with the disuse or ban of leaded gasoline when the cohort was in infancy or young childhood.
ajuc 14y ago
Let's see. USA - strict laws against violence in games (PEGI ratings etc), liberal gun control, 4.8 intentional homicides per 100 000 citizens Poland - liberal law regarding violence in games, strict gun control, 1.1 intentional homicides per 100 000 citizens Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentiona...
- koenigdavidmj 14y ago
  PEGI is a European thing, and game ratings have no legal significance in the US.
- aqme28 14y ago
  "The plural of anecdote is not data."
  - taligent 14y ago
    "Using a quote out of context just makes you look like an idiot"
    - aqme28 14y ago
      Is it out of context? Two datapoints with a multitude of confounding factors do not actually tell us anything of value.
    - tunesmith 14y ago
      That's not even a quote. :)
- alecdbrooks 14y ago
  I am as skeptical about laws regulating video games as you seem to be, but laws about video game violence in the United States are hardly 'strict.' After all, the agency that rates video games, the ESRB, is run by the industry itself. And I am unaware of any legal obligation to take part in the ESRB. Finally, the U.S. doesn't use PEGI ratings, a group of nine European nations do. But you are right in saying Poland has liberal laws — game publishers do not have to have their games rated by PEGI.
mkolodny 14y ago
I actually wrote a paper in university about whether violence in games and tv causes violent behavior in real life. It turns out that the US has spent tens of millions of dollars since the 1950s on studies trying to prove that violent media does in fact cause real-world violence. After the decades of studies, and the gobs of money that's been spent, still not one shred of conclusive evidence has supported the notion that games cause violent behavior. Here's a link to a draft of the paper if anyone's interested: http://goo.gl/TJQaU http://goo.gl/TJQaU
btilly 14y ago
The problem with this type of issue is that the topic is complex, it is hard to get anything like clean evidence, people start with strong opinions, and attempts at careful analysis immediately get derailed. We could try to reduce it to its component parts. But that fails, as Calvin points out at http://www.myconfinedspace.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/image_ed7vv0.gif?9d7bd4 http://www.myconfinedspace.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/im.... But that said, here are my personal beliefs: - Exposure to violence in mass media (including games) is probably correlated with overall violence in life across all of society. - The individual correlation is very, very small. - There are widespread confusions about cause and correlation that come up over and over again. - Long term comparisons have trouble dealing with the confounding influence of a long-term decrease in violence in our society, with possible causes from changing mores to reduced lead to parents not resorting to corporal violence to who knows what. - No simple correlation exists between levels of gun ownership and violence in a society. - The "assault weapons" (yeah, that term is not well defined) that get used in high profile mass shootings are, on the whole, less often used in crime or to kill people than handguns. Even if a ban was effective, it would be unlikely to produce any noticeable effect. - There is no way that, given how polarized our politics are, that anything resembling an assault weapon ban is getting through this Congress. - The Supreme Court in Heller made it clear that governments have limited power to regulate the kinds of arms that are available, but has not ruled on what those limits are. There is a real possibility that assault weapons bans, like the one that just passed in New York, are going to be struck down on constitutional grounds. I now return you to your regularly scheduled argument...
- _delirium 14y ago
  The "assault weapons" (yeah, that term is not well defined) that get used in high profile mass shootings are, on the whole, less often used in crime or to kill people than handguns. Even if a ban was effective, it would be unlikely to produce any noticeable effect. A corollary to this is a guess that the handful of high-profile mass shootings just aren't good proxies for violence in general. I think many people view it as the "straw the broke the camel's back", an extreme example of a general class of problems that finally got people to take the problem seriously, like the Cuyahoga River catching on fire did for water pollution. But an alternate hypothesis is that these rare events are very different (in causes and solutions) from the more common kinds of violence, so the discussion focused on these handful of anomalous data points is not very useful for figuring out how to reduce violence overall.
JVIDEL 14y ago
Well I think the senator should be more worried about those amalgamated automatons roaming around our steppes, breaking our penny-farthing bikes and soiling our women's petticoats. These godless contraptions are invulnerable even to the senator's modern blunderbuss, and are fueled by the pills he needs to live.
WalterBright 14y ago
Don't forget to blame the comic books!
msluyter 14y ago
This is Lamar Alexander, one of the top senate recipients of NRA contributions (http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2012/12/18/nra-and-congress/ http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2012/12/18/nra-and-congre...), so this sort of misdirection is rather unsurprising.
- marssaxman 14y ago
  Oh, that guy? Co-sponsor of PIPA and COICA, and therefore by definition one of the baddest of the bad guys? Yeah, this is exactly the sort of inane blather you'd expect from him.
  - yen223 14y ago
    I think you might be thinking of Lamar Smith.
    - marssaxman 14y ago
      I think you are right, since Lamar Smith has been a prominent baddie, but it is still true that Lamar Alexander co-signed PIPA and COICA.
- mturmon 14y ago
  Also, the misdirection seems to have worked on HN.
WalterBright 14y ago
On the other hand, violent games may actually reduce violence, because people with violent tendencies may be using the games to get their "fix" in a way that doesn't actually hurt anyone.
bernardom 14y ago
US: Huge number of guns, access to violent games Rest of world: access to violent games US: lots of gun deaths Rest of world: not lots of gun deaths So either 1- lots of guns = more gun deaths, or 2- lots of guns combined with violent games = more gun deaths No way to tease out the two variables, unless there are places with lots of guns and no violent games that we can look at.
- taligent 14y ago
  YES. Seriously why isn't anyone recognising this ? The exact same violent video games and movies available in the US exist in many Western countries (New Zealand, Australia, UK, Singapore, Ireland, Scotland, France). But there is no where near the same issues. In Australia I could get lost and end up at any house and be guaranteed I am not going to be killed for no reason.
  - johngalt 14y ago
    Do you honestly think if you get lost and knock on a strangers door you'll just be indiscriminately killed in the USA? Remember that the statistics are all talking about relatively small numbers. Take USA's 0.00004 vs Australia's 0.00001 it's technically correct to say '300% more likely', but it's still a very small chance. tl;dr Your more likely to commit suicide than be murdered in either country.
Tycho 14y ago
US Senators are a bigger problem than guns and video games.
strlen 14y ago
Good luck, Senator: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_v._Entertainment_Merchants_Association http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_v._Entertainment_Merchant...
heifetz 14y ago
How about an experiment. Subject a group of people to violent video games and knives. Give another group of people automatic assault weapons. Create tension in the group over the course of a year, and see how many people get killed.
zoowar 14y ago
If games are a bigger problem than guns, war is a bigger problem than games.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
toddnessa 14y ago
It is only through the responsible use of freedom that people can continue to remain free. Freedom used for selfish ends leads to bondage. History has proven over and over again that in cases when self-serving attitudes spread throughout the culture that they are ripe for picking by their enemies with freedom soon lost. Freedom used responsibly always is to the benefit and welfare of others. George Washington: "Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indespensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars." To those of you who out there who are consumers of this type of material... buyer beware.

93 points by Swifty 14y ago

Yet another excuse to not get tough on gun control, all thanks to a badly worded Second Amendment. The reality is without serious gun control the massacres in the US will continue.

rikacomet 14y ago

There is a famous saying here, for such people: " If someone tells you to jump in a well, would you? " Voilent games can also be seen as a punching bag to vent out your anger, without hurting somebody in actual. It is not always the case that kids turn voilent in real life because of them. Parental guidance is needed at every step of life, blame poor parenting if you have to :?

OGinparadise 14y ago
There is a famous saying here, for such people: " If someone tells you to jump in a well, would you? " Bad example: I wouldn't but a lot of kids are easily influenced. And no, I don't support a ban or censorship of games. I see this and guns as part of life, bad stuff happens some times, like when you cross the street and a car or a lightning might hit you.
- rikacomet 14y ago
  True, the games should be in moderation as well, but I have seen numerous instances of negligence on part of parents. Your kid is 12, why let him play PG-13 games? A lot of people, need to be strict in this case. this is indeed a very complex situation, like a algorithm, for which we know one of the 'possible answers' but not the answer as of yet. On a second thought, I do think thats not the best possible example :/
neumann_alfred 14y ago
Voilent games can also be seen as a punching bag to vent out your anger, without hurting somebody in actual. It can also be seen as "practice" for people that are addicted to cruelty and dominance. I don't know about you, but when I play online I am often amazed at how low people can go, and how some never tire of being mean. And I'm not "raging" either, I can usually hold my own and generally care zilch about winning or loosing random pub games; but compared to how fun it is to play with "normal people", those sociopaths really do stick out, and it's obvious they live in a world where they have everything and all the peers they could want, and nothing that reminds them of the fact they have a problem - games and gamers don't do that usually, they're the silent accomplices. But sure, if it keeps them from abusing animals or whatever, I'm all for it. But there's just no way of telling if it does that, or if it just grows a hunger for something more real. I don't feel comfortable shrugging it off. None of this can or should be solved with laws, it's all about debate and culture. It should be legal, but I frown upon it, and I want to be explicit and vocal about it and step on people's toes. Just because some got used to it, just because so many people do it, doesn't mean it's not fucking pathetic. But so are other things, movies for example. Not picking on violent video games, or violence... more the shallow display and glorification of it.

fotoblur 14y ago

In my research I came across what I think is the best explanation for the cause for violence in our society. I believe video games are just another symptom but not the cause and effect. "Of all crimes, those involving violence are most closely related to high levels of inequality." - http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/mar/13/the-spirit-level http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/mar/13/the-spirit-level

newbie12 14y ago
That doesn't explain the mass rampage murders, which have been all committed by wealthy or upper-middle class perpetrators. Plus, violent crime in America is decreasing even while poverty is increasing.
- pekk 14y ago
  Violent crime is decreasing, period. It is spurious (if not intentionally misleading) to suggest that this correlates in a meaningful way with changes in poverty.
  - JoeAltmaier 14y ago
    Yes, recently an article was posted here (WSJ) that correlated unleaded gasoline with violent crime. That's actually believable.
    - morpher 14y ago
      IIRC, Freakanomics had a section correlating legalized abortion with a drop in crime ~18 years later. Also plausible. But, of course, not necessarily causal.

stackcollision 14y ago

Parenting is the real issue here. If you can't teach your kids the difference between reality and fantasy, you have failed. I had caring parents who love video games. I have been playing violent games since my dad got Doom for our N64. I am a well-adjusted individual with a good job, a happy relationship, a stable living condition, and plenty of friends. Why didn't video games turn me violent? It's probably because while my parents love games, they didn't let me sit in front of them 24/7. They made sure I did my work, had an after-school job, was involved in clubs, etc. The same applies for any other medium, like TV. Everything in moderation.It's not the job of the video game industry to make sure kids are only playing x-hours per day, it is the parents'.

tunesmith 14y ago
It might also be because video games have a poor correlation towards gun violence in general. Video games exist in other countries that don't have our style of gun violence. Of course, I suppose it's possible that those other countries have superior parenting, as well.
OGinparadise 14y ago
Why didn't video games turn me violent? It's probably because while my parents love games, they didn't let me sit in front of them 24/7. They made sure I did my work, had an after-school job, was involved in clubs, etc.... I agree with what you are saying but compare apples to apples. The Senator tried to blame (maybe also blame) games for the shootings when many are calling for limiting gun /gun variety ownership. So to be fair, we should mention that not everyone with a gun shoots his classmates either.
pekk 14y ago
There is no evidence that sufficient experience playing (say) Doom deathmatch will turn anyone into a mass killer. 'Moderation' is probably a red herring.
- Firehed 14y ago
  Indeed. I think the best correlation may be that if someone is already inclined to commit mass violence, they may be able to improve their technique for practicing murder with a violent video game by studying various reactions by human and computer players. This, of course, is equally true for watching any violent movie, and even just the news these days. But don't let that get in the way of some good sensationalism.

noonespecial 14y ago

I think video games is a bigger problem than guns, because video games affect people. But the First Amendment limits what we can do about video games and the Second Amendment to the Constitution limits what we can do about guns. Wow. He's managed to combine "they say the darndedst things" with "that pesky constitution, always in the way of the best ideas". I'm sympathetic to the cause of limiting the power of weapons available to average citizens, but with this guy on my side, I'm not sure the opposition has much work to do. By dragging another amendment that people are passionate about into it, he effectively makes his case impossible to argue.

_delirium 14y ago

It's interesting that "violent games" and "violent music" often get blamed (often by the same people), but "violent films" or "violent novels" less often. I would guess demographics are a big part of it: lots of people who don't think of themselves as potential killers like horror films, but they think of video games, or black metal, as something only weird obsessives are into, because people in their circles aren't into them. I'm personally rather more disturbed that people actually enjoy watching the Saw series of films, than I am by people playing Call of Duty or buying Dimmu Borgir albums, but ymmv. edit: That isn't to say that I think violent films should be banned, either. But I'm more weirded out by the fact that some really gory stuff is really popular, than I am by anything that comes out of the game or music industries.

DanBC 14y ago
I said it before (and other people made useful rebuttals) but I find it interesting that people are quick to condemn pro-anna and thinsperation type imagery, but they'll also defend violent video games. If someone really wanted to get a law on the books they'd take an existing game, re-skin it to be full of children, "Jews" and "blacks", and build some levels in schools and shopping malls, release it anonymously, and then tip-off the most vocal press. And I find it a bit confusing that people spend billions on influencing others, but that we never refer to the research when discussing this.
- jff 14y ago
  People did this quite a bit back when Doom was big, and it caused some controversy, but I don't know of any laws that arose from it.
- mistercow 14y ago
  >I said it before (and other people made useful rebuttals) but I find it interesting that people are quick to condemn pro-anna and thinsperation type imagery, but they'll also defend violent video games. You're sort of right about that being interesting, and the fact is that condemnation and censorship of pro-ana and thinspo material is generally misguided. But it's sort of different. Pro-ana and thinspo imagery are generally promoted by people with the very mental illness that those movements are blamed for, and should be viewed as a symptom, not a cause.

newbie12 14y ago

The article ignores the real issue-- the impact of violent video games and movie content on children. There's no First Amendment right for kids to access violent content.

esrauch 14y ago
I disagree with your assertion. Some violent depictions can trivially be political speech, and "think of what the children will do" is simply not a compelling reason for the government to limit any political speech, especially when there is such a tenuous scientific link between viewing that content and long term health impact. Consider The Bully Project film from 2 years ago; the MPAA rated it R because they consider it to be too violent, even though it is literally actual footage of bullying in schools. I find it difficult to accept that 15 and 16 year olds should be legally forbidden from watching something that has direct and important relevancy on their lives and could, from a reasonably objective view, actually improve the lives of bullied kids. Just because you are 16 shouldn't mean you have no rights.
- JoeAltmaier 14y ago
  Yeah pretty much just because you aren't 21 you have few rights. Its strange - by legislating a number (legal age) we can disenfranchise, economically marginalize, and socially stigmatize whole groups of people. And no constitutional protection helps.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
  - esrauch 14y ago
    Being able to speak freely is utterly pointless if no one else is allowed to listen. I am positing that it is immoral to legally limit the consumption of political speech by any person. At no age is it currently illegal to own a violent game or R rated film. Film ratings are enforced voluntarily by private actors and not by the force of the law. There is no reason for that to change for any medium without extremely strong reasons considering the free speech implications of giving the might of law to arbitrarily restrict content at their individual whim. It seems to me there are not even weak reasons currently, only absurd reactionary politics that always follow tragedy.

ahallock 14y ago

Statists are always looking to point to people's freedoms as being the problem. The vast majority of gun violence is actually State-driven: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9bRDNgd6E4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9bRDNgd6E4

cadlin 14y ago
That guy in the video is a crank. I watched the first eight minute (until he brings out a poverty graph). He a)leaves out the massive reduction of poverty in the US in the first half of the twentieth century and b) brushes off Social Security's massive success in reducing the elderly's poverty rate.
- ahallock 14y ago
  You stopped watching when he brought out a poverty graph? Did you think the data was wrong? He wasn't arguing about the elderly's poverty rate. It's not relevant to the video.

tunesmith 14y ago

I've been reading about bayesian stats and likelihood ratios lately. So, a likelihood ratio is P(X|A) / P(X|~A) . If you define X as "likely to commit gun violence", then A would be the way to identify X. Here, he's saying that A="plays violent video games". The problem is that not only is there a poorly correlated relationship between gun violence and video games, there's also plenty of gun violence by people who don't play violent video games. So the likelihood ratio isn't great. It's the same with "is mentally ill". Even if you screen for mental illness, you're going to get a lot of false positives and false negatives. The problem is that people keep trying to identify "A", and I suspect there isn't even a root cause. To me it seems like it's more a matter of multiple contributory causes that reach tipping points. System dynamics, if you will. For instance, if you reduce the allure of "preparing for the end of the world", that could have a system-level impact. Or, if guns looked feminine, that would probably do it too.

stephengillie 14y ago
Is mentally ill doesn't have binary outcomes. Mental issues are set on spectrums (spectra?), usually from normal to extreme or extremely low to extremely high, normal in middle, and each human has an analog value on each spectrum for each disorder. With the latter, we expect a Poisson distribution.
- _delirium 14y ago
  A particularly tricky aspect for the purposes of this discussion is that the positions on those spectra are somewhat circularly defined when looking at outcomes, at least as defined in the DSM, the most common U.S. diagnostic manual. Many of the conditions have outcome-related diagnostic factors right in the definitions: whether the person is experiencing significant distress in their life, conflict with others or their surroundings, inability to work a job, etc. The pragmatic goal is to avoid over-diagnosing things that aren't actually causing people problems, but as a result it's tricky to isolate causal factors. Even worse if you're diagnosing people in retrospect: of course someone who went on a shooting rampage is going to meet all those criteria, after the fact.
- tunesmith 14y ago

dobbsbob 14y ago

Didn't James Holmes dress up like the riddler/joker, record an insane voicemail greeting in joker character, cover his apartment in batman posters, and shoot up a theatre playing batman? Clearly it was call of duty and gaia that made him do it At least this senator could've found some sort of phony empirical evidence before scapegoating. Guess the violent movies are the root of all evil card is played out

impendia 14y ago

I have heard speculation that violent video games are inversely correlated with actual violence, in light of the fact that violent crime is way down over the past thirty years or so. The reasoning is, people who are predisposed to violence can get their kicks from violent video games, in their own homes, rather than going out and shooting people. It is just a theory, but it is no less plausible than the opposite theory.

russell 14y ago
And I remember reading that the drop in crime was correlated with the disuse or ban of leaded gasoline when the cohort was in infancy or young childhood.

ajuc 14y ago

Let's see. USA - strict laws against violence in games (PEGI ratings etc), liberal gun control, 4.8 intentional homicides per 100 000 citizens Poland - liberal law regarding violence in games, strict gun control, 1.1 intentional homicides per 100 000 citizens Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentiona...

koenigdavidmj 14y ago
PEGI is a European thing, and game ratings have no legal significance in the US.
aqme28 14y ago
"The plural of anecdote is not data."
- taligent 14y ago
  "Using a quote out of context just makes you look like an idiot"
  - aqme28 14y ago
    Is it out of context? Two datapoints with a multitude of confounding factors do not actually tell us anything of value.
  - tunesmith 14y ago
    That's not even a quote. :)
alecdbrooks 14y ago
I am as skeptical about laws regulating video games as you seem to be, but laws about video game violence in the United States are hardly 'strict.' After all, the agency that rates video games, the ESRB, is run by the industry itself. And I am unaware of any legal obligation to take part in the ESRB. Finally, the U.S. doesn't use PEGI ratings, a group of nine European nations do. But you are right in saying Poland has liberal laws — game publishers do not have to have their games rated by PEGI.

mkolodny 14y ago

I actually wrote a paper in university about whether violence in games and tv causes violent behavior in real life. It turns out that the US has spent tens of millions of dollars since the 1950s on studies trying to prove that violent media does in fact cause real-world violence. After the decades of studies, and the gobs of money that's been spent, still not one shred of conclusive evidence has supported the notion that games cause violent behavior. Here's a link to a draft of the paper if anyone's interested: http://goo.gl/TJQaU http://goo.gl/TJQaU

btilly 14y ago

The problem with this type of issue is that the topic is complex, it is hard to get anything like clean evidence, people start with strong opinions, and attempts at careful analysis immediately get derailed. We could try to reduce it to its component parts. But that fails, as Calvin points out at http://www.myconfinedspace.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/image_ed7vv0.gif?9d7bd4 http://www.myconfinedspace.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/im.... But that said, here are my personal beliefs: - Exposure to violence in mass media (including games) is probably correlated with overall violence in life across all of society. - The individual correlation is very, very small. - There are widespread confusions about cause and correlation that come up over and over again. - Long term comparisons have trouble dealing with the confounding influence of a long-term decrease in violence in our society, with possible causes from changing mores to reduced lead to parents not resorting to corporal violence to who knows what. - No simple correlation exists between levels of gun ownership and violence in a society. - The "assault weapons" (yeah, that term is not well defined) that get used in high profile mass shootings are, on the whole, less often used in crime or to kill people than handguns. Even if a ban was effective, it would be unlikely to produce any noticeable effect. - There is no way that, given how polarized our politics are, that anything resembling an assault weapon ban is getting through this Congress. - The Supreme Court in Heller made it clear that governments have limited power to regulate the kinds of arms that are available, but has not ruled on what those limits are. There is a real possibility that assault weapons bans, like the one that just passed in New York, are going to be struck down on constitutional grounds. I now return you to your regularly scheduled argument...

_delirium 14y ago
The "assault weapons" (yeah, that term is not well defined) that get used in high profile mass shootings are, on the whole, less often used in crime or to kill people than handguns. Even if a ban was effective, it would be unlikely to produce any noticeable effect. A corollary to this is a guess that the handful of high-profile mass shootings just aren't good proxies for violence in general. I think many people view it as the "straw the broke the camel's back", an extreme example of a general class of problems that finally got people to take the problem seriously, like the Cuyahoga River catching on fire did for water pollution. But an alternate hypothesis is that these rare events are very different (in causes and solutions) from the more common kinds of violence, so the discussion focused on these handful of anomalous data points is not very useful for figuring out how to reduce violence overall.

JVIDEL 14y ago

Well I think the senator should be more worried about those amalgamated automatons roaming around our steppes, breaking our penny-farthing bikes and soiling our women's petticoats. These godless contraptions are invulnerable even to the senator's modern blunderbuss, and are fueled by the pills he needs to live.

WalterBright 14y ago

Don't forget to blame the comic books!

msluyter 14y ago

This is Lamar Alexander, one of the top senate recipients of NRA contributions (http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2012/12/18/nra-and-congress/ http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2012/12/18/nra-and-congre...), so this sort of misdirection is rather unsurprising.

marssaxman 14y ago
Oh, that guy? Co-sponsor of PIPA and COICA, and therefore by definition one of the baddest of the bad guys? Yeah, this is exactly the sort of inane blather you'd expect from him.
- yen223 14y ago
  I think you might be thinking of Lamar Smith.
  - marssaxman 14y ago
    I think you are right, since Lamar Smith has been a prominent baddie, but it is still true that Lamar Alexander co-signed PIPA and COICA.
mturmon 14y ago
Also, the misdirection seems to have worked on HN.

WalterBright 14y ago

On the other hand, violent games may actually reduce violence, because people with violent tendencies may be using the games to get their "fix" in a way that doesn't actually hurt anyone.

bernardom 14y ago

US: Huge number of guns, access to violent games Rest of world: access to violent games US: lots of gun deaths Rest of world: not lots of gun deaths So either 1- lots of guns = more gun deaths, or 2- lots of guns combined with violent games = more gun deaths No way to tease out the two variables, unless there are places with lots of guns and no violent games that we can look at.

taligent 14y ago
YES. Seriously why isn't anyone recognising this ? The exact same violent video games and movies available in the US exist in many Western countries (New Zealand, Australia, UK, Singapore, Ireland, Scotland, France). But there is no where near the same issues. In Australia I could get lost and end up at any house and be guaranteed I am not going to be killed for no reason.
- johngalt 14y ago
  Do you honestly think if you get lost and knock on a strangers door you'll just be indiscriminately killed in the USA? Remember that the statistics are all talking about relatively small numbers. Take USA's 0.00004 vs Australia's 0.00001 it's technically correct to say '300% more likely', but it's still a very small chance. tl;dr Your more likely to commit suicide than be murdered in either country.

Tycho 14y ago

US Senators are a bigger problem than guns and video games.

strlen 14y ago

Good luck, Senator: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_v._Entertainment_Merchants_Association http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_v._Entertainment_Merchant...

heifetz 14y ago

How about an experiment. Subject a group of people to violent video games and knives. Give another group of people automatic assault weapons. Create tension in the group over the course of a year, and see how many people get killed.

zoowar 14y ago

If games are a bigger problem than guns, war is a bigger problem than games.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

toddnessa 14y ago

It is only through the responsible use of freedom that people can continue to remain free. Freedom used for selfish ends leads to bondage. History has proven over and over again that in cases when self-serving attitudes spread throughout the culture that they are ripe for picking by their enemies with freedom soon lost. Freedom used responsibly always is to the benefit and welfare of others. George Washington: "Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indespensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars." To those of you who out there who are consumers of this type of material... buyer beware.