Your thoughts on gun violence in video games?

[Lord Jesseus]

because there couldn't be any unique factor to the united states no it has to be gun ownership, unlike those other countries

Then what is the factor? What is it that causes Americans to shoot each other all the time when other similar countries manage not to?

What you're saying is basically what Outlaw was saying; that Correlation does not imply causality. But you can't just say that alone and expect your "argument" to hold water. Unless you can actually propose another logical reason that may be causing the huge gun murder rates in your country you're just being stubborn and ignorant.

People should stop using "correlation does not imply causality" as an excuse to turn a blind eye to trends they don't like.

No I saw it. I got the whole "Look at that America with it's much higher gun death rate. Shame shame." While ignoring all the other countries with high gun rates. "Let's just look at these countries and exclude any countries that don't fit the point we're trying to make".

And this is just laughable. If your best defense is that you're better off than some third world African shithole then you're doing something wrong.

 

[ssbbm]

@Lee: (first of all don't cherrypick and only address the first point!)

furthermore, i looked at your article and saw brent was the most diverse borough. then i looked up gun violence in the uk and saw: brent is famous for its violence!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/5342246.stm

also, it's not diversity as much as the forced mixing of the blacks and whites although i didn't say that in my original post, which is my fault. edit: nvm, i did!

edit: this is also seen in germany now, which has increasing rates of gun violence as immigration increases.

 

[Outlaw]

Then what is the factor? What is it that causes Americans to shoot each other all the time when other similar countries manage not to?

What you're saying is basically what Outlaw was saying; that Correlation does not imply causality. But you can't just say that alone and expect your "argument" to hold water. Unless you can actually propose another logical reason that may be causing the huge gun murder rates in your country you're just being stubborn and ignorant.

People should stop using "correlation does not imply causality" as an excuse to turn a blind eye to trends they don't like.

Why? People defending video games do it and turn to guns. Gun people do it and turn to violent video games. Politicians blame it on both and no one blames the news.

There is no single logical reason.

 

[Fishy]

dang, only trax even responded to my idea about why america is so hopped up on bunkers and bullets

here are some articles to reiterate my thoughts!

america loves their guns because young boys are taught to be manly and shoot super soakers/bb guns/nerf guns/ and whatever else they can get their hands on, age permitting. an unbalanced boy thrust into a gun culture may grow up to believe guns can solve all his problems, but remove the gun culture from the unbalanced boy and perhaps he'll just channel his negative energy in a less popular/media-driven fashion. arts and crafts, anyone??

 

[Lee]

i'm not arguing that there isn't correlation between racial diversity and violence as i've seen it first hand throughout my life (i don't understand your point on 'forced mixing' though - when is it ever optional?), I was just showing that we have the same issue but you cannot begin to conpare our statistics to yours. Yes, Brent may be famous for its violence but that is relative - there were only 550 murders in the UK last year, only 39 of which involved a firearm. in the US in 2009, there were 13756 murders, 9203 of which involved a firearm (source). I imagine the figures for Kent itself would be negligible, certainly if compared to a US city 'famous for its violence.' I don't doubt for a second that Brent would have a much, much higher murder rate if we allowed its citizens to own guns but our police took the maverick step of taking away their guns and, as your article shows, experienced a significant reduction in gun crime as a result (who'd have thunk it!)

i cherrypicked for your benefit because your second point was retarded:

This is exacerbated by the unique "Southern Honor" where honor essentially is more important than life

i didn't realise we were talking about Feudal Japan

 

[Lord Jesseus]

Ok good job ssbbm for bringing some reasonable intellegent points to that side of the discussion

From what I've been able to gather it does seem that American has a relatively high racial diversity compared to other developed countries, and conflict between races is historically a fantastic source of murderous encounters.
That said, America is still mostly white people - over 70%. I'm having some trouble comparing to other countries though... Australia for example doesn't really keep accurate records of ethnic diversity and most of the demographics info I can find has a large percentage of people who identify as "Australian" which of course isn't a race at all. I'm inclined to say we're fairly diverse (Sydney has so many asians, I feel like a minority there sometimes) but I can't be sure.
So yeah, maybe race is playing a fair part in American violence.

But as I've said, guns may not be the cause - but do you think the ready access to firearms is helpful? Let's assume that every murder performed with a gun was considered with a different weapon instead. Remember that guns are very, very good at killing. So how many of those murders might have failed to inflict fatal wounds due to the use of a weaker weapon? How many of them could have been defended against in a way which is impossible against a gun? How many might not have been attempted at all due to the difficulty?
If racial issue is the motive, guns are the means. Is it a good idea to allow easy access to firearms in a society predisposed to violence for other reasons?
In my mind I just keep coming back to this point. No matter what the actual cause of gun violence may be, I can't see how the availablity of firearms can be helping.

 

[Heroes Fall]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uwAo8lcAC4&list=UUy1Ms_5qBTawC-k7PVjHXKQ&index=10

Total Biscuit sums it up well.

It's a horrible tragedy, my heart goes out to all those affected.

 

[Outlaw]

but remove the gun culture from the unbalanced boy and perhaps he'll just channel his negative energy in a less popular/media-driven fashion. arts and crafts, anyone??

Do you really want to create comic book villains?

 

[Woodchuck]

dang, only trax even responded to my idea about why america is so hopped up on bunkers and bullets

here are some articles to reiterate my thoughts!

america loves their guns because young boys are taught to be manly and shoot super soakers/bb guns/nerf guns/ and whatever else they can get their hands on, age permitting. an unbalanced boy thrust into a gun culture may grow up to believe guns can solve all his problems, but remove the gun culture from the unbalanced boy and perhaps he'll just channel his negative energy in a less popular/media-driven fashion. arts and crafts, anyone??

Hide

i'm not trying to bring up the gender thing at all; rather, i agree that upbringing/culture is extremely relevant to how people will deal with their "negative energy". video games are probably a significant part of this upbringing and creation of a "gun culture"!
but i think the bigger issue to be solved is

an unbalanced boy thrust into a gun culture may grow up to believe guns can solve all his problems

because better education/counseling can help mitigate faulty reasoning like this while avoiding censoring things that can be fun and enjoyable and provide an outlet for negative emotions (namely, violent video games). this means that children need to be taught the context and the meaning behind violence and death rather than schools and parents dancing around the subject as though it doesn't exist.

 

[Chou Toshio]

I also believe the availability of guns is far more related to violence than video games.

 

[Lord Jesseus]

Why? People defending video games do it and turn to guns. Gun people do it and turn to violent video games. Politicians blame it on both and no one blames the news.

There is no single logical reason.

Because the gamers aren't using "corelation does not equal causality" as their sole arguement. As already mentioned, the link between violence and video games can be plausibly explained by the demographic overlap - young males. And the chart posted earlier in the thread clearly shows that there are plenty of other countries that play just as many or even more video games but don't shoot the shit out of each other. On an international basis, the US is the clear outlier by a significant margin.
Some other circumstances may exist to explain the discrepeancy, but you haven't proposed any alternatives. You're just using the "correlation/causality" banner as a warm blanket to help you sleep at night.

ssbbm has brought up a logical point. Maybe you should follow his example?

 

[mattj]

maybe you could explain it to us then? i assume from your sarcasm that it's obvious but i must remind you that not all of us hail from the US so i'd be interested to hear which factor is present over there that accounts for such a horribly bloated gun murder rate?

hint: make sure that factor is not also present in present in say, Britain or Australia or Ireland or Israel or Spain or Japan or Greece or Estonia or well, any other developed country on Earth.

Also awaiting the unique challenges facing America that makes it comparable to Somalia, Uganda, and other countries that are obviously in the same level as the United States. After all, using places like Canada and the United Kingdom is so unfair. G8 countries? Really? You think America is a G... Hmm.

I don't see why I should have to explain why America is unique. I pointed out that the graph is ridiculously skewed to make America stick out. It excludes all countries with higher gun crime rates. "Look! See! America is so high!" Well sure it's high when you set it next to a bunch of countries with low gun crime rates and exclude the myriad countries with similar and higher rates. My point was never that America has some unique exception. My point was that is an intentionally dishonest graph, which is the kind of thing anti-gun proponents have to resort to.

lol@ "IGNORE HOW BIASED THIS GRAPH IS AND DEFEND THIS STRAWMAN ARGUMENT INSTEAD!"

 

[ssbbm]

i'm not arguing that there isn't correlation between racial diversity and violence as i've seen it first hand throughout my life (i don't understand your point on 'forced mixing' though - when is it ever optional?), I was just showing that we have the same issue but you cannot begin to conpare our statistics to yours. Yes, Brent may be famous for its violence but that is relative - there were only 550 murders in the UK last year, only 39 of which involved a firearm. in the US in 2009, there were 13756 murders, 9203 of which involved a firearm (source). I imagine the figures for Kent itself would be negligible, certainly if compared to a US city 'famous for its violence.' I don't doubt for a second that Brent would have a much, much higher murder rate if we allowed its citizens to own guns but our police took the maverick step of taking away their guns and, as your article shows, experienced a significant reduction in gun crime as a result (who'd have thunk it!)

(not so) interestingly, if we look at the united states statistics for murders, the majority of murders are in places that either contain extremely poor inner cities (look at new york, for example, which has the bronx with a life expectancy of fucking 33 years for a male - goddamn) or the south, such as alabama, arkansas, and tennessee.

the other places such as rhode island, hawaii, idaho, iowa and maine ALL have extremely low murder rates, similar to the uk's!

i don't want to cherrypick data, so i will admit that these places have stricter gun laws than texas (although not as strict as the UK), which does support your position to an extent. however, i will also argue that the only reason that these places CAN have stricter gun laws is because guns are not part of their culture; it'd be impossible to legislate so strictly in texas, where guns ARE the culture.

in my opinion, this shows that while guns allowance may have some effect on the murder in a place, the main factor is the history and socioeconomic status of a place.

i cherrypicked for your benefit because your second point was retarded.-- something about japan?--

except japan has obviously moved on since the meiji revolution: while they do value honor more than their life, they are extremely pacifistic now so i don't get what you're trying to say. america, on the other hand, has not moved on.

i mean, if you want to then we could talk about violence in feudal japan since you could argue their honor-based mindset is essentially the same but then you'd be proving my point.

---

anyway, it's not really racial diversity imo as opposed to having slaves and former slaves living in the same. furthermore, i dont' care about decreasing gun violence as much as decreasing violence as a whole; i don't care about getting stabbed or getting shot (assuming that both ways i die, of course).

tl;dr: the main factor in violence is in the history of a place. it is not necessary to prohibit guns. it is unreasonable to think that we can simply decrease violence by controlling guns, it is more about changing culture and enriching places. that being said, i do think that guns should be regulated to an extent.

 

[Mulligan]

Man, I'm gonna try to stay on topic, but....

The violent video games debate has gone on since the early '90s and maybe before then. During the fighting game craze, I distinctly remember the first Mortal Kombat getting a lot of heat due to the animated gore in the game (fatalities, etc). Funny how things are a lot more realistic looking now.

Anyway, as far as the impact video games can have, I don't think games causing someone to act out the violent events experienced virtually is the biggest problem video games have. The bigger negative impact is that, because of time spent, they can potentially cause someone to lack some social skills that are needed in the real world. I can say that since video games have been a mainstay for me for nearly the past two decades, with certain points playing almost..obsessively(tell me how many times have you had a chance to go out with friends/party, but you end up staying at home to play video games instead). It definitely did some damage to me from a social standpoint, but I don't wanna go into too much detail on that in this thread.

The parents certainly are a major factor in this, especially these days when kids are constantly on the Internet. They really need to monitor what their children are doing, but I agree with many here that some parents are using the Internet as a babysitter for their child. That is extremely dangerous with the cyberbullying(as ridiculous as some people think that is, it is a problem) and online solicitation for sex that's going on right now.

I think back on my own household situation growing up and it's tougher than some of you think though, as far as parenting. I come from a single parent home where I remember my mother limiting us to 2 hrs of video games and only on the weekends....and that still didn't quench the thirst :/

Hope I made sense in all this.

 

[Outlaw]

Because the gamers aren't using "corelation does not equal causality" as their sole arguement. As already mentioned, the link between violence and video games can be plausibly explained by the demographic overlap - young males. And the chart posted earlier in the thread clearly shows that there are plenty of other countries that play just as many or even more video games but don't shoot the shit out of each other. On an international basis, the US is the clear outlier by a significant margin.
Some other circumstances may exist to explain the discrepeancy, but you haven't proposed any alternatives. You're just using the "correlation/causality" banner as a warm blanket to help you sleep at night.

ssbbm has brought up a logical point. Maybe you should follow his example?

Hey, fuck you too. I'd bet money on that demographic overlap applying to gun crimes too. I could give two shits about needing help to sleep at night, this doesn't bother me because I'm confident in my logic that it isn't just guns, it's not just video games, and it's not just media or news. There's just a lot of insane people here created by a hodgepodge of circumstances.

 

[Lord Jesseus]

I don't see why I should have to explain why America is unique. I pointed out that the graph is ridiculously skewed to make America stick out. It excludes all countries with higher gun crime rates. "Look! See! America is so high!" Well sure it's high when you set it next to a bunch of countries with low gun crime rates and exclude the myriad countries with similar and higher rates. My point was never that America has some unique exception. My point was that is an intentionally dishonest graph, which is the kind of thing anti-gun proponents have to resort to.

lol@ "IGNORE HOW BIASED THIS GRAPH IS AND DEFEND THIS STRAWMAN ARGUMENT INSTEAD!"

The graph is dliberately comparing developed nations to each other because of their relatively similar social structures and standards of living. That's not a bias, that's just sensible statistics. If you really can't grasp the notion that America is not really comparable to say, Colombia or Zimbabwe, in terms of violence, then you're likely either ignorant or plain stupid.
Colombia has a higher gun violence rate than America because it's a fucking shithole. But why does America have a gun violence rate than other countries which aren't shitholes? That is the question here.

The graph could be more complete though. Ideally it should include the overall rates of homicide and the percventage of this which is attributable to firearms. But I think you'll find that America still comes close to cornering the market in those categories, with few exceptions. (again, third world shitholes notwithstanding)

So reiterating: America isn't the worst but it is pretty bad, especially when compared to countries which actually make fucking sense to compare it to.

Does that make sense?

 

[Nastyjungle]

no civilian should be allowed to own a gun of any type

america is too poisoned with the idea that guns solve problems rather than create them, so outlawing guns completely would never happen, but wouldn't it be nice?

either way, even if some people can argue the merit of handguns, there is literally no logical reason for a civilian to own an assault weapon, i am kind of dumbfounded that they haven't been outlawed again yet

if somebody can give me a reason assault weapons should be available to the public, please give me it

(also if anybody can give me a reason why high capacity magazines should be legal, please give that as well)

 

[Lord Jesseus]

Hey, fuck you too. I'd bet money on that demographic overlap applying to gun crimes too. I could give two shits about needing help to sleep at night, this doesn't bother me because I'm confident in my logic that it isn't just guns, it's not just video games, and it's not just media or news. There's just a lot of insane people here created by a hodgepodge of circumstances.

1. Um, yeah? The the videogame-gunrate overlap is the one I was specifically referring to so...
2. I've already acknowledged that guns aren't the sole cause of violence; that is literally impossible. But they are certainly fuel to the fire. If you take them out of the "hodgepodge" then there'll probably be a lot less killing, or at the very least a lot less killing with guns.

 

[mattj]

if somebody can give me a reason assault weapons should be available to the public, please give me it

(also if anybody can give me a reason why high capacity magazines should be legal, please give that as well)

If there's an intruder in my house or anyone threatening my life pretty much anywhere I'd like to be able to squeeze the trigger and have the highest chance of them dying please and thank you.

 

[Nastyjungle]

If there's an intruder in my house or anyone threatening my life pretty much anywhere I'd like to be able to squeeze the trigger and have the highest chance of them dying please and thank you.

yeah still not buying that any kind of situation with an intruder could be solved differently with an assault weapon than a handgun

i mean, if they have a gun or some other weapon and pull it on you first, it's over for you anyways (im assuming you don't sleep with a gun duct taped to your hand, mattj?)

and if you have a gun and pull it on them first, it's not going to matter what kind of gun it is, people tend to stop what they're doing when they're staring down a barrel


not to mention if you're worried about your aim, you could always take a course in you know

learning how to use your gun (gasp) instead of just closing your eyes, pointing it, and hoping for the best

instead of saying GEE WE NEED ASSAULT WEAPONS BECAUSE IM A BAD SHOT

 

[Woodchuck]

assault weapons are purely for killing things with more frequency.
if you need an assault weapon vs. a handgun to kill an intruder in your home, the solution is: better training, not spraying bullets wildly.

edit: ninja edited by nj n_n

 

[Aura Guardian]

Nastyjungle: Perhaps you should look at accuracy rates of people firing guns. I'm fairly certain I saw something that indicates that no, it is NOT over if the intruder draws first (can't find it again or anything, so take it with a grain of salt...). Or what if you both already have it drawn as you're walking around? Also, I know I'd want some mercy if I missed the first shot or two, and something where you have to pull the trigger for each shot doesn't cut it.

How's this for why guns should not be banned for civilians? Hunting. There are instances where this curbs ecological disasters (feral boar, overpopulation by deer, etc).

 

[ssbbm]

how many people use assault rifles when they hunt?

i'm actually curious not being snarky

 

[Woodchuck]

if you need an assault weapon for hunting you should quit hunting.

 

[macle]

If there's an intruder in my house or anyone threatening my life pretty much anywhere I'd like to be able to squeeze the trigger and have the highest chance of them dying please and thank you.

or you could get a home security system