http://news.yahoo.com/videogames-under- … 01440.html

When we're looking for excuses to explain things, video games are sure a nice scapegoat!

Some decent responses in this cnn article (also some asinine comments, as usual).

http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/19/tech/gami … ?hpt=hp_c2

I think it's natural and probably healthy for society to take a holistic view to start to look where the problem may be garnering its energy from...but honestly, weren't they originally blaming Mass Effect at one point?  Give me a friggen break...  I honestly didn't feel like playing call of duty (a semi regular nightly ritual)...but that was just out of a mood, I think will pass. Ultimately I can separate the fantasy from reality and want my games untouched.  If anything I want them more violent for the pure escapism / comedy of it all.

I just think we really need to put all the cards on the table and start to talk about it.  Personally, I think the answer lies between better management of US gun policy and a review of what we can do with and for the mentally ill.  I'm not sure the mentally ill have a place in our society.   That's just my opinion - but I think we need to discuss and review options.  Ignoring the problem (Which is basically what the US continues to do) is obviously not working.

Mass Effect wasn't called out for the shooty bits, but for the fact that you could have sex with one of your team members and that the game showed the scene explicitly. It was called a "Rape Simulator" because of this, whereas anyone who has actually played the game knows that it's an incredibly innocent scene that hardly shows anything and it's over in 3 seconds; the average FOX TV show is more shocking than that.

Anyhoo, this is all really about gun control and nothing else.
I can see why people are also worried about the treatment of the mentally ill, but the fact of the matter is that, as long as you enforce proper gun control, the mentally ill won't be able to get their hands on guns, so gun control, and nothing else, really should be top priority.

Also, this:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wor … un-deaths/

I don't think it's fair to compare the US and Japan. Similar in many ways, but also different cultures in many ways. I don't think the US will ever outlaw guns, nor in my opinion should they. That doesn't mean that there shouldn't be tighter regulations, but I honestly don't know how effective they will be. As a counter argument to the link posted by Amazingu, take a look at Brazil:

http://www.afn.org/~afn18566/brazil.html

take it with a couple of grains of salt, since this is from clearly a pro-gun side. However, I have friends from Brazil (who by the way have actually been robbed at gun-point in Sao Paulo) and they say the same thing. Brazil has very strict gun laws, but nevertheless their homicide rates due to guns is HIGHER than the US per capita.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co … death_rate

Also, recall the Osaka School Massacre in Japan, where a crazy man with a knife killed eight children and seriously wounded 13 others. How do you stop things like that? Perhaps a security guard could have taken him down? Anyway, some food for thought, and although I don't purport to have all the answers, I am certain that video games are NOT the cause.

That's very interesting.
Why is it then that such a thing happens in Brazil, but not in Japan?

Is it all just cultural difference?
Are people in Brazil and the US just innately more aggressive than the Japanese?

If so, how do you fix that?
I think you can't just fix all of this by improved mental health care either.
You can't just say that anyone who kills anyone else is mentally ill, because I don't think it's that simple.

I have the impression that the kind of people who do this (in Japan at least) are people who aren't generally mentally ill as much as they just snap at some point because they're unsatisfied with their lives. (The vast majority of culprits in these cases are unemployed. The remainder are usually people who were under a lot of stress at work).
So like I said, I don't think mental health care is the answer either.

Maybe it's just society as a whole that needs to change, and good luck with that, obviously.

On that much we can agree at least

The people that go on shooting rampages are psychopaths with low impulse control (my idea). I recently, and unrelated to shooting incidents, read a book about psychopaths. Psychopaths with high impulse control (according to the book) often become CEOs, lawyers, salespersons, surgeons, journalists, police officers, priests and chefs. Psychopaths with low impulse control become inmates.

Interesting line of thinking Jodo - I see where you're going and the books suggestions....but Surgeons Priests and chefs?? I'll say again Chefs??  hahaha...that lost me..

That said, not everyone gets to be a CEO...sorry, and successful high paid / powerful attorneys are not as common as TV may lead us to think...And this line of thinking may have something to do with the contorted thoughts running within Lanza's head.  I think these lines from a scene in Fight Club may be pertinent:

"I see in Fight Club the strongest and smartest men who have ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see it squandered. Goddammit, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables, slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man; no purpose or place. We have no Great War, no Great Depression. Our Great War is a spiritual war. Our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised by television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars. But we won't; and we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84NkaY3nhSo

Could this attitude be at play in modern psycho's?

This is the book: http://www.amazon.com/The-Wisdom-Psycho … sychopaths

The book also mentions that psychopaths are on the rise. Some people are speculating it's the next step of human evolution. Neurologically, psychopaths have a dysfunctional or nonactive amygdala (no fear).

My personal speculation is that the reason for psychopathy (no fear) is due to the fact we are spending a great deal of time not living around animal (non-human) predators. We are safe inside houses where the horrors are primarily psychological. It's possible our brains are changing due to the lack of true threats.

Oddly, psychopaths have a lot of empathy and can be altruistic, which is very counterintuitive. The book I linked to describes experiments that were done on psychopaths. According to the book, the only real difference between psychopaths and normal people is that normal people feel fear. (A consequence of not feeling fear is that psychopaths have more sex with more partners than normal people, which spreads their genes rapidly and broadly, allowing them to increase in numbers. They do not have any fear of rejection.)

There's actually a much simpler reason I've seen suggested, and it makes total and perfect sense. The absolutely huge amount of coverage that the media spends on events like this cause people to do it. They see these events being /glorified/ and those who do them are FAMOUS. So they go out in a "blaze of glory" as it were and are remembered -- people across the world hear about it -- rather than being some nobody who might get a mention in the corner of a local paper.
It's not that people are crazier, and it's not that our brains are changing. People will be people, but the environment shapes their actions.

It would be really hard to test your theory. I would like to get a definitive answer, but an experiment isolating hundreds or thousands of people from social media would be difficult to accomplish.

Having worked in kitchens for over 15 years, I think it's fair to say many chefs are psychopathic

http://www.wfsb.com/story/20485373/sout … hpt=us_bn7

"there is ample evidence that violent video games, along with violent media of all kinds, including TV and movies portraying story after story showing a continuous stream of violence and killing, has contributed to increasing aggressiveness, fear, anxiety and is desensitizing our children to acts of violence including bullying"

I call BS on this! Here's a professional psychologist saying video games are NOT to blame:

http://www.tamiu.edu/~cferguson/VideoGames.html

Well, I have to say, a hundred years ago or so, they probably would have blamed some minority group (Blacks, Jews, homosexuals, etc) so I guess blaming inanimate objects is arguably better than some alternatives!

A counter argument is that without video games as a suitable outlet for aggression, there may be more violence in real life.

Are we separating "psychopaths" from "assholes"?  ;-)

Here's an apt response from Quentin Tarantino (relating to impact of violent Movies)

http://connecticut.cbslocal.com/2013/01 … to-movies/

Haha psychopath is a tad extreme, but its a fine line sometimes! Anyway I've heard some horror stories. I'm sure mental condition is not determined by occupation, but all types end up in all places at some point or another.

100% pure BS:

http://news.yahoo.com/newtown-video-gam … itics.html

"Every day, mass killings are imagined, rehearsed, and enacted – virtually – by millions of children and young adults, mostly boys and men, in video games like Bioshock 2. That game invites players to murder defenseless, cowering girls at point-blank range or lure them into a trap to mow them down with a machine gun."

Hahaha, oh wow, that has to be the single stupidest and most poorly researched peace of tripe I've ever read on the subject. And that's damn SAYING something.

Doesn't surprise me.  The majority of the anti-gun nuts are wildly ignorant or otherwise allergic to reality.

The people that blame video games for school shootings need to review history and then explain how video games caused those shootings.

Edit: My belief is that it's a problem for neuroscience to solve. All of the violence stems from defects or lack of impulse control in human brains. All of the factors going on in the environment outside of human brains are not to blame for violent acts by humans, with the exception of defending one's life. Some people can control themselves; some cannot. It's a neuroscience problem.