8-year-old intentionally kills grandmother - Page 2

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 8/25/13 at 4:19pm

Outrage is the new black.

[SNAFU]

Posted: 8/25/13 at 4:41pm

Very sad indeed. At 8, growing up in a house with guns, I knew quite well you never pointed one at people or shot them. Well, unless you were Dad in a drunken Christmas Eve funk. I do not believe it was video games or even necessarily bad parenting. Sometimes children's wiring is just plain off.

[Plum]

Posted: 8/25/13 at 6:08pm

I think sociopathy is a whole hell of a lot rarer than idiocy and neglect. Some adult left a firearm and ammunition within reach of an 8-year-old. There's no excuse for that.

[SNAFU]

Posted: 8/25/13 at 7:06pm

Rare indeed, as is an 8 year old killing his grandmother!

[trentsketch]

Posted: 8/25/13 at 8:31pm

There is no evidence to suggest that video games have any long term effects on mental health. The closest a study has come to finding any correlation is one study that showed a momentary increase in aggression that lasted after playing a violent video games. Blaming video games for a gun being available to an eight year old so he could shoot his grandmother is absurd. The video game didn't kill the woman. An unattended gun did.

Are there very rare instances where where investigators, after the death of a killer, decide "Case closed. Video games in the house?" Yes. And it's lazy police work. Are there even cases where already unstable people take inspiration from video games and live out a fantasy born of an inaccurate understanding of the world? Yes, and they are the rare exception.

The video game rating system is enforced at every major retailer. Someone had to buy an M-rated game for an 8 year old. If you ever play some of these M-rated games online, most of the players cursing you out in your headset haven't hit puberty yet. Since we don't have 1000s of game-inspired murder cases (which, find me the mainstream, actually-rated video game where the objective is to grab a gun and shoot grandma dead and the M-rated argument might start to hold water) each day, there's a really logical conclusion.

In the same way exposing people to R (formerly NC-17)-rated film Blue Valentine did not cause an increase in mentally abusive relationships with tear-filled oral sex forced on both partners, video games have not caused an increase in cartoonish violence among young people.

[papalovesmambo]

Posted: 8/26/13 at 9:57am

plum's right. as usual. some things never change.