Politicians try to blame video games....AGAIN!

Albatroes

Video to get a little backstory:

The purpose of posting this isn't really to get political but more on thoughts about if the government completely regulate games instead of aspects of video games (like what is going on about loot boxes, micro-transactions etc). Pretty much the government saying what games you're allowed to buy etc all together.

JeffSpicoli

Enjoy it while it lasts my friend. Youtube ,Facebook,Twitch ,Hollywood,Music, the internet ,professional sports. It seems like every other day some aspect of our lives is being censored ,regulated , or told how to feel & think . Is it all just a domino effect from the political climate we live in or is it tin foil hat time and is something more sinister  and 1984 like at work? 

Barrikor

Imagine how much better the world would be today if Hitler never played violent video games.

Eldurian

I've heard an interesting figure, I couldn't find anything about it on fact checker sites but according to this statistic I've seen a couple places 26/27 of the most major mass shooters this country have seen come from broken homes. AKA Homes were only one parent was present.

This seems an interesting figure to me. It made me vividly recall a conversation I once had in which a single co-worker was talking about making the decision to have a kid. And I was like "Shouldn't you wait until you have a suitable father?" And she was like "Nah, I can just have it with any guy." And I was like "Yeah but if a suitable father does come along someday don't you think he would rather have a child with you then just hop in and raise some random dude's kid?" And another co-worker was like "I guess if he's shallow." And I was like "Well I would like to be there for the birth of my kids..."

Our society doesn't value fathers. It doesn't teach women to expect good men who are faithful. It doesn't teach men to be good men who are faithful and pass those values on to our children. And it doesn't teach couples that a good relationship takes work and is about both parties putting the other person before themselves. Single parenthood is held up like a badge of honor to the point women are intentionally having children with guys they barely know. Where is the honor for parents who decide to put in the effort to make a relationship work? Because newsflash, all relationships no matter how good take effort to stay that way.

Not every child of a single parent is crazy obviously, and sometimes parents die and that can't be helped. But if this 26/27 figure is true then I would say that's strong enough correlation that we can say we're reaping the benefits of a society that doesn't place enough value on children having two loving parents to depend on as they develop. It's not just about 2 parent households having more time to spend with children, getting multiple perspectives etc. It's also about seeing an example of two imperfect people choosing to put each other first and making things work despite all the hardships of being in a relationship.

We should be giving that to children as much as possible.

All I can say is I'm a proud AR-15 owner and I love me some violent video games. But I grew up in a household with a mother and a father. You won't be seeing me shoot up a bunch of random innocent people.

I will however tell the government gestapos that I "lost my AR15 in a hunting accident" or "sold it at a gunshow" if they ever come around for it though. I don't expect to ever have to use it on my government but I want them to know I have it, and they will never get it. Because I will never stand idly by if the day comes someone comes to round up my neighbors and send them off to camps. And if armed civilians meant nothing we wouldn't still be at war in the Middle East. We blew up Iraq's military in like 24 hours.

--------

Also, beyond the correlation noted above, I also think there is a major correlation between how many reports of mass shootings we hear about and how many happen.

Kind of like when we hear reports of people eating tide pods 99% of us think "What an idiot" and then there is that 1% who are like "Let's go eat a tide pod." When you report a mass shooting 99.999% of people think "How can we prevent this?" and 00.001% think "I should do that too!"

--------

We used to be able to buy thompson sub  machineguns out of the back of catalogues with no background check in this country and nobody was shooting up schools. Guns aren't the problem. Our society is.

 

Eldurian

There is definitely an element of that for sure. "Lazy millennials" included, Americans work more hours on average than any other first world nation. We put our students through more hours of school, assign them more homework (and pay more money per student than nearly any other nation to do it, and they still are being outperformed by many other nations). As prosperity in other nations goes up they tend to work less in order enjoy life more. Americans as a whole don't work less no matter how much they have. And you're far more likely to hear the question "So what do you do for a living?" as one of your first questions upon meeting someone in America. We're a very work centric society.

So I can see how you would say that may create elements of a broken home when mom is at work, dad's at work, and junior is getting raised by the school system. It's also just very stressful and draining over time which could contribute greatly to someone snapping.

The interesting part is in most regards violent crime rates in America are continually falling. School shootings are rising as most other crimes fall. These mass-murder suicides are obviously committed by people who feel they have nothing left to live for while your regular violent crimes are generally not committed by people who have completely given up on life.

Yeah I could see stress and overwork as being good areas to focus on to reduce this kind of behavior. Starting at the education level. I've already been saying we need to cut hours in school, reduce standardized testing, and assign less homework simply based on the fact it costs us massive amounts of time and money and fails to yield results. If it caused less people to crack under stress both in the form of mass-murder suicides and even just general suicides that could be very beneficial to our society as well.