Stay With Me On This One

I wouldn't normally comment on this because it is such a tragedy for those involved, but the recent furore about the shootings at Virginia Tech has once again brought Jack Thompson out of the woodwork. His contention is that the blame for events like this lies fairly and squarely on the shoulders of video games like Counter-Strike.

Here's an example of his inexorable logic about the Virginia Tech shootings:

"He might have killed somebody but he wouldn't have
killed 32 if he hadn't rehearsed it and trained himself
like a warrior on virtual reality. It can't be done.
It just doesn't happen."

Presumably, Jack's version of "it just doesn't happen", doesn't include someone like Michael Ryan going on a shooting spree in Hungerford and killing sixteen people and wounding fifteen others.

No, before games like Counter-Strike, something like that would never happen. Oh, wait, except it did happen, and it happened twenty years ago in 1987.

I don't know if you're familiar with the state of video games in 1987, but they looked something like this:

Good luck planning your high street slaughter with that Virtual Reality.

As for how someone like Cho Seung-Hui managed to kill 32 people on his first attempt...well, here's the big secret, and see if you can follow me all the way to the end on this one, Jack:

1. He had some guns.
2. Additionally, they were loaded with ammunition.
3. He went into a college and shot at students in large numbers.

So I trust you see how that works. No big mystery there as to how it was done, merely why.

I'm reminded of when police officers said that the Columbine shooters' hit ratio was amazing, and much, much higher than the hit ratio of the average police officer who has been formally trained in firearms use.

I'm also guessing that those same police officers don't routinely go into schools full of children and gun them down, which may explain why their hit rate is lower.

Why do people's brains seem to leave their heads the moment something like this happens?

If you're interested in my opinion as to why Cho Seung-Hui did this, having seen extracts of his video and diatribe, I'd say he did it for the usual reasons. Which is to say, he was self-obsessed, selfish, and, in my lay opinion, batshit insane.

(One of the reasons for my commenting on this is that I know if I had lost someone in an event like this, and I saw a self-publicising, self-aggrandising jerk like Thompson splashing himself all over the news blaming video games for everything, I think there's a good chance it would make me feel even worse.)

« Spoiler Alert | To the HP employee who packed and posted my replacement laptop keyboard... »