This is just as bad as the Anti-D&D campaigns of the 80s, or the violent video game campaigns of the 90s. Yeah Batman did this….
There are general parallels to the Colorado shooting, “The Dark Knight” and the comic book character:
– Bruce Wayne’s drive to become Batman arose from witnessing the deaths of his parents, Thomas and Martha Wayne, at the hands of small-time criminal Joe Chill, who shot and killed them after they had left a movie theater.
– The Batman video game called “Arkham City” takes place in an abandoned movie theatre (The Monarch, outside of which Bruce Wayne’s parents were killed).
– In the “Dark Knight” graphic novel by Miller, the Joker slaughters the audience of a television talk show with gas.
– In the same book, a man beleaguered man shoots up a porn theater after being fired from his job, killing three people with a handgun.
– “The Dark Knight Rises” features at least two scenes where unsuspecting people are attacked in a public venue: the stock exchange and a football stadium.
You idiots are stretching. You should be ashamed….but you’re not because you’re too stupid.
Please take a look at the work of Lt. Col. Dave Grossman before dismissing the role that media plays in encouraging / enabling acts of violence such as recently occured in CO.
For many years I had the same dismissive attitude about the role of popular culture in these matters, but the work of Lt. Col. Dave Grossman really caused me to change my mind about this.
I can highly recommend all of Lt. Col. Dave Grossman’s materials, including the trilogy; 1) On Killing, 2) On Combat, and 3) Warrior Mindset. I can also recommend his “BulletProof Mind” DVD set. This is MUST have information if you CCW on a regular basis, and want to prepare yourself mentally; before, during, and after a lethal force encounter.
In fact, his books are so good that they are on the REQUIRED reading list for elite police and military academies in the U.S. and worldwide (some have been translated into several languages), including the FBI Academy and the Commandant of the US Marine Corp. These agencies to not waste their valuable officer’s time on useless or invalid information.
I found about his research a couple of years ago as I was developing my own combat mindset and warrior mindset for effective self-defense. His materials will open your eyes to the realities of violence, its root causes (which is the topic of this set of comments), and possible solutions.
Grossman has done some interesting work. In a nutshell: Humans have a built in resistance to killing other humans. In order to get people to kill each other (for example, when training soldiers) you need to break down that resistance. Interactive simulations, for example in realistic video games, are one way to break down that resistance.
In fact, killing is positively reinforced in the violent video games by higher point scores and rankings.
Violence in movies in Cinema’s are also associated with good feelings of a night out, popcorn & soda, and being with family and friends.
Lt. Col. Dave Grossman explains it better then I ever could. Check out his book, “Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill”.
However did people manage to kill each other before mass media and video games?
Sorry, I don’t buy it. Humans have been killing each other for thousands, if not millions of years.
+1, This shining light isn’t noting that our violent films gross massive box office numbers that are only rivaled by our violent video games….yet homicides are DOWN.
But hey, if you have an agenda, why let facts get in the way?
Correlation is not sufficient to prove causation, but it’s damn required.
Lt. Col. Dave Grossman very adeptly explains that a key reason that homicides have not exploded (despite the pyschological conditioning) is due to modern trauma care. This is true in both the military and civilian spheres. Simply put, many people are surviving acts of violence that previously would have killed them. He estimates that without modern medical care the body counts would be much higher.
Murder / Killing has been a part of the human condition since Cain and Able. What has NOT been part of our condition (until relatively recently in human history) is the explosion of masacres perpetrated by active shooters. The question is why?
As part of the research to find an answer, Lt. Col. Dave Grossman did a comparison of soldier “firing rates” across the US Civil War, WWI, WWII, and the Vietnam War. It is estimated that only 10% of Civil War soldiers fired their weapons at an enemy soldier. By the Vietnam War, with new training techniques using conditioning, the firing rate increased to 90%. It has only gone up from there.
The military knows the value of pyschologically conditioning soldiers to reflexively fire at enemy threats. This is a valid and just application of the techniques. However, indiscrimately using these conditioning techniques on the general population is very risky – a recipe for disaster – and we have the evidence in these mass shootings to prove it.
Well first you’d have to show that mass shootings have been “exploding”. I would not be surprised if they were, but given how the media reports them I would also not be surprised if the phenomenon is not blasting sky high and not due to “media brainwashing”.
Also the whole “medical advances explains the lack of murder rise” doesn’t explain the comparative lack of a spike in non lethal violence.
And to what end? The way you say things, it sounds like some nefarious cabal is “indiscrimately using these conditioning techniques on the general population.”
Well, well. Sounds like you’re fishing for some “common sense” free speech restrictions.
Also am I alone in getting a cult-vibe from the constant repetition of Lt. Col. Dave Grossman again and again?
I think one factor that we need to take into account is that we all know know the name of James Holmes. Don’t know much about this guy yet, so I can’t speculate.
Still Laughner, Cho, and McVeigh among many others are household names despite otherwise being pretty much losers.
I know the shooter in the mall in Omaha noted that he wanted to be famous before he started shooting.
Just lost my entire post, so I will have to give you the “Cliff Notes” version.
1. These mass shootings simply did not occur as frequently, if at all, in the past. It does not take a rocket scientist to realize this.
2. There has been a significant spike in so-called “non-lethal violence” (e.g. aggravated assaults). Due to modern trauma care, violence victims are simply shifted from the death to serious injury categories.
3. Yes, I suspect that there is an insiduous process going on, but only God knows if it is purposeful or merely negligent.
4. People need to understand the difference between freedom (responsibly exercised within a moral, ethical, and spiritual framework), and license (a Godless anything goes mindset without any moral, ethical, and spirtual guidelines).
5. Yes, responsible people exercise freedoms responsibly. If Lt. Col. Dave Grossman is correct in his analysis, self-censorship (at a minimum) of materials that foster evil acts is not only appropriate, but a moral obligation.
6. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman is a highly respected researcher, West Point Graduate, and sought after consultant to Police and Military (and Civilian CCW holders). He is very supportive of concealed carry for civilians.
“Significant spike?” Is there a data source to support that claim? Because DOJ statistics show that violent crime is at it’s lowest rate in decades.
As Jack pointed out, without correlation, there can be no causation. There is no correlation here, so Lt. Col. Grossman’s theory is falsified with a simple look at the numbers (found with nothng more than a quick, simple, and easy Google search).
Raw data always trumps theory.
I am getting my information from page 225 of the book “On Combat” (2008 3rd ed) written by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman and Loren W. Christensen – two world renowned experts in this field (BTW – Mr. Grossman’s book entitled, “On Killing”, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize).
From “On Combat”;
1st quote; “Without advances in trauma care, there would have been 45,000 to 70,000 homicides nationwide in each of the past five years instead of 15,000 to 20,000”
2nd quote; “Since 1957, the U.S. per capita aggravated assault rate (which is essentially the rate of attempted murder) has gone up nearly fivefold, while the per capita murder rate has less than doubled. The reason for this disparity is the vast progress in medical technology since 1957…..”
This is from a peer-reviewed book in it’s third edition (originally published in 2004).
I trust this information to be accurate and the analysis to be sound.
Bummer they don’t sell it for Kindle, I just looked into buying it. I read only ebooks now. Dead-tree books take up too much room and don’t travel as well as my little kindle.
@ Weer’d: Here’s the Kindle edition. It’s also available for the Nook, but I don’t have any money right now to buy it.
So, how does he explain the decrease in violent crime – including aggravated assaults – between 1973 and 2004? I would also note that this period coincides with an increase in frequency and realism of portrayals of violence in the very media he blames.
Additionally, the violent video games that he laments really came into their own in the late 90’s, and became even more realistic in the early 2000’s and on to today, yet you see a sharp decrease in violent crime (including aggravated assault) beginning around 1994 (after a small spike) and continuing through the most recent data in 2009.
I haven’t found any data for 1957 to compare, but even if the current numbers are higher, the downward trend in violent crime concurrent with increasing realism and frequency of violence in media equate to no (or negative) correlation between the two phenomena.
Again, while correlation does not equal causation, you cannot have causation without correlation. No or negative correlation means the theory is false.
Cite?
+100
And let me point out that the generations before the video game played “cops and robbers” and “cowboys and indians” with much more realistic and immersive technologies than any video game — their whole bodies and their imaginations.
That doesn’t, however, draw a straight line between Batman and this event.
Yeah. Blaming Batman?
After the golden age (where he shot a good part of his enemies) he solidified into one of the most anti-gun superheros out there.
His whole ethos is “You don’t need a gun! I’m Batman”. He’s as anti gun as Superman is anti-killing. With the same exceptions to their “moral code” if it’s really, really important.
But hey, if the anti’s one to turn on one of their best anti-gun mascots.