More Bullshit

Ok I’m just going to toss a flag on this one:

The Washington Navy Yard gunman Aaron Alexis played violent video games including Call of Duty for up to 16 hours at a time and friends believe it could have pushed him towards becoming a mass murderer.

BULLSHIT! Back over a decade ago, I was a young man with a LOT more free time than I have now (which as you might be able to tell from my lack of posts, and pregnant wife is almost none) I was a fairly hardcore gamer. Also the games I like are VIOLENT. Be it fantasy RPGs where you hack things to death with a sword, or modern shooters where you put virtual lead into virtual tangos, or Sci-Fi where various ray or energy weapons shoot aliens and other such monsters.

I like it, its fun and exciting, and its a good escape from my VERY non-violent life.

Still, I may have logged 16 hours in one day, but I’m still made of meat, and I need to use the toilet and eat food and take in fluids.

Even if you factor in that the “16 hours at a time” are not continuous, why is it so many gamers aren’t killers? Further, video games didn’t reach mainstream until the 1970s, and “Violet” games using the loosest definition didn’t make the scene until the 1980s. Was the latter part of the 20th Century the start of mass violence?

Give it up, nannies!

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2 Responses to More Bullshit

  1. Geodkyt says:

    There is a correlation between obsession with hyper-violent video games and predisposition to unacceptably violent behavior. However, correlation is not causation – many basically non-violent people also enjoy hyper-violent video games to a point a non-gamer would describe as “obsessive” (just as they may get sucked into Candy Crush or Farmville). Normal people who play these games do not exhibit significantly increased aggression and violent behavior, and any increases are often for a few minutes duration after the game (just as jocks can be a little rowdy after being pumped up by a heavy beach volleyball game). In fact, many gamers actually show reduced aggression afterwards, as the games can be cathartic. In other words, normal people are not drawn to aggressive violence by these games.

    I suspect any causation that might exist is probably wholly in the other direction – people who are hyper-violent are drawn to these games, because the games are violent, which better fits their mental map of acceptable behavior.

    However, far more significant to this incident is the mental state of the shooter, and the repeated failures of the systems of checks and balances, any one of which could have stopped him beforehand.

    1. In 2004, he shot out the tires of a car on the street, because he felt he had been “disrespected”. He told the police he did not remember the incident at all because he had a “rage blackout”. That was his defense – that his anger management issues were so severe, he literally blacked out, whipped out a gun, and started shooting on a public street. Seattle decided to drop the charges altogether, if he agreed never to contact the victim again.

    Seriously?!? If you are having “rage blackouts” triggered by anything less than an ongoing fight for your life or the lives of your loved ones, you are by definition an “imminent threat to yourself or others”, because we don’t know if the next blackout will be triggered by the teeny bopper at McDonald’s getting your order wrong. Leaving aside the criminal complications (it may or may not have been severe enough to make him a prohibited person and deny him lawful access to guns or his later Texas CCW – not that his CCW had anything to do with the WNY attack), that should have triggered an immediate court ordered in-patient evaluation, and holding him committed until he was deemed no longer subject to his unbelievably severe anger management issues.

    Either the criminal or medical consequences would have denied him his SECRET clearance, likely would have denied him enlistment in the Navy, and may have had him flagged in NICS as a prohibited person.

    2. In 2010, he shot into his neighbor’s apartment, and claimed it was a negligent discharge while cleaning his gun while cooking (I always clean my guns while making dinner – don’t you? [/snark]). The cops declined to prosecute, despite the fact there was an ongoing feud between the neighbors. I’ll give them a pass on that – they likely thought they didn’t have good enough evidence to win the case. However, had they convicted him on shooting into an occupied dwelling (TX statute 790.19), that would have been a felony conviction. Making him a prohibited person, and DEFINITELY keeping him from ever getting a security clearance, or likely even uncleared base access (say, as a street sweeper).

    3. If he had been processed out of the Navy as the shitbag he apparently was, instead of being given an Honorable early out, he likely would have been unable to get a SECRET clearance. Now, a General Under Honorable, or even a General, is not an automatic disqualifier, but if it’s for a consistent pattern of misbehavior, it is a show stopper – and DSS (Defense Security Services will pull your jacket for anything other than an Honorable.

    4. The VA knew he was paranoid and suffering from hallucinations. Um, paranoid schizophrenia is an indicator that you are an “imminent threat to yourself or others”, because we don’t know what the voices will tell you to do next. . . maybe the CIA mind control waves will tell him to, say, go shoot up his place of work. That should have triggered, at the minimum, an immediate suspension of his clearance and base access, if not an involuntary observational commitment until he could be certified as not being a threat.

    5. Earlier this year, he called the cops on himself, reporting his paranoia and hallucinations. The Rhode Island cops properly informed the Navy of his ongoing paranoia and hallucinations. See Item #4, above.

    This guy could have, and should have, been stopped at any one of these incidents.

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