Mississippi nine year old boy shoots sister in the head when she refuse to give up video game controller.

Courtesy of USA Today: 

A 13-year-old girl has died after authorities say she was shot Saturday by her 9-year-old brother, local media reported. 

Monroe County Sheriff Cecil Cantrell said the girl would not give up a video game controller when her brother wanted it. 

Cantrell said she was shot in the back of the head, and that the bullet went through her brain. The girl was rushed to Le Bonheur's Children's Hospital in Memphis. Cantrell said late Sunday that she died of her injuries, WLOV-TV and other media reported. 

Authorities don't yet know how the child had access to the weapon they say he used to shoot his sister. 

It's also unclear how much knowledge the boy had of the dangers of guns.

Well he knew enough to point and shoot, and that is what makes guns so fucking dangerous.

This cannot be blamed on video games, or violent television shows, this happened because somebody in these children's lives did not understand the concept of gun safety and did not put this weapon in a secure location where the children could not access it.

So once again the gun that was purchased to keep people safe, ended up taking another innocent life.

80 percent of mass shooters showed no interest in video games.

Courtesy of CBS News: 

President Trump met with video game industry representatives Thursday, after saying last month violent video games may play a role in mass shootings. 

The president met with parents like Melissa Henson. "The kind of messages and images that they are putting in their minds, I think they're nightly dress rehearsals for huge acts of violence," she said. 

But psychologist Patrick Markey's research shows 80 percent of mass shooters did not show an interest in violent video games.

"It seems like something that should make us safer so it's a totally understandable reaction," Markey said. "The problem is just the science, the data, does not back up that they actually have an effect."

Keep in mind that video games are popular all over the world, including first person shooters.

And yet the ONLY industrialized country that has to subject their children to school shooter drills, or seriously talks about arming teachers in the classroom, is America.

This is not a video game problem, this is a gun problem.

And until that is recognized and addressed with stringent gun control laws, this violence simply will not stop.

New game pits "Avenger Jesus" against Donald Trump, the Teabaggers, and Sarah Palin.

Courtesy of OC Weekly:

Defeating Donald Trump, Sarah Palin and the Westboro Baptist Church God Hates Fags crew on screen is not enough for the creators of Avenger Jesus: The Social Justice Mobile Game. 

The Avenger Jesus Game Series company is also taking aim at teabaggers and assorted Christian conservatives with sale proceeds and advertising revenues, the founders claim. 

"We are using right-wing tactics, pushing the bounds of free speech to further the cause for equality before it's too late" is how co-creator Joey DeLoach puts it in a company press release.

Money from the app will go to LGBT and women's groups among others.

This is of course a little silly, but in the past I have enjoyed playing some silly politically inspired video games, so maybe this one will catch on as well.

Besides who doesn't think that if there were a real Jesus, and he came back today, he would not be going after these assholes who drag his name through the mud with a vengeance?   

The real violence from which we need to shield our children.

Amy Schumer shows us how a realistic video game portrays women in the military.

Okay that was really good.

Yet to be released video game will feature sovereign citizens as bad guys. Conservatives up in arms. (Okay that might not be the best choice of words.)

Courtesy of Raw Story: 

Although it is not due to be released until 2015, conservatives are up in arms about the latest version of a first person shooter video game which will include anti-government Gadsden flag-waving Tea Partiers as bad guys. 

Battlefield Hardline, developed by Visceral Games and video game publisher Electronic Arts, was recently premiered at Gamescom gaming convention in Cologne, Germany last week, and word has gotten out that the storyline is built around the player character attempting to shoot his way out after being kidnapped by a crime boss who describes himself as a ““one man island of armed sovereignty,” according to Big Hollywood. 

The crime boss, named Tony Alpert, is heard speaking about “these once-united states” and the “denigration, the humbling, the tearing down of everything that made this country great.” 

Speaking of Alpert, one character is heard to say. “One black president and Tony completely lost his shit.” 

According to game reviewers, the ‘Don’t Tread On Me’ Gadsden flags–normally associated with Tea Party protests — can be seen on walls and on the back of jackets of several characters throughout the game. 

Conservative broadcaster Glenn Beck expressed dismay at what he called “American constitutionalists and Tea Party people” being made the bad guys in the game. 

“Let’s go to the game that has just come out that makes American constitutionalists and Tea Party people the enemy. And you can go and shoot them,” Beck said on his radio show.“Anybody have a problem with this?”

Actually no. Especially since the sovereign citizens have been identified as the number one terrorist threat in this country, and the gem is  focused on police responses to terrorist groups.

Besides past Battlefield games used Iranians, Russians, Palestinians, and even the French police as protagonists, and nobody seemed to bat an eye.

It seems to me that these conservatives have no problem with the way minority groups are portrayed in the real world or the virtual, but when THEY get scrutiny, suddenly everybody is a reverse racist, or un-American out to denigrate their good name.

I don't play first person shooters anymore, but if I did I have to admit I would be much more comfortable aiming a virtual grenade launcher at a group as clearly dangerous as the sovereign citizen movement than I would at some stereotypical Arab bad guy who was supposedly trying to take over down town LA.

But hey, that's just me.

Video game makers blame Satan for sabotaging their attempts to launch a Bible based adventure game.

Tim Curry from the movie "Legend."

Courtesy of Raw Story:  

The makers of a Biblical role-playing game that follows the life of Abraham are blaming their lack of success and inability to fund the project on the influence of Satan. 

Speaking with Polygon, Richard Gaeta, co-founder of Phoenix Interactive explained the company’s problems starting cropping up right after the launch of their Kickstarter campaign for Bible Chronicles: The Call of Abraham. 

“I believe that, 100 percent,” Gaeta said. 

“It’s very tangible,” explained business partner Martin Bertram. “From projects falling through and people that were lined up to help us make this a success falling through. Lots of factors raining down on us like fire and brimstone.” 

Phoenix Interactive’s Kickstarter failed to reach its $100,000 target, only managing to raise $19,000. 

Executives with troubled video game company see forces other than the marketplace at play. 

 "If Satan is rallying some of his resources to forestall, delay, or kill this project, I think, this must be a perceived threat to his kingdom,” said Ken Frech, a religious mentor on the project. “I fully would expect something like this to have spiritual warfare. Look at the gospel accounts of demons and so forth. That’s reality. Many Americans don’t believe it anymore. That doesn’t change reality.” 

In the action-RPG game Bible Chronicles: The Call of Abraham, gamers are an attendant in Abraham’s party, witnessing Biblical events, while playing an active role fetching, fighting and seeking. 

The developers point out that game will not be a glossy retelling of the Biblical story, but will follow a strict literal Biblical line.

You know I don't game all that often anymore, but I do pay attention to up and coming content just to see if anything catches my eye.

What I have noticed is that tons of game ideas never make it past the initial planning stages, and simply die on the vine due to lack of interest.

There are many reasons for this, bad marketing, bad development, bad idea, but I have NEVER heard one of these developers blame the Devil.

It must be nice to never have to take responsibilities for your failures, and instead have some imaginary boogeyman to blame them on.

I'm going to try that the next time I forget where I parked my car.

"No I'm NOT senile, I know exactly where I parked the car, but clearly Satan moved it."

Oh yeah, that should make me seem perfectly rational.

Man tells son to lie about shooting sister, a tally of mass shootings since Newtown, and a letter from Starbucks saying Espresso's and guns don't mix.

Courtesy of Raw Story:  

A Wisconsin man is facing charges for allegedly telling his 6-year-old son, who had at least 3 years of firearms training, to lie after shooting his 4-year-old sister in the face with a shotgun. 

In late August, WKBT reported that Jackson County Sheriff’s deputies were called to a home in the Town of Alma, where the 4-year-old girl had been struck in the side of the head with a shotgun blast. 

According to the Jackson Country Chronicle, authorities in Jackson said this week that 48-year-old father Fred B. Maphis had told his son to say that the shotgun had accidentally gone off when he dropped it. But the son later admitted that the father instructed him to lie because he had pointed the gun at the girl and pulled the trigger. 

The boy told authorities that his sister had asked him to aim the shotgun at her, but he had made the mistake of putting it too close to her ear.

 A sheriff’s office complaint said that the mother told investigators that the boy had been training with firearms since the age of 3. She said that he had his own .22 caliber rifle, but he was only allowed to shoot with adult supervision. The father insisted that he had just forgotten to unload and secure the shotgun.

You know I am certainly not an expert in gun safety but you would kind if think that lesson one might be, "Don't ever point on at your sister." I'm just saying. 

And the father encouraging his son to lie indicates that he probably should not be allowed to have children, much less guns.

In other gun violence related news HuffPo has put up a graphic concerning mass shootings that should chill the blood of EVERY American.

Pat Robertson believes that killing characters in video games is a sin. Uh oh!

"If you're murdering somebody in cyberspace in a sense you're performing the act whether you like it or not. Here's the danger with this stuff. And it has to do with television, books, everything. You lose your sensitivity to God. And if you're keen for the Lord, you're in prayer, you're spirit is attuned to Him, you're seeing miracles in your life, you listen to the voice of God. That stuff will chop off your access. And you will grow dead in your heart. That's the danger of all of this."

Did Robertson just ask kids to choose between video games and God?

Because if he did, he may have just put a stake into the heart of Christianity for good.

He does realize that the images which appear to be people in these games are made up of pixels and polygons right? I mean they're not real, and every child sitting in front of their game console knows that.

But then again what can one expect from a man who thinks that hurricanes and tornadoes are called down by God to punish homosexuals and that clothes from Goodwill might be demonic?

Now if you will excuse me I will return to my game racing against Bowser. Koopa Troopa, and Yoshi. I hope I get one of those demonic turtle shells pretty soon.

(H/T to Mediaite.)

Christian academy student shoots both of his parents in the head after one of them tells him that he was "meeting the definition of insanity." Gee, ya think?

Courtesy of Raw Story:  

A 14-year-old student at a Christian academy in Washington state has been charged with attempted murder for allegedly shooting both of his parents in the head after they restricted him from playing violent video games. 

Grant County prosecutors on Monday said that they were asking that 14-year-old Nathan Brooks be tried as an adult for the attempted murder of his parents. 

According to a Moses Lake police report obtained by iFIBER One News, Nathon Brooks had considered killing his parents, 38-year-old Jonathan Brooks and 39-year-old Elizabeth Brooks, since the age of 8. He had recently been been grounded for two weeks from using “electronic devices” — including playing video games — and had been punished with detention for being late to class. 

Nathon Brooks had admitted to police that he had been obsessed with video games. 

“He said he quit playing violent video games because he thought they were making him more violent,” Moses Lake police Sgt. Mike Williams noted in the document. “I asked him how much he played video games, and he told me ‘24/7,’ up until he got his electronics taken away.” 

Nathon Brooks indicated that he had decided to shoot his parents after his mother told his he was “meeting the definition of insanity” by disobeying over and over again. He said that his parents had been angry after he recently took one of their credit cards. 

On Friday, Police believe the boy pried open a gun safe to retrieve a .22 caliber pistol. After listening to music for about 90 minutes, he decided to kill his parents.

First thing I would point out concerning this story, and as somebody who has worked with the mentally ill for years, is that if you are living with somebody who is "meeting the definition of insanity" the LAST thing you do is tell them that.

You get them help.

Another thing, While it may be a knee jerk reaction in this case to blame this on the video games, if this young man has been considering murdering his parents since age 8, that he has a deep seated mental illness that may have been exacerbated by the games, it may also have served as a pressure relief valve which provided an outlet for this young man's extreme emotions.

After all he did not act on his fantasies of killing his parents, until he no longer had access to the games,

All in all it sounds like these parents did EVERYTHING wrong in this scenario. I am sure that putting him in the Christian Academy was because they believed that this young man needed some Jesus in his life to correct his behaviors, when in fact he needed a psychological evaluation and access to mental health supports.

It appears that the ONLY saving grace here was that the caliber of weapon used spared the life of his parents. If he had an assault weapon or a higher caliber handgun he would have successfully murdered his parents, and likely be locked away for the rest of his life.

It looks like there are any number of handy places to lay the blame in this scenario. There is mental illness, violent video games, poor parenting, and access to guns. And it seems like all of them could share equal blame here.

However I must point out that the boy did not bash his parents in the head with a shovel, or stab them in their sleep. Instead he went through all of the trouble of prying open the, clearly poorly constructed, safe to get the gun, because the gun represented power, and he needed to feel powerful in order to kill his parents.

Essentially this was a catastrophe waiting to happen, but the trigger that made it a reality was access to a weapon whose sole function is to end human lives.

Firearms industry pours millions into campaign marketing guns to children.

Courtesy of the New York Times:  

Threatened by long-term declining participation in shooting sports, the firearms industry has poured millions of dollars into a broad campaign to ensure its future by getting guns into the hands of more, and younger, children. 

The industry’s strategies include giving firearms, ammunition and cash to youth groups; weakening state restrictions on hunting by young children; marketing an affordable military-style rifle for “junior shooters” and sponsoring semiautomatic-handgun competitions for youths; and developing a target-shooting video game that promotes brand-name weapons, with links to the Web sites of their makers. 

The pages of Junior Shooters, an industry-supported magazine that seeks to get children involved in the recreational use of firearms, once featured a smiling 15-year-old girl clutching a semiautomatic rifle. At the end of an accompanying article that extolled target shooting with a Bushmaster AR-15 — an advertisement elsewhere in the magazine directed readers to a coupon for buying one — the author encouraged youngsters to share the article with a parent. 

“Who knows?” it said. “Maybe you’ll find a Bushmaster AR-15 under your tree some frosty Christmas morning!” 

The industry’s youth-marketing effort is backed by extensive social research and is carried out by an array of nonprofit groups financed by the gun industry, an examination by The New York Times found. The campaign picked up steam about five years ago with the completion of a major study that urged a stronger emphasis on the “recruitment and retention” of new hunters and target shooters. 

The overall objective was summed up in another study, commissioned last year by the shooting sports industry, that suggested encouraging children experienced in firearms to recruit other young people. The report, which focused on children ages 8 to 17, said these “peer ambassadors” should help introduce wary youngsters to guns slowly, perhaps through paintball, archery or some other less intimidating activity.

"Who knows, maybe you'll find a Bushmaster AR-15 under your tree some frosty Christmas morning?"

You know those new gun control regulations simply CANNOT come fast enough!

But beyond that there has to be a very aggressive campaign to educate the American people about the dangers of these weapons in the hands of young children. Or, in my opinion, the hands of pretty much anybody not in law enforcement or overseas exchanging fire with the enemy.

Remember they are already using video games to market their weapons to our youth so we definitely have our work cut out for us.

Sadly it looks like America's love affair with guns is unlikely to end anytime soon.

Courtesy of Science Daily:  

Despite growing up in a post-Columbine world, more young people plan on owning a gun than had them in their childhood homes, according to a national poll of more than 4,000 high school and college students conducted by Jennifer L. Lawless (American University) and Richard L. Fox (Loyola Marymount University). 

This finding suggests a possible reversal of a trend that pointed to decreasing gun ownership. More specifically, one-third of young people report growing up with a gun in the household. And 36 percent report being "very worried" about gun violence. Yet nearly 40 percent of respondents plan to own a gun when they have their own household, and an additional 20 percent are considering it.

You know they could pass a law tomorrow making it illegal to create any new movies or video games that glorify gun violence and it would not make a bit of difference going forward. The damage has already been done.

And the fact is that neither one of those two things is EVER going to happen.

And the reason why is because the all volunteer American military depends on these games and movies to indoctrinate our children into becoming a military fetishist, who spends hours a week fantasizing about being in combat and firing incredibly destructive weapons at enemy targets.

Don't believe me?

Well I have already shown you in an earlier post how the military has helped game designers make sure that the weapons in the games are accurate, where they serve as playable advertisements for later purchase when the child becomes an adult. (Or earlier, let's face it many of these kids today are substantially smarter than your average gun dealer.) In fact the military actually has their own video game, which they make available for free on a number of platforms. A game that will periodically ask the player if they are interested in enlisting, and even provide links to websites providing information on how to do so.

As for the movies? Well there is a very long standing agreement between the Pentagon and Hollywood that if you scratch my back, I will provide weaponry and military personnel to cover yours.

Courtesy of TV Tropes:

If you're American producer and you want to get some impressive combat scenes in your movie, you can call the Department of Defense (DoD) and ask for some of their fancy equipment. Plus any soldiers who happen to be free. As the examples show, Uncle Sam can be very generous to filmmakers and help you avert tropes like Artistic License - Military, Improperly Placed Firearms, and Just Plane Wrong. 

One reason for this is, if the film is positive about the military, it is good public relations, and thus the movie supports the mission. If the movie is really good — both a positive portrayal of the military and a box-office success — it may even be a boon for military recruiting. Indeed, the Navy stated that after the release of Top Gun, the number of young men enlisting with a desire to be Naval aviators went up by 500 percent. 

There's a catch — a Department of Defense project officer will keep an eagle eye on the script and production phases. If they don't like the portrayal of the military in your film, they will yank the co-operation.

So just put the idea of movies becoming less violent, or games using fewer assault weapons right out of your pretty little head. It's NOT going to happen. Essentially because despite all of the current rhetoric to the contrary the Right Wing, the government, and the military will never let it happen.

I actually DO think that some restrictions can be implemented, but first we have to stop allowing ourselves to be distracted by red herrings and obfuscation.

Guns DO kill people. And guns that have extended clips, and are sold by individuals who don't demand background checks,  kill a whole LOT of people.

We may not be able to stop all gun violence, but we can at least reduce the number of casualties. And for right now at least, I will take it.

In order to avoid having to take reponsibility for gun deaths the NRA has attempted to lay the blame on video games. However as it turns out, in some cases, they are actually working together.

Courtesy of the New York Times:  

As Electronic Arts prepared to market Medal of Honor Warfighter, the latest version of its top-selling video game released in October, it created a Web site that promoted the manufacturers of the guns, knives and combat-style gear depicted in the game. 

Among the video game giant’s marketing partners on the Web site were the McMillan Group, the maker of a high-powered sniper’s rifle, and Magpul, which sells high-capacity magazines and other accessories for assault-style weapons. 

Links on the Medal of Honor site allowed visitors to click through on the Web sites of the game’s partners and peruse their catalogs. 

“It was almost like a virtual showroom for guns,” said Ryan Smith, who contributes to the Gameological Society, an online gaming magazine. After Mr. Smith and other gaming enthusiasts criticized the site, Electronic Arts disabled the links, saying it had been unaware of them. 

The video game industry was drawn into the national debate about gun violence last week when the National Rifle Association accused producers of violent games and movies of helping to incite the type of mass shooting that recently left 20 children and six adults dead at a school in Newtown, Conn. 

While studies have found no connection between video games and gun violence, the case of Medal of Honor Warfighter illustrates how the firearms and video game industries have quietly forged a mutually beneficial marketing relationship. 

Many of the same producers of firearms and related equipment are also financial backers of the N.R.A. McMillan, for example, is a corporate donor to the group, and Magpul recently joined forces with it in a product giveaway featured on Facebook. The gun group also lists Glock, Browning and Remington as corporate sponsors.

I stand by my earlier statement that the violence in the majority of video games probably has a negligible affect on gun violence in this country. But a video game that uses real world weapons and then links to where you can buy them online?

Well THAT is an entirely different issue altogether.

Take a look at this video to see how blatantly the video game and gun manufacturers have been working together.

Well that is certainly quite troubling.

This is how video game nerds get engaged.

I don't know, I think it's kind of sweet.