You're probably already aware but yesterday a 17 year-old German, Tim Kretschmer, entered his former school and killed 12 people, 9 of them students. He then left the school and killed three other innocent people, before killing himself with a gunshot to the head when cornered by police. A tragedy of course, but there will always be people who use such an event to further their own ends.
The Associated Press, a news agency I always thought was reputable; saw fit to mention that the killer played video games in a recent article.
A 17-year-old, who would give only his first name, Aki, said he had been studying this year with the shooter at a private business school, and described him as a quiet, reserved person.
Aki said the two played poker together, both in person and online, as well as a multiplayer video game called "Counter-Strike" that involves killing people to complete missions.
"He was good," Aki said. - Associated Press
Later the BBC also mentioned this in a report on the 1 o'clock news. Why mention this though? He was a 17 year-old male, plenty of guys his age play video games and don't go around shooting innocent people. Even if he was influenced by video games he would have to have something wrong in his head to not realise that the one world is virtual and one is reality. It's more likely that he was just an extremely paranoid person and thought the whole world was against him.
Plus, there's also this little matter;
Mr Rech revealed today that Kretschmer had received treatment last year at a psychiatric clinic in Winnenden, to which he fled after the school spree and where he shot dead a gardener before hijacking a Volkswagen Sharan car. - The Times
This is someone who had already been treated for psychiatric problems, so trying to make video games a scapegoat just because an extremely disturbed person thought that shooting people for the hell of it was ok is crazy. Millions of young people play violent video games and watch violent films, and 99.9% of them don't go and kill people. If video games were so bad then wouldn't we all be going on a rampage? I think Tim would have done this whether or not he played video games; it's just something the media like to jump on to create headlines.
I was going to go into further detail on this, but this excellent post explains everything I wanted to say. Check it out, but make sure you keep your comments civil.
|