People who are already psychos in the first place, maybe.

So we should ban ALL violent video games (including silent hunter, in case you forgot the hundreds of sailors you most likely just killed brutally by firing a torpedo into that ship) because psychos happened to play them, but not the things designed purely to kill other people.

Going shooting and being trained to kill with firearms (as demostrated by lee harvey oswald) could be a HUGE factor in a psycho's decision to kill masses of people. I honestely don't see your reasoning. The gore displayed is pixels and completely hypothetical. any NORMAL HUMAN BEING would be able to make that connection, that this is all not real and that the jump to doing this in reality takes the mind of a psychopath that already has serious issues.

How about the people around the person acknowledge the person's issues and gets him help. I can, as someone who was in high school not too long ago, i can vouch for just how "desensitized" kids are today. When one of our classmates died of cancer, the whole COMMUNITY reacted. Everybody weeped for him. Everybody i came in contact with were so deeply struck by our classmate's death. A massive candlelight vigil and a heartwarming speech made by his friends, even some by those who barely knew him, payed their utmost respect and it was horribly saddening. This was someone who died of cancer. I haven't met ANYBODY, not in my 2500 student high school, not at any college, not be physically taken aback by being confronted with death, the death of anyone close. And i don't know anyone who isn't made violently ill by seeing anyone physically maimed or bloody. This one kid did something incredibly stupid (i never found out exactly what he did), but he was bleeding pretty badly. All of the students who saw him bloodied like that were agape and some were nearly hurling. These same students were the ones that were always talking about going over to people's houses to play Zombies or watch some violent flick. No normal kid isn't affected heavily by scenes of actual gore or violence. The only thing that is desensitized are fist fights, but this has been true for a long time. Death, near death, serious injury, and gore, is still very much a horrible sight for everyone i've met. And i've met alot of teens.

Again, the kids who do these things have some SERIOUS mental instability. They should be the focus.

It's a generally baseless assumption that kids are disassociating real life gore with fake pixelated gore and the thing it represents. There are still many kids that cant even handle fake gore, and there are some movies that i can't stomach either. Besides, most of those horror flicks are stupid anyway, the hack and slashers, with a ridiculous story line and piss poor acting.

Unfortunately there are not normal people and a violent game becomes the enabler. They don't see it as hypothetical. So now people around this possible psycho should get him help? People go to schools for years trying to understand the human behaviors. Now you suggest honey boo boo should be able to recognise a potential lunatic and suggest they get help?

I would argue that it's pervasiveness virtually ensures that anyone who would be affected by it will not be able to escape it. And yes i'd ban video games, ipods, shoot em up movies and any other time waster in a New York second if it made it harder for a mass murder to carry out his crimes. We will never need video games like we need the right to defend ourselves.

Besides, you keep talking about "no normal kid" well show me what is normal. Because as far as I can tell there no longer is such a thing as a normal kid. A third of you are on anti-depressants or have ADHD. You're the most heavily medicated generation in history and you call that normal?
I appreciate that your particular community may have shared the loss of one of your classmates but that has nothing to do with preparing mass murderers. An empty chair of one who has died in private in a hospital does not compare with blood stained walls.

Really? Come now your getting a bit carried away here.A third of people in your generation are on anti-depressants just the same and ADD/ADHD does not make people violent I actually have ADD and I choose not to take any medication for it and never did.That does not mean that people who do take medications are violent.

The argument that we should ban anything that might cause a nut case from going off is just nonsense to be honest.What if a nut case gets set of by a person saying hello to them? Should we then ban speaking to each other? What if a nut case hates the color blue? I guess we ban the color blue then.

If someone has violent intentions especially if they are mentally ill they are going to have those feelings no matter what nothing can be done about it and we can only know if a person has such feelings if they act out in some manner and get caught or behave very strangely and then get medical attention problem is many people can simply hide there true intent and you'll never know with this kind of person until they do act.There is no 100% safety net.

There is a severe overdiagnosis of ADD and ADHD in this country. Doesn't mean anything. "a third" is completely overexaggerative, it is more like 9% and there's alot of hysteria about it and misdiagnosis in young children.

You'd think taking your son/daughter hunting or shooting would have a much more negative effect than any violent video game but i dont hear you voicing any complaints about that. (im not saying banning guns is the answer either, but your logic doesn't make alot of sense)

The fact that my community shared so much grief over "an empty chair of one who has died" shows that in the event of something like the Connecticut shootings it would be traumatizing in every sense for the students who'd witness their classmates dying or hearing of their murder. If the community showed that much compassion for one person who died of natural causes then imagine the outcome if it was something as horrible as this.They wouldn't be "desensitized" to that scene of indescribable death and fear. That is utterly false. And most of these kids in my community play violent video games, and watch violent movies. None of them share any desire to do what these psychos did.

And AVG, how exactly does the video game become the "enabler"? When has a video game ever pushed someone without issue into someone who desires to murder others? As said before, it doesn't take a violent video game to push a psycho over the edge. The mental instability is caused by so many other factors. Torment, abuse, hatred, these are the things that mold someone into a sociopath. A video game is hardly the root of the problem at all. And in most cases the psychotic behavior isn't terribly hard to recognize nor the environment that could cause it. If your kid is getting excessively harassed, viciously attacked, you need to keep a serious eye on him. If he becomes violent, or does abnormally strange things, keep an eye on him. Some people snap without anyone ever noticing. But alot give off signs or are in that danger zone where they need to be watched a little more carefully.

The conneticut shooter was someone with mild autism, aspergers, and the child of a single mother whos father left him to live in jersey with his brother. That's a dangerous combination. You need to keep your eye on that kid. There's now been 2 cases recently of nutjobs that have been stopped by people who paid attention to someone's behavior and stopped them before they could act.

Glad you can control yours. The problem though is many Doctors are simply not taking the time to properly dx and too many kids are given the drugs because they're misbehaved, hyper, etc... Again, the bigger issue is they have no clue on the long term effects on the youthful growing brain.

Yes, we're a drug culture, because it's very profitable to keep people on drugs, rather than teach them proper coping skills.

The long-term impact of ADD/ADHD medication on the youthful, developing brain is not yet known. Some researchers are concerned that the use of drugs such as Ritalin in children and teens might interfere with normal brain development.

Psychiatric problems — Stimulants for ADD/ADHD can trigger or exacerbate symptoms of hostility, aggression, anxiety, depression, and paranoia. People with a personal or family history of suicide, depression, or bipolar disorder are at a particularly high risk, and should be carefully monitored when taking stimulants.

Potential for abuse — Stimulant abuse is a growing problem, particularly among teens and young adults. College students take them for a boost when cramming for exams or pulling all-nighters. Others abuse stimulant meds for their weight-loss properties. If your child is taking stimulants, make sure he or she isn’t sharing the pills or selling them.

I never said they are. He is the one who claimed to speak for millions of "normal" kids. I'm just pointing out that there is no longer such a thing (if there ever was).

Yeah a lot of people in my generation are on drugs too, of course drugs and old people have always gone hand in hand. What's different now is that the younger generation is drugged up now too.

Agreed, but as I said, the effects of these drugs on growing youthful brains is much more dangerous than adults....but we are a drugged nation....big profits....Seems every 5 minutes another "Are you depressed" commercial is on TV, telling you to go to your MD and get meds.

I would agree with the whole over diagnosis that is true in a lot of cases for many things.Hell you go to most any doc with pain and they give like 15 different pain killers.

Well I know a lot of people that have ADD a few guys in my unit had it and took
Ritalin.Myself I just found ways to keep myself focused on a task in fact I would argue that I work better than average because I choose not to dilly dally.Though to be honest if the task is something I really dislike the urge not to do it is pretty strong but I will keep working anyway makes me enjoy the free time even more when I am done.

More or less ADD/ADHD people either take the pills or they don't and they work through it.Thing is the way an ADD/ADHD persons neurons fire a stimulant actually slows them down.So kids that do not really have ADD when take Ritalin it is just like speed to them and they get a free high.

Well when it comes to "normal" I can agree with you I do feel that there is still such a thing as a person that has rational control when it comes to extreme actions for lack of a better term .

I don't know what to say about the drugs really we are a drug nation legal or illegal it seems I suppose that can be blamed to some extent on pharmaceutical companies I think they like the idea of a person needing drugs all of their life time and the fact they give many doctor incentives to hand out their drugs certainly does not help.

You'd think but which activity is supervised by a caring adult? Which one glorifies and rewards the murder of human beings albeit virtual ones?

Sorry but I must disagree. Some people have the ability to grieve the death of a stray dog but wouldn't hesitate to butcher an entire village. Again you presume to speak for the inner feelings of an entire community when you really have no basis for it.

I wonder how many kids from Sandy Hook would have said the same thing before Friday. I hope you are right but the truth is that no one knows the heart of another.

I dont know for sure but I think that the prevalence of violence does desensitize
people to violence in general at least the idea of violance.To be honest until the last 20 years or so there was not much access to such scenes of of graphic violence so you cant really say that it does not have an effect on people.

A friend of mine who is originally from Greece was ata my house a few months back to watch a football game and they had an add for Assassin's Creed 3 and he said "To much violence to be seen for entertainment these days" and to be honest I agree with him.This man is a paramedic and gets to see a lot of real life pain every day some of it the result of violence so I think that he is a pretty good judge.

Yep, and the sad fact is, in a few weeks these shootings will probably become a foot note for the news... And yet again the cycle of forgetting and doing nothing or very little will restart till the next one...

Ah yes, the cycle of forgetting... what a popular past time in society.

Games desensitize. Movies desensitized. Kids are open to suggestion. Kids are open to living a life of fantasy. So are grown adults. Games enable some to live a fantasy. I see it here with the submarine games. Simulation that begins to become real and engrossing. The games are not the sole reason one who can snap finally does. However it can be part of the broader picture.

Your thoughts on the matter suggests to me you do not have children? There are plenty of kids stopped from doing things to others. I would say that more issues arise from kids without problems like autism than kids with. The crime may not be killing folks but there are other crimes as heinous. If not downright diabolical. The only difference here is the sensationalising of it on the news.

We are still not finding the true cause here. After all, blame it on video games, or TV all we want, but that in itself does not cause people to snap and go on the rampage. After all, we are all video game players here, and we probably all watch TV, but none of us are going out to randomly shoot people.

Without knowing the true reasons of events like these, it becomes impossible for us to reduce their occurrences.

PS, big data analytics would help a lot at stopping things like this. I saw a webcast a while back, and it talked about some of the possibilities.

Here is an commercial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZyU6po_E74