Yesterday an ex-student of a school in Germany went back to his school, wearing heavy weapons, smoke grenades and bombs, shooting around.
Some students and teachers were hit, but no one died, apart from the shooter , who hot himself in the end.
This happened before in 2003 when an ex student shot 13 people in a school in Erfurt.
Back then, they found a copy of Counter Strike in his apartment (oh my god, I say already), and some politicians started a discussion about forbidding violent computer games.
At that time it was already obvious that these people had absolutely no clue of computer games, and most of what they said was total crap.
They wanted to find out about negative influences of computer games, but studies couldn’t proof anything.
It was quite clear that excessive playing would mean a lot of problems, but psychologists said that excessive playing is always just a symptom, never a cause of problems.
Later they found out that the student had a lot of pressure from his parents related to school, and in general, a very disturbed relationship to his family. They made this out as the cause of the killing.
Politicians, and some other very one-sided people kept fighting against the gaming industry anyways, and at least they could achieve a raise of the minimum age you need to have to buy a copy of counterstrike.
Now, after yesterdays event, the first thing they found out was that the student was known to play counter strike, and politicians want to forbid:
-“Killergames”, as they call them (meaning just about every ego-shooter), as well as their production in Germany. (Would mean heavy Problems for Crytek for example)
-All violent media
They do even want to search the internet for violent games (quite logical, at least, more stuff get’s distributed there)…
It is clear that, same as 3 years before, people look for a scapegoat, a simple solution, and they want to get rid of things they don’t like (and don’t know about).
This time the shooter left a letter anyways, that lists reasons for his rampage:
He was sick of the state, and about the fact that everything is about money, even in school. He hates the society, and from the many qoutes I read, I can totally understand him. What he does in the end, is attack the german state and it’s system. Of course politicians don’t see that (same as teachers), as he makes us aware of social problems in our country, that are currently being discussed anyways, but as our politicians are, they don’t want to know about anything of that, and of course, Counter Strike was the source of his violence.
This is the typical human behaviour when you are made aware of problems that exist in your society, and you, as well as others would have to change to make that better…
It is the same thing as always, the details are important, but the general problems are not. We destroy our environment and more and more people die of cancer, but soot particle filter for Trucks are not necessary.
An ex-student goes mad and wounds some people, and all gamers are killers, and Video games must be forbidden.
In this sense, I can only add one sentence:
Games don’t make people violent, Lag does!