Quote:
Originally Posted by Margaret Pilkington
With some of these shootings involving young men, it makes me wonder how much time these young men have spent playing on video games......shoot 'em ups...and whether this blurs the edges of reality...making them act out the fantasies of the games they have played.
I'm sure there will be someone out there who will pooh-pooh this thought, but how many shootings like this did we see prior to the era of violent video games.(fewer, surely)
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Nah! not having that argument Margaret...I grew up with plastic guns that fired plastic bullets, Johnny sevens, sekaguns (sp) that fired pigeon peas, shooting roman candles at each other, bangers in satchels, scotch arrows, air pistols, commando magazines, in fact thinking about it I can't remember a single xmas as a kid when I wasn't given something with violent undertones from Santa.. never made me into a killer.
We've had these arguments for decades about how kids spending their leisure time was blamed for violence, for example in the 50's it was rock around the clock and in the 70's it was clockwork orange, the sweeney and Clint Eastwood
As for how many shootings we saw...well I guess I'd argue that maybe in the 1920's the US was worse for mindless violence, and probably every decade since has had its share, we just didn't see it reported as fast and in the same way as we do now.