When I first started my DeadJournal, I wrote a post complaining about the young “kids” (people in their mid-to-late teens) who post too much contact info on PUBLIC posts. I also commented on the Elizabeth Smart kidnapping in that same post, and I therefore feel obligated to point out her first interview.

Oddly, while I feel obligated to mention it, I also feel a bit disgusted that the media hounds people like that. I’m sure that the last thing she really wants to do is to talk about everything that’s going on in her life now to the national media — if it were me, I’d imagine that I’d want to find my own way to deal with it, then move on with my life. I understand the idea that the public ‘has a right to know,’ but I think that means we have a right to know things that’ll affect us. Not that we have a right to intrude on everyone’s life just because there was once a legitimate reason for us to hear about them.
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Apparently, last June, two teen-aged boys who’d been playing Grand Theft Auto III and started taking it a bit too seriously went on a shooting spree. I vaguely remember hearing about it, but only vaguely.

The families of the victims of the shooting spree have, being American and all, come to the obvious conclusion that everyone must come to when a family member is shot by two kids… sue the people who made a video game.

Newsflash: Grand Theft Auto III is violent. It’s also rated M. If an individual doesn’t have the mental capacity to understand that this game (which I love, by the way) is fantasy, and should in no way be attempted in real life, they aren’t mature enough to be playing the game!!

People make me sick. Take-Two and Rockstar games had nothing to do with this tragedy. Wal-Mart wasn’t to blame — even if you could make a case that they should only be selling “M” rated games to adults, I’d wager good money that one of the boys asked his parents for the money to buy it. Even after they bought it, their parents should have been paying attention! Why sue the game makers? Because there’s a perception that they have money.

$246 Million dollars isn’t going to bring back Aaron Hamel. It won’t take back the injuries that were received by the other people hurt by this. Our society is far too obsessed with the idea that, if anything goes wrong, you should be rewarded with money. Maybe the premise here is that, if we punish all the ‘bad people’ who were associated with this in even the most remote ways, things like this won’t happen again.

But, they will. People have been killing other people since the dawn of time. Teaching people to respect others, helping people to understand the difference between fantasy violence and real-violence… those things will help solve the problem. Suing a video-game maker will not.
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