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.
——–