Not only are video games responsible for warping the mind of Cho Seung-Hui, they made him a better marksman:

Virginia Tech mass murderer Cho Seung Hui honed his skill as a deadly marksman by playing violent video games.

According to Washington Post Staff Writer David Cho, several Korean youths who knew Cho Seung Hui from his high school days said he was a fan of violent video games, particularly a game called “Counterstrike,” a hugely popular online game in which players join terrorism or counterterrorism groups and try to shoot each other using all types of guns.

Emphasis mine.

Here are a couple of facts about me. First, I play violent video games. I loved Gears of War, which not only lets players “try to shoot each other using all types of guns”, it lets players attack each other with a “chainsaw bayonet”. Second, I have been known to shoot guns. I don’t do it regularly, but I grew up with them in the house, and I’ve spent time with both my dad and my friends firing weapons.

I am not a particularly violent or aggressive person. This is despite the fact that, throughout my life, I have spent time beating my friends up (and being beat up by my friends) in games like Mortal Kombat and Killer Instinct, not to mention the amount of time I’ve spent hunting and “killing” friends in Halo, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, Gears of War, and dozens of similar games. Violent video games do not a killer make.

Another interesting fact of note: despite the fact that I have managed to kill my friends hundreds, if not thousands of times using virtual guns, I have a hard time shooting a target with a real gun. Similarly, I have a feeling that my dad, despite being a fairly good shot with a rifle, would have a bit of trouble translating that skill into shooting an Axis soldier in Call of Duty 3.

It is possible that Cho Seung-Hui was unbalanced and that his obsession with violent video games was a symptom of that, or even that it worsened it to some degree, but he was not some completely normal, sane, well-adjusted individual who was brainwashed into becoming a maniacal killer by Counterstrike. It is also not possible that he learned how to accurately shoot a firearm by playing a video game. The skills are so unrelated that you may as well say that I am qualified to be a doctor because I once played a few levels of Trauma Center: Under the Knife on my sister’s DS, or that kids who can document that they’ve played lots of Mario Kart shouldn’t have to take a driving test. After all, they’ve spent lots of time “honing their skills”, right?

Maybe Cho was mentally unbalanced. Maybe he had some neurological defect that caused this. Maybe he was just evil. I’ll repeat myself here: He was not a nice, well-adjusted individual who was brainwashed into becoming a maniacal killer by Counterstrike. Using this incident to attack video games is simply pathetic.

Now that it’s finally premiered, Fox is wasting no time in shifting Drive up to full gear. The two-hour premiere event on Sunday aired both The Starting Line (which I missed, but was thankfully able to watch online — I love the internet) and Partners. Monday night, in its regular timeslot, was a third episode, Let the Games Begin.

Now, here’s a disclaimer: I was anticipating this show with an eagerness that I usually reserve for new Spider-Man movies. Nathan Fillion in a starring role? Tim Minear as executive producer? Maybe I was anticipating it even more than a Spider-Man movie (after all, the new Spider-Man movie has a Goblin in it). If I had ended up not liking it, I would probably not tell anyone. I wouldn’t lie and say it was great, but I’d refuse to say bad things.

Fortunately, I did enjoy watching it. Though, given that, and the aforementioned fact that Tim Minear is the executive producer of the show — on Fox! — I won’t get my hopes up of seeing more than the already-purchased 12 episodes (and at least 3 of those, I don’t expect to see until the DVDs are released). And that’s all I’m going to say before cutting the spoilers.

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