The Mad Rants of a Raving Genius

I’m an avid gamer. I don’t own a video game console, but I do have quite the collection of computer games, ranging from Monkey Island to Gears of War. And yet, I am not a mass murderer. I haven’t shot up my school with a 9mm or written violent poetry about killing people. Surprising? Not to most people. But Jack Thompson would have you believe that violent video games are tied directly to real world violence. The thing is, he’s an idiot.

Video games do not cause problems. A normal, well-adjusted person playing Halo is not going to buy a gun and shoot his neighbor simply because he played that game. And contrary to what Thompson is constantly saying, video games do not train you to kill. Anyone who has ever played a shooting game (à la Grand Theft Auto) can tell you that the most you learn from that kind of game game is how to aim with a mouse or a controller. I highly doubt that the average gamer could pick up a gun for the first time and hit anything smaller than the side of a building.

People like Thompson are the cultural equivalent of ambulance chasers. Mere hours after the Virginia Tech shooting in April 2007, Thompson sprung to life and claimed that the shooter must have played Counter-Strike, which was to blame for the killings. And even after it was determined that Seung-Hui Cho had not played Counter-Strike since high school and that none of the games he had played recently involved violent themes, Thompson continued to go on about it, even going so far as to criticize Microsoft for creating the game. Funny thing: Microsoft didn’t create Counter-Strike. Duh. But that’s not the only incident Thompson has pounced on. He pulled the same “Counter-Strike kills” argument regarding the Northern Illinois University shooting in February 2008. It’s bad enough he relies on silly arguments like that in the first place, but using the same game twice? Come on, Jack. Get some new material. Preferably material that doesn’t involve you pushing your narrow view of morality onto everyone else.

The kind of stuff Jack Thompson does is doubly abhorrent to me, as a gamer and as a libertarian. It’s one thing to disapprove of violent video games. But it’s something completely different to attempt to prevent anyone from playing those games. I’m just happy that most people have seen Thompson for what he is: an opportunist who’s too eager to take the moral high ground. The Florida Bar Association has even sanctioned him for his un-lawyer-like behavior in vehemently attacking video games. Of course, Thompson thinks it’s all a conspiracy because he’s Christian. He’s certainly got denial down to an art form.

Bottom line: video games don’t kill. Crazy people who happen to own video games do kill. There’s not a correlation no matter what Mr. Morality says.