Violent Video Games to Blame for New Bedford Gay Bar Attack?

Posted on | February 7, 2006

Looks like in my rush to get my new laptop online, I missed out on the fact that the blame game in the case of Jacob Robida, the man who walked into the New Bedford, Massachusetts Puzzles Lounge and shot three patrons. On Sunday, Robida died of injuries he sustained in a shoot-out with police in Arkansas which occurred after he murdered officer Jim Sell in Gassville, Arkansas.

You might recall from my previous post on Robida that there were the fact that he apparently subscribed to the principals of Nazism and the numerous references in media stories to his liking the Insane Clown Posse and that would probably figure into trying to determine why Robida did what he did. Apparently I was wrong on that score and it looks like violent video games are once again being attributed to someone’s violent behavior. New Bedford Mayor Scott Lang released a statement on February 4th about the incident in Puzzles Lounge probably even before Robida was identified as the suspect. The statement included one line that pissed me off: "The violent video games have to be taken out of our homes." Did we not go through this bullshit before after Columbine because Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold played the game "Doom"? And again with the endless attacks on Grand Theft Auto?

I am sorry but I get enough of that bullshit from publicity whores like Jack Thompson. If you unfamiliar with Thompson, he is the grand-standing attorney who is on a personal crusade against violent video games. One of his favorite targets, and seems like everyone else’s too, is the Grand Theft Auto series in which he as filed lawsuits against Rockstar Games, the publisher, and Sony on whose Playstation 2 platform the game has been released on. Recently Thompson had his licence to practice law in Alabama revoked because of his antics in a lawsuit he filed on behalf of the families of police officers and a dispatcher killed by Devin Moore,an eighteen year-old man who is now sitting on Alabama’s death row for the crime.

What a lot of people do not seem to grasp in terms of video games is that they are roleplaying. When I play Star Wars Galaxies, I do not become a gay go-go dancer or a gay Jedi Knight in real life. I merely take on the role of one of my characters for the duration of that session. The same goes for Grand Theft Auto, the Quake Series, and any other game. The individuals who have problems separating the game from reality have other problems, but the game is not the blame.

Maybe it is just me, but I think we need to stop placing blame on media and such and focus on the individual themselves. Until a game puts a gun to someone’s head and says something along the lines of "Kill a cop or I will kill you", then I would be hard pressed to blame the game instead of the individual. The games can desensitize, "train to kill", and other such things people like Thompson claim, but none of them can negate the McNaughton Rule. No matter how many hours a person plays Quake or Grand Theft Auto they still, generally speaking, know the difference between right from wrong and are fully aware of the consequences of their actions. Because for every Devin Moore, there is a Jonathan Wendel who many of you may know as "Fatal1ty" who started a professional gaming career in his teens and became the number one Quake III player in the world. With the many hours of game play he had to have put in to get there, you would have thought he would have gone on a killing spree by now if you believe individuals like Jack Thompson.

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