This timely comic from Filibuster Cartoons really doesn't need an explanation, does it?

GP: Kudos to Jabrwock for sending it our way...

As the smoke begins to clear on last week's school shooting at Montreal's Dawson College, Canadian media pundits are offering opinions on the relationship between violent video games and the rampage. In the Calgary Sun, columnist Licia Corbella writes:

"You are what you eat. Garbage in, garbage out... if you consume violence, you will be violent... Kimveer Gill practiced what he preached... He acted out on the music he listened to, the games he played... His favourite video game was Super Columbine Massacre RPG..."

"In a fascinating, if not utterly maddening interview... (Super Columbine designer Danny) Ledonne calls his disgraceful, exploitative game 'art' and 'social commentary' ...That someone who would create a 'game' so cruel, insensitive and immoral can then speak of morals is galling and hypocritical in the extreme."

"Is Ledonne partly responsible for Wednesday's mayhem? Legally, no. But what about morally?"
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"The world, as usual, is more complex than we'd like it to be," said Georgia Tech Ian Bogost, addressing concerns that an amateur video game based on the Columbine massacre inspired a 25-year-old man to go on a shooting rampage in Montreal on Wednesday.

Bogost, interviewed by CTV, added, "Certainly, (the shooter) was using media of all kinds to culture his antisocial fantasies. Should we hold (this game) responsible? Clearly, these are overly simplistic explanations."

Bogost has much more on the Dawson shooting on his Water Cooler Games website.
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Canadian media are reporting that an obviously disturbed school shooter had at least a passing interest in a controversial amateur video game.

As detailed by the Associated Press, 25-year-old Kimveer Gill (note: not a kid) seemed obsessed with violence, with more than 50 photos of himself in paramilitary poses on the web site VampireFreaks.

In his last entry on the site, posted about two hours before the shooting, Gill described himself as drinking whiskey, "crazy" and "postal." His profile reveals someone full of hate and rage, obsessed with guns, and describing himself as the "Angel of Death."
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Gun control. Video game legislation.

They're both hotly debated. And while GP tries to not let his own political opinions show (much), one thing that's clear is that nobody ever shot anyone with a copy of Halo or GTA San Andreas.

Guns? Now they're another story. Nobody ever shot anyone without one of those.

And yet we continually hear about gamers "literally training to kill" and learning "cranial killing menus" from critics like Lt. Col. Dave Grossman and whatsizname down in Miami. Both have voiced the opinion that Paducah, Kentucky school shooter Michael Carneal taught himself marksmanship while playing DOOM.

And so it seems rather ironic that game publisher Crave is readying NRA Gun Club, a non-violent simulation that focuses on improving the player's shooting skills. Instead of aliens, World War II Nazi soldiers or zombies, the victims in Gun Club will include things like watermelons and paper targets.

More than 100 accurately-modeled guns are available in the game, including law enforcement and military weapons. A GameSpot preview calls NRA Gun Club "a first-person target shooting game with an interesting nonviolent, educational slant on guns... control seems to be limited to aiming, firing, zooming, and holding your breath while zooming to maintain a steady shot."

The NRA, of course, is a rather controversial organization itself, albeit a well-financed and highly politicized one.

So will a game designed to teach players how to shoot provoke the same kind of criticism spawned by titles in which shooting is largely abstracted?

NRA Gun Club is scheduled for October release on the PS2. It will carry an E-10 rating from the ESRB, with a content descriptor for "mild violence."

Thanks to GP reader Karsten Fouquaet for the heads-up on this one.

Just-released diaries and assorted papers of Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold contain a handful of video game references among the 946 pages made public today by the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office.

Of the planned massacre, Harris wrote, "It'll be like the LA riots, the Oklahoma bombing, WWII, Vietnam, Duke and Doom all mixed together. ... I want to leave a lasting impression on the world."

id Software's Doom series is well-known as a favorite of Harris and Klebold. The "Duke" reference refers to Duke Nukem 3D, a bawdy, 1996 first-person shooter from developer 3D Realms.

Note the hand-drawn Doom logo in Harris' diary at left. The complete diaries are available on the website of the Denver Post. A reference in Harris' diary written about a year before the Columbine shootings reads:

"...everyone should be put to a test. an Ultimate Doom test. see who (unreadable) an environment using only smarts and military skills... Put them in a Doom world, no authority, no refuge, no BS copout excuses. If you can't figure out the area of a triangle or what (unreadable) means, you die! If you can't take down a demon w/a chainsaw or a hell prince w/a shotgun, you die!"
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Video games rarely capture the attention of the mainstream press. When they do, it's usually a sensationalized story about violence or sex or some other hot-button issue.

So it is with Super Columbine Massacre RPG, a non-commercial game available only as a free download via the Internet. Thanks primarily to a story in the Rocky Mountain News, the mainstream press is all over this one. In addition to the coverage in the Rocky, the Associated Press has written about Super Columbine Massacre and the game has been linked on The Drudge Report.

The story has gotten such wide play in the last couple of days that there's really no point in regurgitating the facts here on GamePolitics. At this point, the public reaction to the game seems to be the defining part of the story.

Like many GP readers who track developments in the video game space, I became aware of Columbine Super Massacre about two weeks ago when word of the game began to make the rounds of video game blogs. I chose not to address it at that point. Perhaps I should have, but for me, Columbine remains an open wound - not in the sense that I knew anyone there, but along with September 11th, the trauma and tragedy of the Columbine shootings was seared into my brain by live television coverage. Both are generation-defining events. For me, the Littleton community seems very much like my community and Columbine High School much like the schools my kids attend.

It probably comes as no surprise that initial reactions to the game are negative. Families of Columbine victims, of course, were sought out by the media for comment. Necessary, I suppose, but somehow distasteful. What are the families to say? What would you expect them to say? If even a jaded gamer like GP is uneasy with the Columbine Super Massacre, it has to be an incredibly raw nerve for the Columbine families. And it is. The Rocky Mountain News piece quotes several surviving relatives:

"It's wrong," said Joe Kechter. His son, Matt, was gunned down in the school library.

"We live in a culture of death, so it doesn't surprise me that this stuff has become so commonplace. It disgusts me," said Brian Rohrbough. His son, Dan, was killed outside the school building. "You trivialize the actions of two murderers and the lives of the innocent."
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A chance meeting with a survivor of one school shooting led Joseph A. Lieberman (no, not that Joseph Lieberman), author of The Shooting Game, to investigate the cultural phenomenon of school shootings.

Focusing on the deeply-troubled Kip Kinkle's 1998 massacre at Thurston High School in Springfield, Oregon, The Shooting Game explores the factors common to school shootings that occurred between the turn of the twentieth century and the book's recent publication.

This makes the The Shooting Game an ambitious work which could be a valuable resource - if not for its many problems. For starters, it has no index. This abscence makes The Shooting Game difficult to navigate as a reference guide.

It is, unfortunately, also missing a bibliography. Lieberman does provide an appendix of recommended sources, but there is no indication of what role these materials played in his own writing.

This is especially troubling since The Shooting Game has neither endnotes nor footnotes. Though Lieberman often cites sources in his text, he almost as often drops in quotes and facts without proper attribution.

Lieberman also gets some basic facts wrong.
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Is this week's apparent rash of school shooting plots related to video games, as some vocal critics would have it? Or, are other factors at play, in particular the Columbine anniversary, April 20th?

Among law enforcement officials, sources tell GP that the Columbine anniversary is closely monitored for its possible inspiration of copycat massacres. And what of those would-be copycats? What social and psychological factors motivate them?

Columbine killer Eric Harris, for example, suffered from depression and was taking medication. He was also an angry teenager, had recently broken up with a girlfriend and had been turned down in his longtime dream to enter the Marine Corps. He was suicidal and fascinated with guns.

GP: random thought - why does the National Rifle Association escape blame? Actor Charlton Heston was NRA president at the time of Columbine. Why is Michael Moore the only prominent social critic blaming guns instead of games?

Back on topic, GP finds rather appalling a comment made by serial video game critic Dave Grossman (seen at left) in a news report by WISH-TV8 (Indianapolis). Grossman made his remarks during a school safety summit sponsored by the Indiana School Safety Specialist Academy:

"The desire of the kids to commit this stuff is at levels we've never seen before," Grossman said. "The new ingredient in the equation is media violence, television, movies and especially the video games."

Especially the video games...

Meanwhile, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, there is a surprising degree of official reserve concerning an apparent game connection to a 17-year-old student who briefly held a teacher and another student hostage at gunpoint, firing a shot through a window during the incident.

As reported by the News-Observer, 17-year-old William Barrett Foster faces multiple criminal charges based on the incident. He left the school prior to the arrival of police and his mother immediately placed him into a hospital. Although the news report does not specify, it's likely that he is receiving psychological treatment, since no physical injuries are mentioned.

While one student described Foster as "one of those rebel kids," others told the newspaper he was a nice but quiet kid into skateboarding and video games, especially Halo. Foster's younger brother is so skilled at the popular Xbox shooter that he plays competitively and is paid to tutor others in mastering the game.

But here's the refreshing viewpoint expressed in the News-Observer report:

"...experts cautioned against linking video-game playing and school violence. Typically there are warning signs and other symptoms besides video-game playing, said Gregg O. McCrary, a retired FBI agent who trained teachers and police on what to look for to prevent juvenile violence. McCrary now has a consulting business, Behavioral Criminology International."

"'Not everybody who plays a violent video game or watches a violent movie is violent,' he said, adding, 'More people play video games who are not violent.'"

It's probably, almost certainly, potentially possible that maybe the video games perhaps made them do it.

Or not.

Numerous GP readers wrote in about the brief mention of video game playing by five boys accused of plotting a Columbine-style massacre at a high school in Kansas. A widely circulated Associated Press report contains but a single line relating to games:

"(Cherokee County Sheriff Steve) Norman also mentioned bullying and said investigators had learned the suspects liked violent video games."

...and that's it. No info on which games, or much of any news about the suspects beyond the characterization of one as an "oddball" who was also a victim of bullying.

It's frustrating that we never seem to get to a bottom line with the alleged relationship of video games to these situations. GP believes it would be highly unusual these days to find an American male, 15 to 18, who hasn't played at least some violent games, whether it be the relatively gore-free shoot 'em up action of Halo 2, the fantasy violence of World of Warcraft, or more hardcore titles such as GTA San Andreas.

Naturally, the game critics will jump all over this one. They have almost certainly started already - never mind that the facts aren't known. Ever since the revelation that the Columbine killers played Doom, video games have become fair game for media sensationalists, game violence critics, and culture cops.

The Columbine killers, of course, didn't shoot up the school with copies of Doom, but rather with guns, purchased illegally.

So GP is clearing out his Inbox the other day (checks, people, where are the checks?), when what do we come across, but a new, um...theory.

The author - we know him only as Larry (and would strongly prefer to keep it that way) - writes that he found GamePolitics "...while researching Jack Thompson. I noted your entries on game regulation and school violence correlated to video game play. Thompson is RIGHT ABOUT CORRELATION BUT WRONG ON CAUSATION."

"The content of games is not the cause of the violence but they can be correlated because of a little known problem with human physiology. The problem is the game playing or computer workstation. Violence and user suicides are being caused by exposure to Subliminal Distraction..."

The author refers readers to this site for more information. Regarding the Red Lake, MN school shooting, his theory is that:

"The Redlake shooter... placed a second monitor near his computer so he could watch movies... That placed a source of repeating detectable movement in his peripheral vision. While he used the computer he could subliminally detect 'threat movement' to cause a peripheral vision reflex... That exposure is Subliminal Distraction and will eventually cause the mental break. It, not the game content, is responsible for the violence."

According to the author, this theory explains many things, from the famous flight of the "Runaway Bride" Jennifer Wilbanks to the 1994 crash of a B-52 bomber. MMO addiction can also apparently be attributed to subliminal detection. In the case of the so-called Everquest addiction of actor Ben Stein's son Tommy, the author recounts his aha! moment:

"It was the fall of 2002... I was resting, watching 48 Hours... I saw the problem I had been attempting to research being featured on the program... They were calling it the Sony Everquest Addiction Problem. I was stunned."

"...Ben Stein was interviewed and the program moved to... his son's room. The boy sat there, his back to the camera... There it was on the boy's right side. A big glass box sat a foot or two from his right shoulder, against the wall. It was about half full of water... I saw that the glass box was a lighted aquarium... I was sure that I had seen enough. I had confirmation the Sony Everquest addiction problem was also my research problem."

GP: MMO addiction proven by an aquarium. It was so simple. Who knew?

If Rep. David Hogue (R) has his way - and so far he's on a roll - it will soon be a felony to provide a violent video game to a minor in the state of Utah.

As reported by the Salt Lake Tribune, Hogue's bill, HB257, passed the state House of Representatives by a 56-8 vote yesterday. The measure equates violent games with pornography, and would add such games to a Utah statute normally used only to prosecute those who provide smut to kids.

Hogue linked violent games to school shootings, including Columbine.

"Would these same kids have done this anyway without watching violent videos? Maybe not."

Hogue also mentioned Resident Evil 4, the Grand Theft Auto series and Rockstar's upcoming Bully to the Tribune.

"You can get even with bullies. You take a baseball bat and beat up their heads," he said. "It is going to show kids how to respond in school. Is this what we want our kids doing?"

Games which violate the proposed law would need to be "patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community" and lack any serious "literary, artistic, political or scientific value for minors."

Republican Rep. Scott Wyatt opined that only the "most depraved" video games would fall under this bill. However, Republican Rep. Margaret Dayton and Democratic Rep. Ross Romero had concerns over the bill's constitutionality.

For his part, Hogue expressed confidence the measure would survive First Amendment challenges. "It will set an example that Utah is a family state," he said.
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There is a report of a shooting at Roseburg High School in Oregon.

The Kansas City Star is reporting that a 16-year-old student shot one person and fled. He was arrested by police after holding his gun to his head.

No information on who was shot or what their condition is. No word on whether the shooter was a gamer.

GP: Lots of readers have questioned why we ran this story with no allegation at this point of a video game connection. Believe me, I wrestled with the same dilemma in deciding to go with it. Bottom line is that we know that critics have tried to create links to video games in past school shootings. It's likely they will do so here. Investigators will certainly work up a profile of the shooter, but that info isn't always released.

Personally, when I hear one of these stories I always cringe - and I would bet most readers do too - because I know what's coming: another round of blaming games. I don't believe that merely covering this story links it to games. In fact, it is expressly mentioned that there are no reported game links to the shooter right in the story.

Finally, we had the story pretty early on - before CNN and many other mainstream outlets. In any event I appreciate all of the viewpoints and will factor them into future decisions.

Yesterday GamePolitics reported that an 8-year-old boy who accidentally discharged a handgun at a Maryland day care center, wounding another student, had been exposed to violent video games. At the time, we didn't know which games.

But we do now.

A report in today's Washington Post identifies 50 Cent: Bulletproof and 187 Ride or Die as extremely violent games to which the boy had access. The paper's information regarding the games comes from what it describes as "a police source."

The WaPo article also seems to cast some doubt on how "accidental" the shooting may have been.