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NEWS: Californian Senator Links Games to Violence

[I also think that people who want to shoot at stuff are much less dangerous if they are allowed to do it in a virtual environment than let them grab the first gun available and go to the post office to do a carnage because there ain't no law to restrict gun use in their State - but then again, I am an idealist...]

Good luck voting out a Democratic senator in California. She's gonna be untouchable until she leaves the Senate either via retirement or existence-failure.

Now, instead of throwing out vague personal anecdotes or ad hominem attacks, why don't we use facts for once. This might surprise you, but video games and violence has been studied a lot, and no correlation has been found. Citations:
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/12/data-helps-rebut-the-violent-video-games-cause-shootings-argument/
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2009/01/study-violence-in-games-not-that-compelling-for-most-gamers/
http://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2007/02/8887/
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2007/04/study-finds-stable-personalities-unaffected-by-violent-games/
And these are just a few examples. So why does Senator Feinstein think video games are a problem?

MiwaSatoshi wrote:

Good luck voting out a Democratic senator in California. She's gonna be untouchable until she leaves the Senate either via retirement or existence-failure.

It's also hilarious how the politicians love to go after the first and second amendments, while the seventeenth amendment is the one that's really starting to cause serious damage to this nation.

I'm eternally grateful anime will never achieve enough status or notability for anyone to blame it on anything. Maybe it's best that anime do stay unnoticed by the mainstream, forever. I rescind my opinion about Hollywood A-listers being in dubs, it's a bad idea.

walw6pK4Alo wrote:

I'm eternally grateful anime will never achieve enough status or notability for anyone to blame it on anything. Maybe it's best that anime do stay unnoticed by the mainstream, forever. I rescind my opinion about Hollywood A-listers being in dubs, it's a bad idea.

I can't imagine how these ignorant politicians would perceive the moe stuff if they actually found out about it. They'd probably call it all a pedophilia breeding ground or something.

@Happiness for Subaru
Re: the Resi 4 example, that may less be correlated with violent intent and more with muscle memory. Zombie games by definition teach you to aim for headshots rather than center mass due to their in-game effects. Not to say correlation may not exist, but that particular example has a perfectly valid physiological explanation.

Target mannequins are still a fairly long way from actual people - they're pretty far on the other side of the Uncanny Valley (and thank goodness for it).

Interesting data points, though.

I will say it again, preventing people from getting what they want will not keep them from doing so if they want it bad enough! This is the flaw in your gun control argument. So let's keep those that want to defend themselves from those kinds of people that shouldn't have those weapons from being able to! 2nd Amendment was created the way it was for that reason!

Oh boy, here we go again. For the last 500 times, video games does not cause violence. Even FBI profiler are smarter then her when it comes to the mind of the criminal, serial killers, and mass murderers.

Tenbyakugon wrote:

I will say it again, preventing people from getting what they want will not keep them from doing so if they want it bad enough! This is the flaw in your gun control argument. So let's keep those that want to defend themselves from those kinds of people that shouldn't have those weapons from being able to! 2nd Amendment was created the way it was for that reason!

The nagging problem with that stance is the boundry between those two situations has been so blurred that no one can define, and thereby tell, where one changes over to become the other.