8YO shoots grandmother/caregiver after playing GTA IV

[Nero Duskwind]

http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/25/us/lou...html?hpt=hp_t2

So if my dog fetches anything I throw...

... and I light a stick of dynamite...

.. and he kills us both for fetching it...

.. it must be the dynamite's fault for exploding?

Why is there even a consideration of controversy here? 1) that kid is waaaay too young to play GTA IV, 2) You need to play for at least... I dunno 1-2 hours before you even get your first gun in GTA IV, given the complexity of the game and your typical 8YO, doubt he got that idea. 3) Most importantly HE HAD ACCESS TO A DAMN GUN. HE WAS 8.

This whole story is irresponsible journalism. I have serious doubts the kid was even playing that game, and I have NO doubt something rotten/fishy/made up bullshit is going on here due to GTA V coming out September 17th. Is it just me or does something like this happen prior to every GTA? For CNN to make some sort of connection to controversy is this regard is just... sad. I can't come up with a good simile here.

The only culprit is an incredibly negligent caregiver and parents. Violent media doesn't make violent kids, absentee parents do.

Nailed it right there with the final sentence.

What kind of parent lets their 8 year old kid play game that's ESRB rated MA? The system has existed for almost 2 decades now and yet negligent parents continue to disregard at it and then roll the blame on the companies when something like this happens.

Also, what kind of parent keeps a firearm where it can be so easily and readily accessibly by their child?

[Erolian]

100% the fault of whoever takes care of the child. They don't bother to teach them the difference between reality and fiction and they keep a loaded gun within reach of the child. You can play all the terrible games and learn to shoot firearms etc like myself and many others did before you're 10 but if nobody ever bothers to actually make the distinction of what you can/cant do and what is real and isn't real you're just praying the kid is smart enough to innately understand. Big surprise that doesn't always work out.

[Every Pwny]

Kid shoots grandmother after living in house. Houses make kids kill!

[Deleted]

The first GTA game I played was Vice City when I was around 6 or 7. I don't want to go and murder my family. I see no point in this perpetual accusation towards violent games. The general ignorance of the media is astonishing - anything to rally the masses against a relatively new form of entertainment.

I'm fairly sure that even an eight year-old can distinguish between real-life and virtual situations, unless he was severely mentally ill.

[Doylez]

Clearly GTA4 kills people and should be banned. Such a violent game.

[Sliske]

Cut out that "violent video games" part please. Correlation =/= causation

Well i'm not one of those people who thinks video games are the devil but yes i can draw the lines between a kid playing with firearms IRL and a kid playing with firearms in a game. I don't blame the game or the gun though. I blame the people who left him in the vicinity of either unsupervised

And FYI so i don't get mobbed by people sarcastically quoting me and telling me video games are bad:

I played GTA3 when i was 5-6, i played dynasty warriors 1-4, daily, for like 5 hours at a time from age 6-10ish. I played GTA SA as soon as it came out, vice city, all of the medal of honors, call of duty, online shooters, etc. I was even in a clan at age 11 on Joint Operations: Typhoon Rising with people aging 17-45 years old

Also i am not in America or a country where guns are readily available for the common folk. The most i had was pellet guns, wooden poles and plastic swords. The only time i've ever used a weapon against someone was when i was like 8 years old and a 20 year old man was climbing into my garden to get me, i think i had did something bad to him, i forget. I hit him with a plastic ball pellet gun.

[Spectral]

The only culprit is an incredibly negligent caregiver and parents. Violent media doesn't make violent kids, absentee parents do.

I agree with the overall point of the post, but this isn't exactly right. Media does have an impact on behavior, it's just weak relative to parenting.

[Baracuda]

I felt like doing the same after playing that crappy excuse of a GTA game. I did play Unreal tournament 99 when I was about 5 and that game is 10x more violent than GTA 4, haven't killed anyone yet. FPS with meat slabs flying around

[Deleted]

Well if its GTA's fault then have you ever thought of bread and its wicked ways to make you criminal??
Research has shown that 93.4% of all criminals have eaten bread within 24 hours of their crime!!
Clearly bread should be banned and im pretty sure the whole "criminal problem" will be solved!

[Drikkink]

Nailed it right there with the final sentence.

What kind of parent lets their 8 year old kid play game that's ESRB rated MA? The system has existed for almost 2 decades now and yet negligent parents continue to disregard at it and then roll the blame on the companies when something like this happens.

Also, what kind of parent keeps a firearm where it can be so easily and readily accessibly by their child?

And, here we have the "Parent's fault for letting him play the game that made him shoot a gun" argument. How is it that everyone is so sure that the game caused him to shoot his grandmother. How do you know he didn't have ANYTHING else going through his mind? Something like "Hmm, I wonder what happens if I pull this thing!"

You can blame the parents for this (which you should), but blaming the parents for getting him the game is like blaming a parent of an obese child for just having a TV in the house. I mean, if they wanted their kid to lose weight, why not get rid of the TV? It's clearly the TV's fault for the obesity, but shame on the parent for even having it. You should blame the parent for what they did do wrong, not what fake psychology thinks was wrong. Could the game be a contributing factor? I guess, but I think we'd see a lot more instances of 8-12 year olds shooting people if video games made children homicidal.

[Deleted]

One thing to think about, it is never the newspapers/traditional media fault. Despite they love to write about real life shooting tragedy/massacre, they show picture, maps, detailed description, give the offender (if it was a massacre) his/here 5 min of fame, but oddly enough newspaper/traditional media never inspire people to comint crime....according to themselves.

[Every Pwny]

Well if its GTA's fault then have you ever thought of bread and its wicked ways to make you criminal??
Research has shown that 93.4% of all criminals have eaten bread within 24 hours of their crime!!
Clearly bread should be banned and im pretty sure the whole "criminal problem" will be solved!

Why is bread so dangerous? Why haven't we banned it yet!

[Spraxle]

Nothing to see here except another parental break down. As a parent it is YOUR duty and responsibility to teach your children right from wrong and fantasy from reality. My father was a real piece of shit but I still remember the day he gave me the talk about fantasy violence and the such. I know this is a 'generalization' but many kids today are raised by their TV, game console, computer, etc and not their parents. This creates children who are out of touch with reality, uncaring, and selfish. Do some psych research and you'll find the studies about children raised with little to no parental interaction and how f'ed they are.

The first GTA game I played was Vice City when I was around 6 or 7. I don't want to go and murder my family. I see no point in this perpetual accusation towards violent games. The general ignorance of the media is astonishing - anything to rally the masses against a relatively new form of entertainment.

I'm fairly sure that even an eight year-old can distinguish between real-life and virtual situations, unless he was severely mentally ill.

The problem is people don't want to take responsibility for their action/inaction. It's easier to pass the buck off on someone else, ie: TV, games, movies, music, etc. Your example is funny because 'back in my day' the super violent game of the day was Doom or Mortal Kombat. I still remember playing MK1 on my SNES and I have to this day never ripped someones spine out.

[Deleted]

Why is bread so dangerous? Why haven't we banned it yet!

Im sure its cursed, why els would that many people commit a crime within 24 hours of eating it?
And a little bit less sarcastic, the prison company's are lobbying against banning bread.

[Nero Duskwind]

And, here we have the "Parent's fault for letting him play the game that made him shoot a gun" argument. How is it that everyone is so sure that the game caused him to shoot his grandmother. How do you know he didn't have ANYTHING else going through his mind? Something like "Hmm, I wonder what happens if I pull this thing!"

You can blame the parents for this (which you should), but blaming the parents for getting him the game is like blaming a parent of an obese child for just having a TV in the house. I mean, if they wanted their kid to lose weight, why not get rid of the TV? It's clearly the TV's fault for the obesity, but shame on the parent for even having it. You should blame the parent for what they did do wrong, not what fake psychology thinks was wrong. Could the game be a contributing factor? I guess, but I think we'd see a lot more instances of 8-12 year olds shooting people if video games made children homicidal.

My fault for leaving out another salient point in my previous post: If, as a parent, you're going to disregard the ESRB and get your kid a video game meant for a mature audience, then you have a responsibility to that kid to ensure that he/she understands the difference between fantasy and reality. Blindly presuming that understanding in your child is even more negligent than ignoring an ESRB rating.

The game may or may not have given the kid the idea to play with a real gun that was, as another result of irresponsibility on the parent's part, so readily accessible. That conclusion is so easily jumped to because it's the the most obvious correlation. One may not have to do with the other and, in all likelihood, it's a horrible tragedy made possible by a string of negligent behavior on the parents' part. Worst case scenario, the kid is a budding sociopath. In any case, the game has little to nothing to do with it.

[Mayhem]

Im sure its cursed, why els would that many people commit a crime within 24 hours of eating it?
And a little bit less sarcastic, the prison company's are lobbying against banning bread.

forget bread, thats a conspiracy, it´s air

100% of all criminals around the world have breathed air not just prior to the crime but during, how fucked up is that?

[Masochist]

> blames violence on video games
> 8 year old playing GTA
> 8 years old
> GTA
> ESRB: M 17+

Blaming games for violence is just a terrible parent's scapegoat. Maybe if people like this spent more time giving a fuck about their kid and raising them instead of letting a television do the job for them, something like this would not have happened.

You can blame the parents for this (which you should), but blaming the parents for getting him the game is like blaming a parent of an obese child for just having a TV in the house.

no

if you let your kid get fat as a parent, you're a failure and it's all your fault.

[Deleted]

First off, why does an eight year old even has access to a firearm? Secondly, why is an eight year old playing GTA?

This isn't a case of "videogames promote violence", but just some really, really, really bad parenting.

[Dezerte]

A 90 year old & and an unsecured gun.

Let's blame the vidya gamez.

[Deleted]

Clearly he used an IRL Weapons cheat to get the gun using his cellphone, duh.