Video games and the Virginia Tech shooter

Yesterday, outside my local Peet's Coffee & Tea, a Lyndon LaRouche follower manned a political information table where he pushed some typically fringe positions, including a hard-to-follow argument that Al Gore is just like Hitler. One of the posters hanging from the LaRouch table featured the now-famous photo of the Viginia Tech shooter wielding two handguns. The message on the poster (dang, I must remember to carry my camera around, or get a camera phone) said violent video games pushed the shooter over the edge. A passerby was mightily offended, and let the LaRouchie know it.

Which brings me to the point of this post, which is to recommend an opinion piece by Peter Hartlaub in the San Francisco Chronicle. Hartlaub analyzes the race to judgment that violent games caused Seung-Hui Cho to go on his deadly rampage.

Snippet:

Last week's unfounded attack on gamer culture would be far less frustrating if it weren't something that happens at least once a year. Imagine how ridiculous it would seem if cable news interviewed alarmists who blamed professional wrestling or game shows (two things that Cho reportedly did enjoy in college) for a massacre before a suspect was identified. Yet video games are repeatedly presumed guilty from the start, with no correction or remedy when the facts prove otherwise.

(deletia)

As critics look to blame video games such as Counter-Strike, Doom and the Grand Theft Auto series for the world's troubles, it's important to note that most young men in 2007 prefer video games over movies, television and other forms of entertainment. Simply learning that a young adult has played a violent game proves very little. Would you make negative assumptions about an 18-year-old in the 1980s just because he watched "Die Hard"?

Considering his age and gender, it's remarkable that Cho didn't play video games for the past four years. As for the now-missing Post report that he played Counter-Strike in high school, I defy you to find one 23-year-old male outside of Amish country who hasn't enjoyed a first-person shooter at some time in his life. If Grand Theft Auto and Counter-Strike were really training youngsters for mayhem, and everyone is playing them, our suburban streets would be a fiery pit of death and carnage.