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Germany School Shooting - Video Game Violence: Catalyst, not Cause
March 13th, 2009 by Theo |
If you haven't already heard, there has been a school shooting in Germany, leaving 15 dead. Police held a press conference identifying the shooter as Tim Kretschmer, a teenager who had received psychiatric treatment for depression.
As fresh as the news is there seems to already be a number of people pointing, as always, to videogames as a possible cause. A generalized statement by Ralf Michelfelder, a local Police Chief states, "Kretschmer played the kind of videogames typical for someone carrying out a mass shooting."
One kind of game the Police Chief was speaking of was Counter-Strike, which a fellow student named Aki claimed he had played with Kretschmer, saying, "He was good".
A neighbour and childhood friend of Kretschmers, Michael Veit, specified another in the following quote, "He was fascinated by video games, he used to play a shooting game called Tactical Ops and he used to watch horror films like Alien and Predator."
Aside from his experience with virtual violence, it is reported that he had a large collection of horror movies and frequently accompanied his father to a local shooting club. Placed along side this horrific act such activities which would normally be seen as trivial are instead being construed as causes, as they often are.
In a related article apparently, "Politicians and experts on both sides of the Atlantic were squaring up Thursday" Calling "for tougher gun laws and tighter monitoring of video games, after two more horrific massacres."
As to the possible causes, "...The combination of access to weapons, training and training your brain through violent video games, creates a cocktail of risk, says Peter Gill, professor of educational science at Gavle in Sweden. …It's a thing to want to kill people but you have to get access to weapons and to be able to use them. Why is it so easy for young people to train and to get access to weapons whereas teenagers can't smoke and can't drink in some countries before 21? Gill also believes it is naive to dismiss the impact of video games in channelling anger, noting that when you're playing violent video games you can do so against real opponents (over the Internet)... video games are much closer to reality than we thought."
The article further cites' James Treadwell of Leicester University in England, who when discussing the various school shootings stated, "...the link to video games for all is 'inherently problematic.'"
Despite these early comments regarding Kretschmer's motivations and adeptness with shooting games there are at least an equal number of people saying enough is enough; attempting to address the real issues rather than simplifying a tragedy down to one single cause.
One of these people is Daniel Finkelstein. In a comparison to the recent event he uses a new book called "How We Decide" by Jonah Lehrer. The book tells the story of John Wayne Gacy, a notorious American serial killer.
"When Gacy was a young boy he was entirely unremarkable. Save for one thing. He liked to capture mice and rats in a wire trap. Then he would dissect them while they were still alive. He was oblivious to their agony.
Years later Gacy was living a perfectly normal life. Or at least he seemed to be. He became a successful building contractor and he liked holding barbeques for the neighbours."
The tale as he says is that "of the classic psychopath. And that we could see Gacy's future in his lack of emotion when dissecting the rats."
Finkelstein points out that "Anybody arguing that Gacy's violent behaviour with rats caused him to be a murder, would appear ridiculous." But rather, and quite obvious, is that "the same brain dysfunction caused" him to do both terrible things. Gacy had long standing problems and issues that needed to be addressed but weren't, as has every one of these mass murderers.
"Now what about Tim Kretschmer?" Finkelstein asks, "There have been quite a few mentions of this violent computer game this morning. Naturally, however, Kretschmer's game is no more responsible for his acts than Gacy's rats.
Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl Olson make this very clear in their review of the evidence on computer games - Grand Theft Childhood. Game addiction is a symptom of something wrong and not a cause."
Of course it will be argued that like Gacy's Rats, Kretchmers video games were the desensitizing force that allowed him, and those like him, to carry out these atrocities with an unwavering hand. Perhaps to some degree this assessment is correct, but thus is the world we live in today, surrounded by violent imagery. The truth however is that while millions partake in violent entertainment, from video games, music and movies to mixed martial arts and boxing, and are provably desensitized, very few actually go on rampages; Leading us to believe that most likely those individuals who do, have issues far beyond that of the desensitization that occurs through said media. Even if we could somehow show that such violent mediums catalyzed the violent acts in those with a propensity towards violence, it would still not rightly define them as the causes, but merely a trigger inside those with already decaying and twisted perceptions.
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