Having watched the clip, I can honestly say that the theory presented there is... reasonable. The expert claims that culture promotes being less grounded and less empathetic, resulting in outbursts of violence out of the ones prone to indulge in it. This is not absurd to consider. Video games were only mentioned as a factor among others.

Wouldn't you all agree that the less repressive a culture, the less suppressed harmful tendencies of its members are ?

When society starts pointing fingers, the shooter wins.

I just knew someone on Fox News would pull the God card.

I have to be really carefull so as not upset the people personally dealing with this tragedy BUT...
1) STATS: The numbers used to insinuate games/music (well media period) with violence and/or deviant and destructive behavior don't add up. When I was a kid and they tried to nail Judas Priest because a kid who listened to them offed himself. Well at the time Priest had sold millions and millions and millions (I'm sounding like Sagan) of albums to milions and millions and millions of kids (like myself) who didn't off themselves. You could probably find WAY more instances of people who ate cheerios for breakfast and then killed themselves than you could kids who listened to Priest and went nuts. Should we then blame cheerios!?

2) EVIDENCE: A lot of the folks making these accusations don't do their homework. They wanted to blame the Columbine shootings on Marylin Manson but conveniently failed to recognize that either kid listened to Manson!

3) HISTORY: When I was younger some people said Space Invaders and Pac Man was going to turn everyone into psycos. How's that working out?!

4) RESPONSIBILITY: If your kid has that much trouble distinguishing DOOM from reality, maye you aren't doing your job as a parent!?

I could go on and I may go on if I don't get chucked from the forum for preaching.
Now I'll stop for a bit :)

By the way, I've chosen a solution on that topic, but the real problem will only be "solved" when usa will mourn its victims and find explanations.

Vestin , do you mean state repressive behaviour? In democracy, it's more civil violence right?

The fox "expert" forgot that the scale of violence can change depending on the material available for the possible terrorist. If guns are not controlled , it turns into massive violence. If would be the same thing for explosives, if they were just released out in the nature ! That's why gun control is a not a bad thing, imo.

Sometimes, some people are just broken, though, and there's no more those parents can do about that than the parents of mentally handicapped kid can do about the handicap. They both do the best they can and try, even knowing the results will largely be ineffectual.

I read an article in Game Informer magazine regarding violence in video games and its effect on those that play them. They were talking about a group that is researching this sort of thing (I don't recall the group's name as I don't have the article in front of me). The interesting thing that they are starting to find is that video games in general, whether violent or not, actually have the opposite effect than what most "experts" claim. They have seen that the aggression level in gamers decreases as they play video games.

The point is people will always try to blame something and for some reason it is always tv/movies and videogames. What about bunnies? Why are bunnies never to blame?

I agree, every single person I've slaughtered online has made me less violent and I have actually reached a point where violence I inflict makes me physically ill.

"4) RESPONSIBILITY: If your kid has that much trouble distinguishing DOOM from reality, maybe you aren't doing your job as a parent!? "

-> I think parents can not control every exterior factor that might influence their son/daughter. We need to be careful, even for adults. We can't mind control people after all... lol

cbean85 -> I think it depends on people. Maybe we will see things change, but the problem that can appear is that experts can be bought. By fox news, guns lobby , by video games industries. In climate problems , those things happen. It can happen in the study of link violence/video games also.

America needs to take of terrorist that are their own then look elsewhere, far to many shooting incident has happend this year, and just saying those kids are probably crazy doesnt make the situatiion less lethal

I can understand people being critical of my "responsibility" bit and I cringe at the thought of mind control, but it seems when something nasty happens the parents can oft be heard saying "We had no clue." I really have to wonder if they were even looking/listening. As I kid I never would have gotten away with building an arsenal or planning a murder spree. As a kid I was beyond weird TRUST ME and my folks let me be that, but if they'd ever even gotten the slightest inkling of an idea that I might go nuts then they would have called me on it and they would have tried to help me. If, god forbid, I was beyond help, they would have stripped me of any means I had of inflicting my psycosis on the rest of society. Just a note: none of this applies today as the shooter was an adult.

Game Informer have obviously never joined a random game of L4D2 where there's some fuckwit closing the saferoom door on everyone in one of those endless-swarm events.

Edit : grammar!

As long as the US "guns r great" lobby, is as well funded and powerful as it is, politicians there will be too scared shitless to antagonise them, consequently nothing will be done about tragic events like this, (aurora/columbine etc).

Nothing left to say other than offer my commiserations to all people affected by these events.