Connecticut Groups Cancels Plan to Destroy Violent Games

An anonymous reader writes with an update to an earlier story about a group wanting to destroy your violent video games. "Southington, a town in Connecticut, has canceled its plans to collect and destroy violent games, stating that it has already succeeded in raising attention." Perhaps the real reason: "Backed by the Southington Chamber of Commerce, SouthingtonSOS originally planned to offer citizens $25 gift certificates in exchange for their violent games, films, and CDs, which the group would collect for 'permanent disposal.'"

now they can concentrate on ignoring mentally ill

[Dan667]

not helping the mentally ill can be their new top priority.

Re:now they can concentrate on ignoring mentally i

[interkin3tic]

You might also be pissed at the NRA for polarizing the issue so badly. By refusing to compromise on anything at all, they really invite criticism. I'm a liberal. I really don't want to take away your guns. Hearing them constantly bleat that I'm out to get them makes their side look bad. Were I less logical, I might question the sanity of that whole side of the debate.

Fortunately, I am more logical than that. Unfortunately, many people are not, and many liberals I've talked to are, if anything, driven to be anti-gun because of how ferocious the NRA is.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Real Psychologist: This is Moral Panic

[davydagger]

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/422728/20130110/sandy-hook-violent-games-biden-southington-censorship.htm

"Ferguson said that destroying games carried a "real risk":

"Don't get me wrong, I am fully aware you are trying to do what you think is best," said Ferguson "but there is real risk in focusing people's attention on the wrong thing, as well as contributing to historical patterns of 'moral panic' that tend to surround new media.

"I'm very appreciative of the sincerity of your group, but at the same time I've been concerned about some of your public statements linking video games to bullying and youth aggression which do not accurately reflect the science," Ferguson continued. "As a scientist, when we see that someone is saying something that isn't scientifically true, ethically we're supposed to take some time to try and speak with them and point that out to them...I've done a number of peer-reviewed articles myself on the topic, and have found no evidence linking video game violence to bullying or any other forms of youth aggression or violence.""

Re:now they can concentrate on ignoring mentally i

[nedlohs]

How do you know? Do you have a parallel universe machine that lets you see what would have happened in all the cases in which someone did use a gun in self defense if they had not done so?

Ten seconds of looking gives me:
http://www.ktvn.com/Global/story.asp?S=8378732&nav=menu549_2 [ktvn.com]
        - man starts shooting in a bar containing 300 people. 2 people die before he is shot by a civilian. Somehow you know that even though he was reloading when he was shot he wasn't going kill enough more people for you to call it a massacre?

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/12/10/colorado.shootings/index.html [cnn.com]
      - man has already killed 4 and is shot by a a lady who was volunteering as security at her church (so not quite a random bystander, but still a civilian carrying their private weapon). You know he wasn't going to kill anyone else, he brought 1000 rounds of ammunition for no reason at all.

Re:now they can concentrate on ignoring mentally i

[oodaloop]

Perhaps you are referring to fully-automatic weapons? Semi-automatic assault rifle style weapons are incredibly easy to purchase throughout the US.

Re:now they can concentrate on ignoring mentally i

[TheAxeMaster]

An assault rifle by definition has selectable fire, e.g. the ability to go fully automatic. And are already illegal (except for the government and certain gun manufacturers). The federal permit is required to own guns with barrels shorter than 16" that are not a handguns. What the recent proposed legislation wants to ban is things that merely look like assault rifles as the OP said.

Re:now they can concentrate on ignoring mentally i

[AlphaWolf_HK]

Murders are committed about twice as often by unarmed people (e.g. strangulation, kicking, punching) as they are with rifles. Murders are committed with blunt objects (hammers, clubs) about 20% more than they are with rifles. Automobile fatalities occur at a rate of three times that of firearms homicides.

Clearly gun control will solve this problem, right?

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/01/03/FBI-More-People-Killed-With-Hammers-and-Clubs-Each-Year-Than-With-Rifles [breitbart.com]

The "you're more likely to kill x with a gun" arguments always fall on their face when you take a closer look.

For example, a woman using her weapon against an abusive boyfriend is far more likely to happen than her using it against a robber, mainly because a robber is less likely to attack her than her boyfriend (the robber prefers to wait until nobody is home.) There, she used it against somebody she knew. But is there anything wrong with it? Absolutely not, that scenario goes in FAVOR of owning firearms, but the gun control lobby instead lumps it into a statistic going against owning them.

This would also apply to e.g. a relative or neighbor attempting to abduct one of your kids. Your neighbor is somebody you know. Women and kids are far more likely to be sexually assaulted by somebody they know than a complete stranger. Your house is far more likely to be burglarized by somebody you know than a complete stranger.

Have you ever wondered why that statistic you throw around doesn't say anything about justifiable homicide? It's because the gun control lobby wants people to blindly follow them. Take ALL statistics with a grain of salt because they almost never tell the entire story, they're often thrown out with the sole purpose of persuasion, and therefore are inherently biased.

Even the above statistics I threw up above are biased, because they only include rifles (but to be fair, rifles are what the politicians are trying to ban.)