Connecticut Groups Cancels Plan to Destroy Violent Games 350
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.'"
Re:now they can concentrate on ignoring mentally i (Score:5, Interesting)
Disclaimer: Lifetime NRA member(it was half price!).
I'm currently pissed at the NRA for pointing the finger at violent media, though they had a point if they'd restricted it to the *news*. Specifically, the making of the shooter into a celebrity, the digging into their life, etc...
I also happen to think our support structure for the mentally ill is horribly broken and needs to be fixed. End the war on drugs, actually combat poverty, treat the sick and we'd be more like Switzerland - awash with guns, but very little crime, not just 'little gun crime'.
Re:now they can concentrate on ignoring mentally i (Score:1, Interesting)
There's a local NRA backed gun club/firing range that I frequent for target practice. It has all kinds of targets depicting people... From what I gather, this is not uncommon.
Of course they point at other sources, they'd hate for people to see how much they really promote it, themselves. They glorify killing, thinly veiled under 'self defense' and 'anti-terrorism' motifs.
Re:now they can concentrate on ignoring mentally i (Score:5, Interesting)
Disclaimer: Lifetime NRA member(it was half price!).
I am a gun owner, but I would never join the NRA, and I am disgusted that they are so often considered to represent all gun owners. They have taken positions on drug prohibition, censorship, "precrime", and other issues that are appalling. They may be pro-gun, but they are certainly not pro-freedom. I believe in the 2nd amendment, but I believe in the rest of our constitution as well.
Re:Similarity to gun buybacks? (Score:5, Interesting)
I can't really take issue with the program as they would have implemented it.
But you should take issue with it, because it is anti-science, and it is diverting the public's attention from the real issues. There is NO evidence that violent video games cause real life violence, and there is at least a correlation between video games and lower violence. This may be because teenagers are spending more time at home playing games, and less time on the street, joining gangs and getting in trouble. They would probably be doing more good if they handed out games rather than collecting them. If they are allowed to do this without protest, people will assume that their pseudo-science is actually legitimate.
Re:now they can concentrate on ignoring mentally i (Score:5, Interesting)
I typically shoot at lined/bullseye targets.
I don't need to get off killing a pretend person, I just want to see how accurate I am.
Re:now they can concentrate on ignoring mentally i (Score:2, Interesting)
Despite the many gun owners and lobbying (bribing) NRA group, self-defense hasn't prevented a single massacre
Well first of all, it's not a massacre if it's been stopped.
Second, it's illegal for me as a gun owner to carry a gun on school property, so you've artificially limited the data set.
Third, I don't have enough people in my home to qualify as a "massacre" even if someone killed everybody in the building.
Fourth, you should probably educate yourself on exactly what an "assault rifle" and an "assault weapon" really are, how they are legally defined, and notice that most people use the terms to mean the same thing when they are not.
As for the actual STORY we're discussing, I've seen kids beat each other up over a game of fucking Tiddley-Winks, so I suspect any link between violence and games has more to do with competition getting out of hand and lack of parental involvement than the actual material in the game.
Re:now they can concentrate on ignoring mentally i (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:now they can concentrate on ignoring mentally i (Score:5, Interesting)
Despite the many gun owners and lobbying (bribing) NRA group, self-defense hasn't prevented a single massacre
But it has prevented ~300,000 individual massacres, rapes, robberies, etc. Per year. That's based on various poll-based research efforts into defensive gun use. (The noteworthy studies seem to range from 80k to 2.6 million, but ~300k or so seemed most credible to me when I was doing some light research into the issue.)
On top of the known cases (which, admittedly, we don't know exactly how they would have turned out in the absence of a firearm), the implicit threat of firearm availability has probably saved many more lives, such as women who fear their violent exes or homeowners in crime-prone areas. And of course, the implicit threat of protracted civil revolt is a deterrent to cases of outright tyranny (i.e., Nazi Germany, communist China, Soviet Russia) that have a habit of killing millions, not just twenty.
Re:now they can concentrate on ignoring mentally i (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Best publicity stunt yet. (Score:3, Interesting)