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PlayStation (Games) Entertainment Games

Highway Shooters Claim To Emulate GTA 313

Posted by simoniker from the stupidity-is-stupidity-no-matter-what-excuse dept.
Thanks to Yahoo! for their story regarding teenage stepbrothers who randomly fired at cars on a Tennessee freeway, killing one person and wounding another, and told police they were inspired by Grand Theft Auto's sniper mode. According to the piece: "From a wooded area near their home at the Smoky Mountain Country Club, the boys fired a .22-caliber rifle up to 25 times through a break in the trees at cars driving along Interstate 40 about two miles east of Newport. They said they were bored and decided to shoot at tractor-trailer rigs, just like in the video game, 'Grand Theft Auto.'" According to this IOL/Reuters article, "Prosecutor Al Schmutzer told Judge Ben Strand that the boys told authorities they were mimicking the video game by trying to hit the sides of passing trucks."
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Highway Shooters Claim To Emulate GTA More

Highway Shooters Claim To Emulate GTA

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  • Sounds familiar (Score:5, Funny)

    by BoomerSooner ( 308737 ) on Friday August 29, 2003 @08:03AM (#6823151) Homepage Journal
    I did this as a kid (with a BB Gun) and that was before GTA. I guess I can blame it on the Duke Boys.

  • ohhhh... (Score:5, Funny)

    by cabra771 ( 197990 ) <<cabra771> <at> <yahoo.com>> on Friday August 29, 2003 @08:04AM (#6823157) Homepage
    so that's what you're suppose to do in the game...
    no wonder I suck playing GTA3.

    • Re:ohhhh... (Score:3, Funny)

      by bamurphy ( 614233 )
      Yeah, its a good thing they didnt take a bunch of hookers out to the park and beat them with baseball bats!
      • There's no better way to get stamina!! Don't forget to kill her too or she gets to keep your money.
        Sound asinine? That's how the game works.
        • Stealing an ambulance seems to work better and quicker. Or, finding a heart icon.

          Honestly, I've gotten 100% on both GTA3 and GTA: Vice City, and I've never used the hooker trick in the course of the game. I used it once or twice in GTA3, just to see how it worked, and probably a half dozen times to show friends who wanted to know what all the hoopla was about. It's far from an intergal part of the game.

  • Funny (Score:5, Funny)

    by GigsVT ( 208848 ) on Friday August 29, 2003 @08:05AM (#6823161) Journal
    There's not any tractor-trailers in GTA.

    Sorry Mr. Prosecutor, got to come up with something better than that.

    • Re:Funny (Score:2, Informative)

      by Zardoz44 ( 687730 )
      Well, there's this: LineRunner [thegtaplace.com] Which is close enough. Plus some large vans and firetrucks.
    • Sorry Mr. Prosecutor, got to come up with something better than that
      Hackwork defenses are the job of the defense attorney. The prosecutor would be the one dopesmacking the GTA argument.

  • So what are you saying? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by wbav ( 223901 ) <Guardian.Bob+Slashdot@gmail.com> on Friday August 29, 2003 @08:05AM (#6823170) Homepage Journal
    We need to make a game where people jump off a cliff and kill them selves to finally clean out the shallow end of the gene pool? Sheesh. People will say anything these days to shift blame from themselves.
    • The real question is, who was dumb enough to give these kids a gun.

      They should receive the same punishment, because through their action/inaction they helped kill this driver.

      • Re:So what are you saying? (read more) (Score:5, Insightful)

        by lafiel ( 667810 ) on Friday August 29, 2003 @08:23AM (#6823355) Homepage
        The real question is, who was dumb enough to give these kids a gun.

        Probably the parents were pathetic and irresponsible people as well. All this blame on games is pretty stupid, why don't you blame on the people that couldn't teach the kids that a game is a game, and shouldn't be tried in the real world?

        You'd think these kids had some sort of teachings that taught them "shooting a truck with a gun is bad". It seems glaringly obvious the parents are at fault here, and people are once again looking for the scapegoat to blame.

        Get some responsible parents, stop blaming games/tv/(insert someone else here).

        • The parents are always responsible for their children's actions. The media is not going to report on this because irresponisble parents are not going to want to watch or read anything that tells them that they are bad parents. You don't want to potentially alienate your audience. It's much easier to blame it on movies and videogames.
        • It seems glaringly obvious the parents are at fault here, and people are once again looking for the scapegoat to blame.

          Actually, the parents and the community that family lives in are at fault. Cliques in school can reinforce bizarre and counter-intuitive ideas about morality, teachers often don't keep the kids stimulated while managing their "day care", and other adults in the community may simply be bad role models. For example, if a neighbor resorts to baiting a deer to his back yard and shooting it
          • OK. So it's the kid's fault. No wait, it was the game's fault. No wait, it was the parents fault. Oh no, wait! It was actually the community that the parents lived in!

            How long can we keep passing the buck?

            When people shoot cars, it's thir fault, full stop.
            • How long can we keep passing the buck?

              I wasn't passing the buck at all. A community raises everyone within it. The parents ultimately have the most influence and bear the brunt of the responsibility, but every member of a community influences everyone else in it. This cannot be ignored.

              Basically, it can be argued that humans are going through an adolescence of civilization right now. We still have prisons, personal freedom is still in question, there is still corruption in the government, etc. It wi
        • Yes, I agree that the parents probably weren't doing their job. But at some point you have to blame kids for what kids do. These weren't little 6-year-olds with no conception of the permanence of death, or the lethality of bullets. They were teenagers. They knew what they were doing, and they did it.
          You say "people are once again looking for the scapegoat to blame" yet yourself blame the parents. Sounds like scapegoating to me. The blame for this rests on the shoulders of the perpetrators.
      • That is such bullshit. For years, kids had .22 rifles for recreation and sport, and no one thought that it was a crime to give their son a gun after he was 11 or 12 and old enough to know how to use it responsibly.

        It's all about teaching the child proper respect for the firearm, and supervising them until you know they have it.

        If you wonder why so many people are growing up to be irresponsible people, you might look at how people like you seek to protect them for having any real responsibility for anythi

    • Re:So what are you saying? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by reynaert ( 264437 ) on Friday August 29, 2003 @08:14AM (#6823254)
      We need to make a game where people jump off a cliff and kill them selves to finally clean out the shallow end of the gene pool? Yep. See Stair Dismount [jet.ro] and Truck Dismount [jet.ro].
      • Actually, I think Lemmings would be more appropriate. For the truly evil, just send them off a cliff without turning one into a blocker.....
        • I always appreciated the "Lemming Nuke-Drilling Co." approach. Two blockers on either sides of the lemming dropper, wait until they're all out, then nuke away and see how deep you can go.

          Those poor little Lemmings. Oh well.
        • Just for those of you who still don't know, lemmings don't go around jumping off cliffs and committing suicide. You can read all the details at snopes [snopes2.com]. Basically, the footage was staged.

          That aside, what's done is done, I want to see the White Wilderness episode with the lemming herding. I wonder if filming it was something like heding cats?

          pk

    • We need to make a game where people jump off a cliff and kill them selves to finally clean out the shallow end of the gene pool? Sheesh. People will say anything these days to shift blame from themselves.

      Well, the story line isn't perfect.. But I think it's close enough... Try using Stair Dismount [jet.ro] it should fit the bill well enough...

  • I was like this once (Score:5, Funny)

    by one9nine ( 526521 ) on Friday August 29, 2003 @08:06AM (#6823178) Journal
    When I was nine, I wound up in the hospital with three broken fingers becuase I tried to imitate Super Mario by punching bricks that were floating in the sky. Those were the days.

  • It's rated mature... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Basje ( 26968 ) <bas@bloemsaat.org> on Friday August 29, 2003 @08:08AM (#6823195) Homepage
    The ESRB rating for GTA3 and VC is 17+. What were these kids doing with a game that they shouldn't be playing? They should sue the parents for negligence.

    • Re:It's rated mature... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by djiin ( 113861 )
      More to the point, what were these kids doing with access to a rifle?
      Don't get me wrong, I am not about to launch an anti-gun tirade, but like any tool it should be used responsibly and until you can show good judgement in your actions you shouldn't be using them unsupervised

    • The ESRB rating for GTA3 and VC is 17+. What were these kids doing with a game that they shouldn't be playing? They should sue the parents for negligence.

      Or maybe they should sue games publishers and developers for actively fighting any attempts to make retailers obey the rating "recommendations". Industry representatives and trade associations claim the ratings system works but then they go to court to make sure the ratings aren't legally enforced. Hmm, why is that?

  • idiot box (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 29, 2003 @08:10AM (#6823212)
    "Prosecutor Al Schmutzer told Judge Ben Strand that the boys told authorities they were mimicking the video game by trying to hit the sides of passing trucks."

    Yeah, and he probably forget to mention to the judge that due to the lack of parental attention and involvement in these boys lives, they grew up to be anti-social and depressed kids who deep-down really just wanted somebody to pay attention to them while their parents sat on the couch, drank beer, and worshipped the idiot box.

  • Hit the trailer? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Jayjr ( 696035 ) on Friday August 29, 2003 @08:15AM (#6823276)
    Now if they were imitating a game by shooting at tractor trailers and trying to hit the trailer (those of which ther are none of in GTA3/GTA:VC) how the hell did they hit people. They must not play many FPS's either if they cant hit the broad side of a truck without hitting a person in another car ... This is just what the Games=Violence activists need, more ammunition (no pun intended)

    • They must not play many FPS's either if they cant hit the broad side of a truck without hitting a person in another car ...

      Yes. Because we all know that game physics and real life physics are identical.

      If there's anything that our office sessions of Quake II taught me, it's that the best way to move about in any situation is to constantly run while incessantly jumping like a rabbit 6 feet in the air.

      I don't wan't to blame the motivation on the game either, I think it's just a cheap excuse ... but to c

  • Yeah... (Score:3, Funny)

    by EABird ( 554070 ) on Friday August 29, 2003 @08:15AM (#6823278)
    Maybe they should outlaw tractor-trailer rigs. That will fix this little problem.

  • If I had only had the chance... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Perseid ( 660451 ) on Friday August 29, 2003 @08:16AM (#6823285)
    Kids these days are awfully lucky. When I was a kid, we actually got blamed for what we did. If I'd had excuses like this childhood would have been a hell of a lot more fun.
    • Before you knee-jerk at this one, remember that it is the prosecutor who is explaining their actions here. They are being prosecuted for their crime. So yes, they are being blamed. However, it is in society's interests to look at their influences as well as sending them to jail. Media has influence. You cannot make a game that will be played by children, and hope that children will not be affected. That is not how children work.
      • Valid point. Children are influenced by their surroundings. Media, friends, teachers, parents. In the case of a child with a gun shooting at a vehicle, it's obvious the parent's did not do enough to either a) keep the gun out of the child's hands, or b) teach the child how to use the gun responsibly.

        You cannot make a game that will be played by children, and hope that children will not be affected. That is not how children work.

        And, you cannot have a child and hope that child will not be influenced

      • First, these 'children' shouldn't have been playing GTA3. It was designed for a mature audience.

        Second, which should make point 1 moot: Did you watch Bowling For Columbine? If you haven't, I strongly suggest you do before you start deciding what actually influences children to do these things.

        Kids are smart, way smarter than they are given credit for. Kids read every day how 'Violent Video Games Cause Children To Do Horrible Things'.
        Gee, I wonder why when called on their actions they spout out: 'Hey, the

  • even more important thing about this article... (Score:4, Funny)

    by boomerny ( 670029 ) on Friday August 29, 2003 @08:23AM (#6823353)
    I was unaware that Tennessee was even a state still. Damn NY public schools.

  • yeah and i decided to emulate three musketeers.. (Score:4, Funny)

    by gl4ss ( 559668 ) on Friday August 29, 2003 @08:33AM (#6823429) Homepage Journal
    and went on a fencing spree into the city and also had sex with anything i saw..

    seriously, geez...

    i don't remember shooting tractor rigs in gta though..

  • So? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jarran ( 91204 ) on Friday August 29, 2003 @08:41AM (#6823510)
    I think the sad facts are, idiots and psychos will always find something bad to emulate. If there were no games, they would been inspired to shoot at people by a movie. If there were no movies, they would have been inspired by the Washington sniper, or the US government.

    If someone doesn't know the difference between fantasy and reality then obviously playing computer games and watching TV could cause them to do something bad. But the problem is with them, not with the game or film.
    • You have a good point, but you infer that people are inherently idiots or psychos which isn't always the case.

      You hit on the point that these people don't know the difference between fantasy and reality, which is close.

      In my opinion though, the problem is that reality, especially the one that the media stuffs down our throat whether we like it or not, is quite often way more brutal and horrific than fantasy. So then how do you teach someone the difference between a TV show where someone is murdered, and a
  • Ok... let's be frank. I believe in Personal responsibility. If I do something dumb, I'm supposed to pay. I believe that if I smoke, I get cancer, I died, I asked for it... but let's assume for a minute that the companies should live under the same rule.

    For smoking, this means the following. The fabric industry is the cause of a very small amount of publicly spent medical costs per year. The smoking industry is (indirectly) the cause of the majority of medical expenses per year. However, both the fab
    • games don't kill people(people have seen violence 'all the time', or heard in fireplace stories, for the past x thousand years).

      however.. guns do kill people.

      or more correctly, irresponsible behauvior with a gun kills people(where the f did they get the gun??).

      or more simple, shooting someone with a gun can/will result in death.

      where did they get the gun, why weren't they educated enough to NOT SHOOT SOMEWHERE WHERE PEOPLE ARE? the gta excuse is just an excuse(there's no trailer-tractors in it) they de
  • And anti-videogame attourny Jack Thompson rears his ugly head in 5...4...3...2...

  • This is absurd... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by HaloZero ( 610207 ) <protodekaNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Friday August 29, 2003 @09:08AM (#6823761) Homepage
    Point 1) There are No Tractor-Trailers on the roads, for shooting in either Grand Theft Auto III or Grand Theft Auto Vice City. Looking into previous revisions of the game, which don't have the aforementioned 'Sniper Mode', the closest you can get to a Tractor Trailer is a snub-nosed fuel tanker truck.

    Point 2) Where did they get the gun? Notice how everyone is 100% ready to jump on the video game... my question... WHERE THE FUCK DID THEY GET THE GUN? I mean, of course the gun isn't dangerous. No way. Guns never kill people. That's why cops and 'sportsmen' carry around RAZOR SHARP DVDs.

    It's fucking obscene. I can't wait to see what happens to such good titles (and yes, you have to admit, even if you hate the content with a passion, the games are done really well..)
  • oh - well let them go then. sorry, big misunderstanding.

    • Actually it'll probably end up being that people once again start flailing their arms around and going on about how violent video games are bad for anybody. Nevermind that these kids somehow attained a freaking rifle and nobody seemed to notice until they started shooting at cars on the interstate.

      The closest thing to a tractor-trailer in GTA3 was one of the 18-wheeler cabs that drove around. IIRC there's nothing like that in Vice City.

      For about a 3 month period I did nothing but play GTA:VC after work un

  • Get Bored - Shoot People ? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by FileNotFound ( 85933 ) on Friday August 29, 2003 @09:11AM (#6823786) Homepage Journal
    The best line by far is :"I didn't want to hurt anyone"

    You got to be shitting me. You take a .22 rifle and shoot at cars...wtf are you trying to do?

    If you're shooting a rifle anywhere but at the shooting range, you're shooting to kill as far as I know.

    Even in GTA, you only ever shot to either blow up the truck or kill the driver.

    It's absurd that anyone believes their bullshit.
    • Hey sometimes I like to shoot cans in my backyard!

      Everybody wants to blame something else for their poor behavior. Their parents, their video games, their DNA. Who the fuck cares why you did it? Does it even matter? You try to kill people, you go directly to jail, do not pass go. Learn from your (stupid-ass dumb-shit tard-fuck) mistake, and when you get out, try not to make the same mistake again.
      • Ah, so you're the asshole I have to listen to blasting away in his backyard all weekend, oh how I love listening to that.

        I sure do hope your backyard is big enough that there is no possible chance of a stray bullet hitting anything not on your property, in all directions.

        I also really hope nothing ever ricochets and accidentaly hits a family member, maybe a child hiding just off to the side of your targets behind a bush out of curiosity or something.

        If not, you're at LEAST as bad as these kids, except fo

  • What if.. (Score:2, Funny)

    by rylin ( 688457 )
    What if I start a bunch of really sick and twisted lawsuits against major companies, and loose in court,
    can I say I was inspired by SCO and blame it on insanity and get away with it?

  • A nudge in the right direction? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Andy Smith ( 55346 ) on Friday August 29, 2003 @09:20AM (#6823857)
    From the linked article:
    The boys wrote letters to apologize to the victims' families that were read in court Thursday.

    "I didn't want to hurt anyone," Joshua wrote. "This will stick with me the rest of my life."
    I don't think a 13-year-old would write that without prompting.

    Sure it's conceivable for a 13-year-old to have a concept of "the rest of my life", and for him to imagine the guilt he will feel over that length of time, but could that maturity and self-awareness really exist in the sort of kid who shoots at cars because he did it in a computer game?

    Methinks an adult had a hand in writing that letter.
  • Long ago several girls claimed their behavior was inspired by an old slave "Witch." Behold the past is present, let the "witch-hunts" begin anew.
  • I now have a sudden urge to fight any green-suited Hyrulians, scantily-clad purple-sknned woman with chain swords and Elvis impersonators with a nunchuck.

    Seriously though, this is just sick. Not only that, but personally the whole "GTA made me do it!" just feels like a lame excuse. I've played through and beat GTA3, and I have absolutely no urge to run out with a sniper rifle. Nor do any of my friends who have played it.
  • I read 'Oedipus the King' for school, and I killed dad and had sex with mom. Next semester we are reading Hamlet.

  • A culture of no accountability? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pmz ( 462998 ) on Friday August 29, 2003 @09:45AM (#6824111) Homepage
    Personal responsibility and accountability is perhaps the most important thing that people can teach their kids. However, it seems that popular culture is increasing making it appear that people are rewarded for lying, cheating, killing, bribery, getting something for no effort, etc. Take Enron, WorldCom, the current Republican administration, reality television, nationalized health care proposals, Grand Theft Auto (to be on topic, of course), public schools, the Earned Income Credit, short-term cash loans, pre-approved credit, six-year car loans, no-money-down mortgages, rent subsidies, many organized religions and labor unions, student loans, professional sports, soft drink commercials, and so forth.

    People need to be much more cynical than they are. They need to realize that both large government (whether Republican or Democrat flavored) and large corporations do not act in the interests of individual people. They are much too wealthy, powerful, and corrupt to care. They are their own means and their own ends. People need to stand up for themselves in the midst of this, vote their conscience with both their wallets and their ballots, and be prepared to sacrifice materialistic prestige and social popularity in favor of knowing they made the right decision and did the best they could. Corporations and government need to become more modest and come back to realizing that they exist because of and for the People, not the other way around. It seems that every day the opposite of this is actually happening, and, ultimately, people will exist miserably in a rusty machine of regulation and consumption and live in complete fear of their creditors and their own government.

  • The question is... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by gamgee5273 ( 410326 ) on Friday August 29, 2003 @09:46AM (#6824120) Journal
    Now, let's assume the kids aren't lying through their teeth (I don't remember taking potshots at cars in GTA while standing...maybe if I had a large weapon...but to each his own) about the game influencing them to do this: Who let the kids get access to a gun, but who let the kids get access to GTA?!?

    From the article: William Buckner, 16, and Joshua Buckner, who turns 14 Sunday, pleaded guilty to reckless homicide, reckless endangerment and aggravated assault.

    A 13-year-old and a 16-year-old. Now, I think the argument could be made that a 16-year-old MIGHT be mature enough to play GTA (obviously not Billy-boy, though), but WTF was a 13-year-old doing playing that game?!? To add on to that, why have I seen kids - young kids - in game stores getting M-rated games? My wife and I watched a 9- or 10-year-old kid and his mother buy Vice City earlier this year, and the mother asked him if he wanted the strategy guide! Obviously that's one smart little kid...

    Now, don't get me wrong: I love the GTA series, but I'm 30. I wouldn't have let me at 13 play GTA, and I sure as hell know my mother wouldn't have, either. At 13, I couldn't handle that game, I know that.

    Where the hell are these kids' parents? Is Tennessee going to prosecute those idiots (I hope!)?

    • ...and the sicken thing is that the parents either dont care, dont know, or dont care to know.

      Last Christmas I worked at Best Buy, selling consoles and console games. 9/10 parents didnt know about the ESPR rating system. 5/10 were shockedthat there was one, and that the game their kid wanted was rated "M" because of sex, drugs, violence, murder, life-like gore. 8/10 partents would putthe game down and not let their kid buy it. But 2/10 parents were like really....I'll get it anyway.
      • Last Christmas I worked at Best Buy, selling consoles and console games. 9/10 parents didnt know about the ESPR rating system. 5/10 were shocked that there was one, and that the game their kid wanted was rated "M" because of sex, drugs, violence, murder, life-like gore. 8/10 partents would putthe game down and not let their kid buy it. But 2/10 parents were like really....I'll get it anyway.

        You took the time to tell parents about this stuff and Best Buy let you keep your job? I'm impressed. Most of these

  • So then they should get.. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Inoshiro ( 71693 ) on Friday August 29, 2003 @09:58AM (#6824267) Homepage
    25 charges of public mischief.
    24 charges of attempted murder.
    1 charge of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill.
    1 charge of murder one (since they clearly planned it).

    The statement that they were inspired by GTA is irrelevant. In the 16th century, some Catholic nuns started to walk around with heavy pelvic thrusting all the time. They claimed it was because Satan had visited their convent and ravaged them in both holes with his evil, barbed, bifurcated penis. Did Satan really do that? No, not any more than GTA is responsible for this.

    An action is not the same as an idea -- it takes a diseased mind to put an idea like, "it's fun to kill people" into practice.
    • In the 16th century, some Catholic nuns started to walk around with heavy pelvic thrusting all the time. They claimed it was because Satan had visited their convent and ravaged them in both holes with his evil, barbed, bifurcated penis.

      Reference? (Seriously.)
  • I tried the same excuse when I bit a guy's finger off and jumped to my fiery death in a pit of magma. I'd read about it in a book and it seemed cool.

    But seriously folks gun control is this issue here, not video games, or movies, or the sulky, moody, violent, careless, callous and fundamentally stupid nature of teenage boys.

    America has a lot of such boys and a lot of guns. Together they'll cause deaths. They'll never be rid of the boys so they'll have to do something about the guns.

    If they have to be prie

  • I hope... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ivanmarsh ( 634711 ) on Friday August 29, 2003 @10:10AM (#6824388)
    I hope when I finally do something stupid and evil that there is something popular that I can blame it on.

    Ehh...
    Doom made me do it...
    GTA made me do it...
    Satan speaking through my dog made me do it...

    Further proof that there should only be one punishment for violent crime; an industrial meat grinder.

  • Idiots. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by KevinIsOwn ( 618900 )
    You can't blame video games for sheer stupidity.

  • Having the gun wasn't the reason (Score:3, Insightful)

    by NaugaHunter ( 639364 ) on Friday August 29, 2003 @10:47AM (#6824772)
    I can tell a lot of readers have lived in/near big cities most of their lives. A .22 is a small caliber rifle, and lots of people have them. To give them the (marginal) benefit of the doubt, it was the probably older kid's and meant for hunting. These were a couple of bored kids tired of shooting squirrels or stop signs and decided to shoot at moving targets, and are now (hopefully) horrified by what happened. (That's giving them the benefit of the doubt obviously - they may only care that they got caught, not that they hurt anyone.) The mere fact that they had a rifle doesn't mean anything; the fact that they seemed to think shooting at vehicles with people in them was ok does mean something.

    GTA is a smoke screen, and probably came from leading questions from the prosecutor hoping to get a name for himself or to shift blame - there is no point in GTA where you randomly shoot at trucks. You shoot at people, so if they were emulating the game then they knew full well that people could die.

    The sad part is that the 'juvy' distinction should be lifted for homicides. These murdering kids will be out at 19 each, and aren't going to be able to do anything besides turn to crime.

    • Yep (Score:2)

      by Synn ( 6288 )
      I had a 22 rifle when I was 14 or 15, my best friend had one when he was 16. We sure as shit never shot at anyone or even towards where anyone might be.

      It's kind of funny but before we had our 22's we had pellet and BB guns. Now those we sort of abused, shot out lights, stop signs, whatever. But our 22's were "real" guns and we treated them with respect.

      • My cousin's oldest kid is (I believe) 16, or turning 16 soon.

        He has full access to all of the guns (whether shotgun or rifle) on my aunt's farm, and goes hunting on his own often.

        That said, he's extremely responsible with the guns. Nerf weapons... YIKES. But real firearms, he's *damned careful* with.

        Yes, they live out in the country. Kids with guns are a normal thing in many parts of this country, and it's normally not considered a problem.

  • In other news: (Score:5, Funny)

    by AzraelKans ( 697974 ) on Friday August 29, 2003 @10:52AM (#6824811) Homepage
    A 40 year old man was arrested in Chicago this morning:

    "He started acting weird" mentioned his coworkers, Timothy Arcade 40 year old, went and bought a bunch of aspirins and throw them in the floor across all the cubicles, then he proceeded to eat them while making a "snacka" "snacka" sound effect, several coworkers and security officers tried to stop him, but he elluded them succesfully, in his way he also grabbed some cherries that were in the middle of the office for no apparent reason.
    When the police finally arrived and arrested the man, he stated he was just trying to emulate pacman after hearing this the policeman let the poor man go and went to burn down namco's office on chicago.

    Later that afternoon , the police had to arrest Timothy again, after eating a large Pill in one of the corner cubicles he actually attemped to eat the coworkers that were chasing him.

    In other news some other 40 year old, was arrested yesterday for soliciting but he was let go when he confessed he was just emulating Leisure suit larry. The police is looking for sierra's offices to burn them down.

    VideoGames: the best way get you off the hook... always!

  • hey, don't knock it till you try it (Score:3, Funny)

    by wanderers_id ( 682230 ) * on Friday August 29, 2003 @11:07AM (#6824945)
    I'm currently a free man! And I owe it to this kind of defense! I was one of the first to download that Postal 2 demo... and stabing people in the face with a shovel, covering them in gas, then lighting them on fire was the most fun I've had in years! I had been doing that for like an hour a day... every day. Well, when there was a power outage and I couldn't get my daily dose of stabity death, I took my shovel and gas and headed into the next subdivision.

    Long story short, I'm free because I was "insane" and needed "help". And blaming the game helped me stay out of prison for 3 counts of murder.

    For anyone who is still pending litigation and wants to go full-on for the insanity plead, fire your lawyer and defend yourself... go for the chewbacca defense. It adds a special bit of believeability.

  • The Cost of Liberty (Score:2, Insightful)

    by jazman_777 ( 44742 )
    Once in a great while, a couple of nuts raised by twats go off and kill somebody. Obviously it's a very rare case. Or should we try to make it impossible? Oh, this is America, we're working for a zero-risk world. See you in Utopia!

  • Only in America... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 29, 2003 @12:28PM (#6825787)
    ...can a pair of stupid kids play a game, get a gun, and start shooting people... ...and have people immediately jump on the fact that they played a game instead of HAVING A FUCKING GUN!

  • Where'd they get the gun? (Score:3, Funny)

    by mmdurrant ( 638055 ) on Friday August 29, 2003 @12:44PM (#6825988)

    Detective: Now tell me sonny, where'd you get the gun
    Kid: I already told you 3 f'in times. There was this floating skull thing behind a bush, I picked it up. A voice in the sky said, "Kill Frenzy!" like that announcer guy on "The Price is Right". All of the sudden I had this sniper rifle and the urge to kill 20 people in less than a minute. Was that wrong?

  • They didn't emulate anything (Score:4, Funny)

    by M3wThr33 ( 310489 ) on Friday August 29, 2003 @02:42PM (#6827469) Homepage
    Everybody knows in GTA3 you can only fire uzi's out your car window, and unless you are doing a job, you can't pick up anyone else.

    Amateurs.(Vice City was in the past, doesn't count)

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