Columbine and Sandy Hook, and the tragedy associated to them, shared a common denominator often targeted by the media, violent video games. However, the bias of the media failed to bring attention to other more prominent factors. These video games do not spur aggression as media turns a blind eye to more telling elements such as mental health issues and bullying.
As the level of violence in video games increases, so does the level of concern for those who play them. Some people are quick to blame school shootings on games just because the kid played a “violent” game. “The topic of videogames and violence can be compared to the chicken or the egg question, which came first, violent games or violent behavior”(Violence and Videogames). However most kids in mass shootings tend to have easy access to guns and are mentally unstable.
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They downplayed all less asinine factors. According to Simpson and Blevins, “In the Sandy Hook massacre, the investigators found games in the shooters family home such as: Paper Mario, Lego Star Wars ,Kingdom Hearts, Pikmin and Doom. Additionally in the Columbine massacre, the shooters played Doom over the Internet where there created a level on the game based on the Columbine high school floor plan.” That looks bad already, however if you think into it a bit the school was a neutral building that they were familiar to. Simply using a floor plan parallel to their school’s made their jobs as mapmakers
Barbara Dority author of “The Columbine Tragedy: Countering the Hysteria”, illustrates how society becomes hysterical after a teen commits a mass school shooting. The Columbine shooting occurred April 20, 1999 in Littleton, Colorado. It was caused by two adolescents Eric Harris and Dylan Kledold, collectively killed 13 students and wounded 23 others. After the Columbine shooting, society looked in every direction for who is to blame for such a horrendous act of violence caused by teens. Dority expresses how society tends to panic, and take away the youths’ pleasures such as video games, music, and the very basic rights young people have. While society posit that media or Goth music is the catalyst for teen violence, it is not the media or Goth who are to blame for teen violence.
Not one person from Sandy Hook, Connecticut ever thought this sort of event would ever happen. On December 14, 2012, 20-year-old Adam Lanza fatally shot twenty children and six adult staff members in a mass murder at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Before the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Lanza shot and killed his mother, Nancy Lanza, at his home in Newtown, Connecticut. After the shooting, Lanza successfully committed suicide before he was detained. Which left, the state, officials, and the entire country to question why Lanza would do such a horrible act of violence to innocent children and staff members of the school. Also, questioning the security of schools, and even our country. There are many conspiracies of the
Also, newspapers focused on video games being the major explanation for school shootings. However, “Some stories mentioned other explanations… but these were treated mostly as minor factors compared with video games” (pg.14). Much less attention were given to the other reasons.
The most extensive argument many have argued toward violent video games affecting one’s behavior can simply be described as that many shooters were fans of violent video games before committing the shootings. A common example people making this argument raise are the Columbine shooters, who were big fans of the video game Doom. While many believe that Doom’s excessive gore and violence led the two teens to perpetrate the mass shooting, that is not the case. What those who argue against video games fail to realize that those who commit these crimes had a history of other conditions. After many mass shootings, researchers often discovered in autopsies that the suspect had a long history of aggression or mental health problems that gaming was not responsible for. Patrick Markey and Christopher J. Ferguson, writers for US News, wrote
On April 20, 1999, tragedy struck a Colorado high school. It started out as an ordinary spring day in Jefferson County, but it soon turned horrific. “The tragedy began at approximately 11:10 a.m. on that sunny Tuesday,” (Gimpel 27), right around lunchtime. No one could have anticipated the events that would soon follow, devastating the otherwise average suburban town. The lives of the students of Columbine High School and their families would never be the same after that catastrophic day.
Few things that happen in the United State can move a whole country into action, but when they do happen it will leave an impression that cannot be easily erased. This is the case with the infamous Columbine. Columbine is a name that will forever resonate in the minds of those who have lived through and survived the bloody incident that will forever change the world. It only took Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold one day and a few weeks of careful planning to strike fear into the eyes of a whole nation and for some families bringing their happy lives tumbling down to sadness of losing a loved one. Twelve students and one teacher were killed in the deadliest massacre before Sandy Hook and they will never leave the memories of the people of
The Columbine shooting on April 20, 1999 took place in Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado and was described as one of the worst mass shootings in the U.S history and the deadliest incident of school violence. The perpetrators were two students who attended Columbine High School: Eric Harris,18, and Dylan Klebold,17. Young Harris and Klebold killed 12 students, 1 teacher and wounded more than 20 others. The weapons utilized by Harris and Klebold for the attack consisted of; a Hi-Point 995 9mm carbine with thirteen 10-round magazines, a sawed-off Savage 67H 12-gauge pump shotgun, and a sawed-off Stevens 311D double-barreled shotgun they also had 99 home made explosives and 4 knives. At approximately 11:19 am, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold started the massacre by shooting individuals outside the school. Some of the first victims were Rachel Scott, 16, shot two times (murdered) and Richard Castaldo, 17 (paralyzed) who were shot outside the school while eating lunch. Most of the killings were performed at the school’s library. After, walking around the school for less than an hour, the shooting ended after 12 p.m. with Klebold and Harris committing suicide in the school’s library.
Making it the deadliest high school massacre, and fifth deadliest school massacre in American history. The gunmen were 17 year old Dylan Klebold, and 18 year old Eric Harris dubbed the trench coat mafia. They were the only ones who knew this day would not be typical, as it was the day they had been planning and waiting for. They entered the school with many types of guns as well as several explosives, and knives. They walked in with the intention of killing every single person in the building, and had the weapons to do so. When the bombs they had planted in the cafeteria did not detonate on time due to faulty wiring their plans fell apart, and they instead walked the halls firing in the cafeteria and the library. The attack ended when both boys took their own lives roughly 49 minutes after the attack began, and law enforcement was then able to clear the school roughly 4 hours after the attack. The big unanswered question that remains is why did they do it, what were the motives behind such a tragedy. The most popular and publicized theory is that it was the result of both boys being bullied for many years by many
During the past decade, America has witnessed a rise in mass murders carried out by youth leaving parents, teachers and school officials scrambling to figure out the motive behind such attacks. The 1999 massacre at Columbine High School was a watershed moment in American history that offered, besides grief and sorrow for lost loved ones, clues as to how to prevent copycat massacres at school campuses in the future. Theories abound in the hopes of explaining why Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 12 and injured 21 others, yet very few hold true as time progresses and other massacres unfold. Modern-day schools have atmospheres that foster bullying and a divided social class system. The attacks perpetrated by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold
School shootings years ago in Paducah, Kentucky; Jonesboro, Arkansas; and Littleton Colorado, have raised the question time and time again. Do violent video games have an influence on children and their aggressive behavior? In all three of these brutal shootings, all the shooters were students who habitually played violent video games. The Columbine High School students who murdered thirteen and wounded twenty-three in Littleton before committing suicide after the shooting, enjoyed playing Doom, a bloody and violent video game. One of the shooters made a customized version of Doom: two shooters, unlimited ammunition, extra weapons, and victims who couldn’t fight back. This customized version of the game
Kostinsky, Spencer, Edward O. Bixler, and Paul A. Kettl. "Threats of School Violence in Pennsylvania After Media Coverage of the Columbine High School Massacre: Examining the Role of Imitation." Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, vol. 155, no. 9, 2001, pp. 994-1001, Agricultural & Environmental Science Database; Medical Database; ProQuest Central,
Whether violent media content leads to real-life violence is always debatable. And in recent years, school shootings have made video games a new focus of public concern and scientific research. In public opinion, video games cause more aggression in comparison to traditional violent media contents because video games have more features of interactivity, "due to the active engagement and participation of players" (Hummer and Wang et al. 137). But more and more reports tell us that video games are not the main cause of school shooting issues; rather it is the negligence of parents, schools, and communities.
those who may have behavior disorders, social out casting and anger issues in regards to
Video Game Violence has been a controversial topic for many years. It is easy to shift the blame for school shootings, and other crimes on to video games; an example of this is the Columbine High School massacre, a school shooting that occurred on April 20, 1999, where two students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, went to their school and killed 12 students, one teacher, and wounded 21 others. Because Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were fans of video games and actively played games such as Doom, Wolfenstein 3D, and Duke Nukem, this pushed the blame on to these companies and would lead to lawsuits and sour the mouth of the public view of video games. That is only one of the many that would paint a bad picture into the mind of the public. This
The date was April 20, 1999. Many people's lives were changed in a bad way. It was just a normal start to a school day. Everything was going normal until 11:19 a.m. At 11:19 a.m teenagers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold walked in and started shooting at students. By 11:35 a.m. 12 students and a teacher were dead. 20 other students were wounded during the shooting. At 12:00 p.m the shooters turned the guns on themselves and pulled the triggers. Columbine high school was never the same again (Columbine High school shootings, 2009). After further investigation, it was found that the shooters liked to play violent games (Do Violent Video Games Contribute to Youth Violence?, 2017). This raised the question do violent video games make people violent. Violent video games make people violent because of links to mass shootings, violent behavior is rewarded by games, and no true decompression happens while playing video games.