"Killing in First Person"

If you have ever watched a video gamer play a “first person” killing game, what you will see is multiple murders, through the eyes of the killer, on HDTV.  First person is a term used in literature, as the view of the person narrating the book and generally the main character.  It will often use the term, “I”.  So the view on the screen of the killing game will be as the shooter would see it, down the sights of their weapon.  In the good old days the view on the screen was a view of your good guy killers, or one of them, fighting the bad guys that the computer controlled.  It wasn’t so up close and personal.  You watched the action rather than living it.  In my opinion, anyone who sits for hours, playing first person combat games is in training for mass murder.  I am not contending that they actually will commit a mass murder, in real time, but if I were going to set up a profile for predicting the act, it would be #1 on my list.  In the recent killings in Tucson and Sandy Hook, I remember reading that the murderers both were game boys.

This raises an interesting problem.  Would you “track” all purchasers of first person video killing games?  In the future a study will surely be done that confirms that all mass murderers have a hobby of playing these particular games, but that only a small percentage of these game players commit mass murder.  So we "Monday morning quarterback" the lunatics that do the killing and place blame on the police or health professionals who have dealt with the killer before the slaughter takes place.  Some of the methods of profiling are: killing game player, male loner, bullied, dark wardrobe, gun and ammunition collector, long hair, an aggressive Facebook page … etc.

   

I just finished reading a novel by C.J. Box, “Stone Cold”, in which a suspected campus shooter is taken out before a mass student shooting can take place from the roof of his dorm.  The guy is a black clothed, long haired, a loner, who loves guns and killing video games.  He is guilty … right? Alert students are on the watch and inform the campus police that our shooter is heading for the dorm roof with an assault rifle in his hands.  Turns out that the assault rifle is a pellet gun that looks like an assault rifle and that he is on the roof shooting pigeons.  This doesn’t deter a swat team from going up on the roof and shooting the suspect to pieces.  Oops!  Swat teams are imaginary heroes.  A real “swat team” would be a sharpshooter with a telescopic sighted rifle and an assistant to wipe the sweat from his brow, not a dozen or so GI Joe impersonators.

So, do the game manufacturers who produce first person kill games share in the blame for mass murders?  Yes, they certainly do.  Their CEOs, in front of the Senate, claim that there is no connection between the game world and the real world.  Not so, in the mind of the player.  No Senator ever asks why they don’t produce “first person rape games.”  Would the answer be, “Rape is not socially acceptable (except while in the military or college).”  Could one logically conclude, “Killing is socially acceptable.”?  Please help me with this.

Comments are welcome, Old Buz