Do you think that children obsessed with violent video games can turn out of touch with reality?

YAWN.

This is a known fact??? Prove it??? Provide evidence of a study with 100% conclusive proof and not some LA LA study conducted by anti-gun campaign lobby. Oh wait you can't can you???

Who creates these games and why??? Programmers from multimillion dollar software companies create these games. Why?? Because there is a huge market, demand, and they get paid for doing it.

They are a menace are they?? If parents allow their child to become totally obsessed by computer games then how is it a fault of software industry? The normally happy, well behaved, gentle little children turn into snarling little terrors, turn out that way because of $hit parenting skills. Nothing to do with software industry yet again.

What is a KNOWN fact is that a lot of parents are quite happy to leave their child playing those games for 12-14 hours at the time as long as they get some quiet time for themselves. This is why the children obesity levels are on the rise, that is why children turn into monsters. All of it can be prevented by striking a balance and disallowing the kids to sit there for long periods of time.

So?? Some 17 year old geek blows away his parents. So what???

How did he get hold of the gun?? Why wasn't family firearm locked securily?? Why did his parents allowed him to sit there for hours bashing at his senseless console?? Did he even sit down to eat his dinner at the family table??? The causes are deeper than just laying blame at the door of software companies. And just because of such sporadic tragic events, do we automatically come to conclusion about banning all the software?? Because once we ban one category, it won't stop there. But even if we ban all these games, the focus will switch onto something else and the problems will just continue.

Love me or hate me I don't care. But unless you are blind or narrowminded, you certainly would not come to a conclusion that software is somehow responsible.

So you're saying that games are evil? I've been playing video games since i was a little kid and i've never thought or wanted to "shoot" someone.

When that kid shot his mom because he didn't think death is real has nothing to do with the game, it's because the kid had issues, mental problems or whatever you want to call it.

If a kid does bad things like that it's not because of the games, it's because of his/her upbringing. not so long ago we had "crazy" kids. Now parents try to blame other things for what their kids do. God forbid a parent might think that they failed at teaching their kid about right and wrong. Instead they blame video games, movies, music.

Yes some kids get influenced by those things, but that is not the root or the cause of the problem. The root of the problem is the way they were raised.

Out of the millions of people who play video games everyday you CANNOT pick 2 and say oh look they did something bad because of the game therefore games are evil.

That's like saying a guy drove his sport car into another car and killed a family, therefore, sports cars are evil and car companies shouldn't make them. Just because a bad/reckless driver decided to act crazy and drive really fast doesn't mean that the car is at fault or the company who made it. It's the drivers fault for acting crazy.

OK, yes i believe they are addicting, i believe they can de-sensitize a child to violence, BUT I believe that children as well as adults know right from wrong and are responsible for their actions. If they are de-sensitized it just means that it doesn't shock them anymore, it doesn't mean they don't know what they're doing. Of course they do. As for the 17 year old you cited, well he knew exactly what he did, he was angry and lashed out violently and deserves his punishment. Whether or not he is addicted shouldn't matter, he still knew better. We would not accept this behavior from a drug addict or an alcoholic either. It is a parents duty to limit their children in all things. Nothing when it becomes obsessive is good, I speak from experience, I have 3 children and there is NOTHING that is allowed to be done/played with at an obsessive rate. Especially electronic anything. Video/TV/Ipod,Telephone.... all are limited. It is my job to raise people that are positive good and productive to our society, I take it seriously as should all parents. If your child is a product of overindulgence and behaves badly/irrationally the parent should also be called to task.

No.

I think that idiot parents who buy violent video games for their brats and then don't enforce limitations on playing times in favor of activities such as SCHOOL WORK, or going outside to play, or reading a book, other healthy activities are the ones responsible for promoting unhealthy obsessions and lack of connection with reality.

It's the heart of man to seek evil. People want to believe that we're inherently good, but we're not. It's not the guns, it's not even the games, it's our fallen nature.

well let me tell you a story,

Just the other day, I stole three cars and sold them all. And made over £10,000 profit.

Next I saw a few ethnic minorities crossing the street so I ran them over.

After that I ran around shooting people with a sawn off shotgun and successfully evaded the police.

Then I picked up a hooker, used her for three hours, paid her, knocked her over and stole all her money.

Finally I sold a sh*tload of heroin for a £5,000 profit.

Unfortunately grand theft auto Chinatown Wars crashed after that, so I cried and went out for walk.

Pleased to say I haven't killed a single person .......yet. :0)

Millions of people have played Halo/Doom/Quake/etc

Like 5 of them commit violent crimes in real life

Let's assume 50,000,000 people play violent video games (this is a very conservative estimate, it is much more in reality)

That means that 0.00001% of people take the things they learned in video games into real life

To assume a causality relationship based on that ratio is so ridiculous that trying to make such a connection is laughable

This is like saying that everyone with red hair is a murderer because one redhead killed someone

Not much we can do now about these games, but I honestly believe that they take away the 'conscience' from young people. I feel violent games like this do a lot of harm to many, and serve little purpose

i play tekken and i dont go around killing people i dout that your children are going to do anything plus halo gets boring pretty quick when they are done with the game they will ask you to buy them a new game , dont do it and walla your done

Cyrus M and leeplus3 give some pretty good answers to be honest. Only thing i want to add is where do these kids get the guns from to do these things.....?!?!?