Do you think that video games and rap music are the cause of shootings like the one we saw yesterday?

Rap music and violent video games can never change a mentally stable, healthy and kindhearted person into a monster, even if he were to sit there listening to/playing them 24 hours/day for years.

But we're talking about unstable, unhealthy people. In the setting of mental illness, people's minds are much more liable to be affected by surrounding environmental factors. They don't have the basic anchors in their heads that tie them to a consistent way of looking at the world and of managing their emotions. They can be triggered by all sorts of things. I remember taking a psychology class one time taught by a doctor who had worked in a psychiatric hospital. He said the patients benefited enormously from regular routines and predictable situations that their minds could handle. He said one of the things they did each day was to have "craft time" where the patients used markers, glue, etc., to create little art projects. He said one day the hospital ran out of glue, and 10 patients required Haldol injections because they couldn't cope with this change in their routine.

Picture taking a mind like that and subjecting it to repeated doses of loud, rhythmic, colorful messages like what rap music and video games provide. Then make the messages violent and antisocial. The colors and rhythms speak to deep parts of their brains that may play a role in affecting their thoughts and emotions. It's not too hard to see how they could internalize some of this in their attempt to find something to hold onto. Music, rhythm, and color are very powerful sources of stimulation even for a normal person, but for someone with messed-up brain chemistry they can become all-powerful.

So do music and games "cause" a shooting? Of course not. Mental illness is the cause. But would you approach an out-of-control fire and toss lighter fluid on it? That's what I think is happening in some of these cases, especially when you consider the fact that many mentally ill kids are isolated and alone, spending virtually all of their time between headphones or on their computers.

I think you miss the point as to why many young men (women) take refuge in a make believe world. It's because in that make believe world they have the feeling of control, the feeling that they can direct their lives.

It's when they surface for their make believe world and have to function in a world they do not control they have problems

Where do the come from?

The sad fact is that we are creating them as we speak

Parents now hear from "professionals" that discipline can harm a child's development

They are berated by total strangers when their child has a public meltdown over not getting a piece of candy and gets their butt paddled for it.

The child grows not realizing that there will be consequences for their actions

The child grows believing they can have their own way

Then the child grows a bit more and goes to school. There they find they do not have to work or study. They are spoon fed the answers to the standardized tests where no child fails (that would hurt their development, don't you know) and they drift through what has become a public babysitting system instead of a learning system.

They are not challenged, they are not shown that failure is a real possibility and how to prevent it. They never have to come home with a report card of D's and F's and spend the next six months restricted to school and home.

They have no other frame of reference when the day comes they graduate and are thrown out to greet the real world.

The real world where you are not congratulated for just showing up. The real world where your worth to your employer is decided by his evaluation of your contribution to his bottom line. Where things are not fair, and there are a lot of days that are not fun and frolic. Where failure is real, and public, and scary.

It's a shock, a huge shock, and some people cannot deal with it.

Now add in a mental heath system that is so afraid of being sued that they would rather make no diagnosis at all. That will just pump out prescriptions for all manner of feel good drugs, which may soften the blow, but never fix the problem and what have you got?

A recipe for disaster.

Even without access to weapons, these crippled minds are going to lash out at system that failed them.

With weapons, it just becomes all that much worse.

Put the blame where it belongs, on a system designed to cripple the children we love.

Violent video games or rap music were not the cause of this shooting at all. He was mentally ill and had pathological issues. That has nothing to do with video games or music. The shooter was compared to a boiling pot of water. He slowly led up to the point where he eventually just boiled over. Not one, specific thing set him off, he probably had felt the way he did for some time.

But as for the video games and music, I know plenty of people that play Call of Duty or other violent, war games and they have no intentions of being violent or hurting people. I think people are over thinking it. Guys have a lot of testosterone. Guys like to do "guy" things. Most guys would like to go to a shooting range and shoot a gun. Guys like to play paintball. Guys like violent video games because they're guys. End of story (I realize I may have made several generalizations there). The shooting that occurred yesterday, the one in Aurora, Colorado, the one in an Oregon mall, had nothing to do with video games or "inappropriate" music.

I am an avid gamer who plays gta iv quite a bit an I listen to metal( which is worse than rap) and I'm not some murderous freak.

Im a liberal pacifist too. Forgot too mention that part.

When I kill a bug I feel sorry for it, thats how much I respect life. Does this sound like your stereotypical result of violent media?

The media and others are searching for blame for the entire problems in the younger generations and fairly frankly, are doing a terrible job at it. There was violence on the grounds that the beginning of time -- and in many countries/civilizations, this violence was worse than now (and there WASNT any video video games or rappers to affect them). The actual fact of the subject is that individuals are influenced by means of the whole thing around them, and if it wasn't video video games or rap negatively effecting your child, they'd find anything else responsible it on. Traditionally, its parenting. Mum and dad at present proceed to get worse and worse, and except we are able to support finish that, youngsters are going to make flawed decisions. Plus, i consider each kid grows up loving santa claus, however it has nothing to do with his weight. I never ate and ate due to the fact santa claus used to be fats and i desired to be him? No kid chooses to be fat seeing that they understand anyone else is fats, there is other extra predominant explanations main to weight problems and it has to do with meals industries and father or mother's selections to enable kids to eat whatever they want. Youngsters and even teenagers are impressionable and its about time that every dad or mum and adult takes responcibility for shaping the generations to come. It's our job to take our skills and experiences to support hinder the identical mistakes from occuring within the previous generations.

I think that violent video games, slasher movies, and music that contains degrading or violent language stimulates the imagination in some people. I think it can make people less empathetic, make things seem surreal, and blur the lines of reality. I do believe that some people are prone to this, just like some people are more prone to suggestion and peer pressure than others. We know that some personalities are already more violent or less empathetic than others. Some personality traits are inherited. This, I believe, puts some people at greater risk of influence of violent and degrading media like games, movies and media.

Baby boomers like myself grew up watching Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and the rest of them blow each other up, shoot each other, run people over with steamrollers, etc., and we didn't all become homicidal maniacs. In fact, many became ardent supporters of peace. And how many kids in Newtown, CT do you think listen to rap music?

The problem is the ease of getting guns and a prevailing attitude in this country that violence is the answer to anything.

Rap music and video games?? Wtf the problem is gun laws.. Focus on that topic, people are constantly shunning the topic, like what happened with bob costas.. Dont blame music or games, blame our gun laws.. Also reports have said the guy had mental issues so thats something.. But I dont care what mental disorders you have, shooting a little kid is beyond my thought process..

Yes. People are never responsibility for their own actions. It's clearly the media.