*Scapegoating video games and other violent media is nonsense*

[socialindependocrat]

44. I figure that someone has to be out of their mind to kill someone

I think people can play fantacy games and still know how to act in society.

I have also, met a few people while I was growing up that I can now see were not very stable.
These were the people you didn't hang out with but you saw them walk thru your neighborhood
on their way to and from somewhere.

These were the people who did odd things that were against the law - vandalism, killing animals,
sometimes breaking and entering even.... They seemed to do things for emotional stimulation.
this was long before video games (1950s). These people got ideas all on their own to do bad things.

Now we have names for all the mental problems - I don't mean to say that mental illness is bad.
I am saying that certain people can be mentally ill in very destructive ways - toward themselves
and others.

Now we have rapists, serial killers, arsonists (some who burn churches), people who kidnap children,
mad bombers and mass murderers. If one of these people pops up every month we have enough to
keep the news stations busy sensationalizing what an unsafe world we live in. And as things happen
we see copycats who are enticed to repeat something that has already happened.

These people are going to go whacky no matter what. Something really simple can set them off. we've
all see the TV show where someone tries to pick a fight and no matter what the "victim" trys to say to
get out of the fight the bully always misinterprets it as an insult. these people are all over the place (it's
why we don't go out at night to restaurants in unfamiliar neighborhoods) . I think it's lucky we don't see
more violence than we do.

I am not trying to say we shouldn't do something about the violence but what do you do before these
people commit a crime? Any teachers reading this can say they have seen kids like this. They don't do
well in school and they are just waiting to quit school at 16 years old. What do the teachers do in cases
like these? We don't put them on a federal "watch list". We may call tem repeat offenders and career
criminals. Like the guys currently in the news who killed a girl for the thrill of it!

There are signs that kids exhibit that may alert us to a potential problem but, being the polite society that
we are, we don't want to stigmatize the child and we don't want to piss off the parents by suggesting that
the child be tested and we can't do anything until a crime is committed.

So where do we go from here? Suggestions?

and even if we identify someone who exhibits psychotic behavior and are lucky enough to find a drug to
stabalize the individual - who's to say they don't like the side effects of the drug (they make me feel tired)
and they go off the drug - what then?