My apologies, but maybe I am just getting old and remember D&D dust up too well [View all]

[The Straight Story]

When I was a teen my high school history teacher burned my dungeons and dragons books (me and others were camping out on his property and he was a Christian Fundie).

There was a craze back then - see the 60 minutes documentary (on youtube) and the movie Mazes and Monsters (starring a young Tom Hanks) - where people were blaming role playing games for many ills.

Kids killing themselves or others were blamed on the game. It was a tool of the devil.

Were there a few who maybe used the game in ways not intended? Sure. Didn't know any myself but I am guessing maybe that there were some who had issues and 'got too involved' in it.

I remember that time well (not just for the reasons above). I was looking at getting a cool cloak (based on the LOTR) and my dad (a christian fundie) got upset and said no way could I buy one because he was afraid I would become like those other kids (he watched the 60 minutes show) that were drawn into the game and did terrible things.

Guns. Video Games. Movies. These are not the causes of things we see going on at times.

The person who did this latest act was not motivated by any of those things. They had free will and used it for reasons that we don't really know at this point.

To start blaming such things is to remove the real causes and empower things which don't really have any power at all. It is a way, perhaps, for some to try and make sense of it all. But it is not based on truth.

It is a way, used by many I have seen in the past, to make sense of something which makes no sense. People trying to tell themselves that if they can isolate what they see as a cause they can save us all from the same thing happening again.

It is lying to yourself and to others. An attempt to control what you cannot.

Problem here is not the guns, the games, computers, etc - the problem we face is trying to make sense of what some psycho did. And you can't do that fully.

You cannot, no matter how much you want to, control others and gain a perfect and safe society. And you sure as hell cannot achieve that by looking at that person and trying to remove from the rest of us the tools they had or the things they did for pleasure and hoping that will fix it all for you and make it all better.