{"id":15357,"date":"2012-12-24T12:42:13","date_gmt":"2012-12-24T18:42:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techcitement.com\/?p=15357"},"modified":"2013-02-07T14:22:16","modified_gmt":"2013-02-07T20:22:16","slug":"nra-are-you-the-new-jack-thompson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/gaming\/xbox\/nra-are-you-the-new-jack-thompson\/","title":{"rendered":"NRA, Are You The New Jack Thompson?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The\u00a0National Rifle Association<\/a>\u00a0lay silent shortly after the horrific Newtown shooting in which twenty children and six adults were indiscriminately killed with a military-style Bushmaster rifle. It’s a tragedy that has seized America in grief. Using this moment of silence to assess their options, the NRA tactfully asserts their 141 years of wisdom to shovel the blame onto video games. Just like the dear disbarred<\/a>\u00a0Jack Thompson<\/a>, best known for being outplayed<\/a> by Penny Arcade.<\/p>\n

Okay, I get the NRA’s motives. Video game violence is an easy scapegoat, but it\u2019s been tried before and this strategy has already been tarnished and hackneyed by the aforementioned ex-lawyer.<\/p>\n

Read the whole press release here<\/a>, but below is the excerpt concerning video games.<\/p>\n

And here’s another dirty little truth that the\u00a0media try their best to conceal: There exists in this country a\u00a0callous, corrupt and\u00a0corrupting\u00a0shadow industry that sells, and sows, violence against its own people.\u00a0Through vicious, violent video games with names like Bulletstorm, Grand Theft Auto, Mortal Kombat and Splatterhouse. And here\u2019s one: it\u2019s called Kindergarten Killers. It\u2019s been online for 10 years. How come my research department could find it and all of yours either couldn\u2019t or didn\u2019t want anyone to know you had found it?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

[yframe url=’http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=qI8J_pl60l0′]<\/p>\n

This argument is nothing more than a weak attempt at deflecting unwanted attention onto a \u201ccorrupting shadow industry that sells, and sows, violence against its own people.\u201d Correct me if I\u2019m wrong, but if a fight breaks out at a League of Legends<\/em> tournament, I\u2019m fairly certain that transgressor\u2019s team gets disqualified and the individual is charged with assault instead of the facility erupting into a bacchanalian frenzy of hypnotized blood thirst and programmed violence.<\/p>\n

As a silly side note, in the paragraph prior to the excerpt, Wayne LaPierre speaks in the second person plural “you’ve” (Americans) and then shifts to the singular “you” (specific person) in the video games section. Who is he talking to? Where is my research department? Simple subject confusion, while amusing, is not professional.<\/p>\n

[yframe url=’http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=TfBtJr9q_fw’]<\/p>\n

Human beings are a violent people, just look at our\u00a0written\u00a0<\/i>history. The bloodshed stretches much farther back, even before people wrote down who won. It’s absurd to blame a recent and young innovation like video games as a\u00a0root\u00a0cause for an inherent propensity for aggressive and violent actions. Yes, many video games are violent (Max Payne 3<\/em>, seen above), they can also objectify and sexualize women (also seen above in the Lollipop Chainsaw\u00a0<\/em>video), and offend in any number of ways, just like any other media (including books). Look at what’s currently happening in India where a journalist was killed<\/a> during an anti-rape rally, or for that matter look at\u00a0Libya,\u00a0 Egypt, and Syria. This is news that we’re neutrally exposed to and passively absorb. Violence breeds itself organically; video games are a recent product of the world, and they did not produce violence. How old is murder?<\/p>\n

Do you think exposure to violent video games encourages violent behavior?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The\u00a0National Rifle Association\u00a0lay silent shortly after the horrific Newtown shooting in which twenty children and six adults were indiscriminately killed with a military-style Bushmaster rifle. It’s a tragedy that has seized America in grief. Using this moment of silence to assess their options, the NRA tactfully asserts their 141 years of wisdom to shovel the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[905,3062,125,908,2221,3063,730,26],"tags":[3705,3727,3729,3179,3728,3711,3730,3726,3731,3713],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15357"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15357"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15357\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15386,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15357\/revisions\/15386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}