Attn Dipshit Jack Thompson

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/02/24/tech/gamecore/main676446.shtml

Okay, I'm responding to this. Essentially, Jack Thompson, a Miami Lawyer, is on a rampage claiming Video Games should be regulated. Scott Roomsair of the great VGCats and Tim Buckley of Ctrl+Alt+Del, both online comic artists, both made arguments against this.

Okay, first off, this guy is an idiot. This guy is the same kind of lawyer who would take up a case against McDonalds because the food made someone fat. Its the kind of person who goes around whining like everyone in the world is a 5 year old and cannot control his or her self.

His argument essentially is that video games are training for violence. Lets look at some quotes.

"Is gaming escapism?"

"Yes, just as Ted Bundy escaped into pornography. It is not a release of aggression. It is training for aggression."

Excuse me for a minute here, Mr. Thompson. Saying that such games are training for aggression would naturally mean that anything that puts you in a position of immitating or replicating violence would be bad and/or illegal, under your idea. Lets look at what this entails:
- Paintball
- Wrestling
- Martial Arts of any kind
- Professional Sports
- ANY Sports
And much more. So you're saying when someone plays a video game with violence it trains them? Well, we better get rid of Football, its training people to slam each other.

"How does free speech factor in?

There is no right of children to buy adult entertainment. None.

Are parents paying attention to what their kids play?

Nope."
Oh great. Now he's playing Overlord Daddy on us. He's saying that anyone under the age of 18 should not be allowed to play "Adult" entertainment. Excusing the fact that that is not his job, and that it is a parent's job, he moves into his second point: Absolutely no parents whasoever in the whole wide world are ever watching their kids play video games ever. Great, thats the biggest assumption since "I made the internet".

"There is plenty of blame to go around. The parents must do a better job, but you know what? When we were on 60 Minutes the Sunday after Columbine (we predicted Columbine on NBC's Today eight days before it happened) with the parents in Paducah, Ed Bradley asked Joe James "Isn't this a parent's responsibility?" Joe said "Ed, I'm trying to figure out what I did wrong. I had my daughter in school and in a pre-school prayer meeting where she was shot and killed. If I hadn't raised her right, she'd be alive today.""

Note how he changes the focus. The issue is the parent of the kid who bought the game, not the d***ed parent of who got killed. Thats what I like to call a pity attack: He's trying to make the public feel bad for the murdered, instead of realizing that it wouldnt have happened if the kid had restraint.

I could go on much more, but here's the key stuff gamers need to keep on track when someone mentions this:
1. There is no proven link between Video Games and Violence. Only excuses by people who already killed, which could mean they used it as an excuse to blame it on someone else.
2. It is up to the Parents, not the government, to decide what a kid plays, no matter what. Just like movies or music- Video Games are no different.
3. A murderer takes his own punishment. Attacking Video Game companies, even if they incite violence, is a bad thing. After all, do you punish a Gun company if someone gets shot?