Videogames and too strict gun laws

I have sympathy with the people who need to find someone to blame. Who in their mourning tries to find answers to impossible questions. It is human nature. With 32 people left dead by a student at Virginia Tech and many more wounded, there is going to be a mountain of grief and sorrow to get by. A mountain that will cast a shadow on VT for a very long time after the eyes of the media turns elsewhere.

But, please, spare me of the people using the tragedy as a means to promote their personal agenda. Yes, Jack Thompson, I’m talking about you. Yes, Dr. Phil, I’m talking about you. Yes, Larry Pratt, I’m talking about you. Jack Thompson – the lawyer on a one man crusade to rid the world of videogames – was quick to lay the blame for the shootings on videogames. Dr. Phil – never one to shy away from free publicity – did the same thing as Thomson, with the typical Dr. Phil wording.

Then there is Larry Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America, who as a response to claims that gun laws in the US should be reviewed as a cause of the shootings, managed to come up with something along the lines of: “If everyone on campus had a gun, the gunman would have been shot before he could have loosed a single bullet.” Those were not the words he used, of course, but these are: “The latest school shooting at Virginia Tech demands an immediate end to the gun-free zone law which leaves the nation’s schools at the mercy of madmen.”

The sad part is that they might get more fuel to their fire as more information is disclosed. My stereotypical image of a young South Korean (the shooter moved to the US from South Korea at the age of 8), is a person with an above interest in new technology and videogames. I fear that a connection will be easy to establish – too easy perhaps?