California Senator Wants Fewer Guns in Games

[ecoho]

I don't think it is the gun obsession at all.

I'm not in favor of the "Govment dun take our guns hurr durr" bit everyone in my state is spewing, but the reason these shootings keep happening is far more complex than anyone seems to realize.

If I had to point at one thing and say 'That is the reason," personally put the focus on mental health and depression. After all, there is a proven link between depression and shootings.

But state of mental health in the eyes of the public is in such a poor state. People just ignore it or assume it doesn't exist and that it's all made up. But depression is a real thing and it is not the victim's fault.

Oh I fully agree. In fact, I don't think there's a specific one reason at all for people to consider actively shooting people.

But the situation throughout the US in general is definitely what makes it easily possible to actually happen. That's where I was going with that.

Because the Right goes out of it's way to prevent the government from enforcing the few gun laws we actually have. And of course banning assault rifles is just a slippery slope to tyrants disarming the populace. Seriously, Fuck the Second Amendment.

......and the left keeps getting in the way of actually doing anything other then just more gun laws, like say a COMPLETE OVERHAUL OF THE MENTAL HEALTHCARE SYSTEM!

OT:in all fairness we dont need more gunlaws, we need the ones we have to be enforced. I live in Wyoming which is a pretty sparcly populated state yet we have more guns in our homes then pretty much anywere, yet we have very little gun crime. Why you may ask? I beleave its because the people out here not only enforce the gunlaws on the books but go the extra mile and teach their kids(when they're ready) how to use their guns safly in either defence or for hunting.

All that said i beleave if they did put anything new in gun control it would be better to require classes and a full phyc evaluation before you may percuse a handgun or assault rifle as these weapons are made for the sole perpose of killing other human beings and as such sould not be avalible to just anyone.

edit: anyone else notice that the vast majority of the people who try to pass these things are
A. from california
and
B. democrats

or is it just me?

Because Democrats are the ones who believe in exercising the Government's authority to save American lives, instead of just killing foreigners. Republicans mask their lack of humanity by claiming that having the government actually help people promotes dependency and corrodes the "maverick" American spirit. And they'd never agree to fix the healthcare system, just gut it to the point where the only thing the government will subsidize are their gay conversion camps.

Don't retreat, reload!

yet they cant pass a budget for now 5 years,(and dont say thats the republicans fault causes the dems held both the house and senate for 4 years) they ramroded a healthcare system WE CAN NOT AFFORD!, and finally they keep pulling bullshit like this were they try to pass anti videogame laws. Now i vote the person not the party and i have to say i vote more republican then demicrate because when you look at the dems they tend to be idiots with no real work experiance other then govrnment service, or they are rich through inheritence/old money and should not be making laws.

next time you want to bash a party because you cant do research on the people IN D.C. please at least try to act like your not a bigot who beleaves everything he hears from one party.

 

[Jamous]

But why reduce virtual guns that do no harm to anyone other than irritation? Especially when there are plenty of -real- guns that can and do? It would be a tenable position to hold if she was actually advocating nigh on universal gun control but it doesn't seem like she is....

But she does. And people who support gun control (outside the milennial generation, that is) are also the same people who want to ban video games. You support the positions of your biggest opponents.

Did I support it? No. I simply said it was a tenable position to hold. I still think it's stupid, but at least it is -less- stupid.

 

[LordMonty]

Was about to call the first before i got to the bottem of the page, but hey if your mental to try this in a game hate to say try it in the real world first see how that goes down. Real guns kill people not the fake ones on the TV.

 

[A Weakgeek]

Ol' Cawifouhnia will never be the same without its one true ruler.​

With this guy in the lead, guns wouldn't be a problem anyways.​

 

[Frost27]

Dear, America ...

your obsession with guns has caused this. You allow children to touch real guns, teach them how to shoot them and glorify it with your insane defense of the 2nd Ammendment.

Fake guns are not the problem. They are a safe way to live your gun obsession, without harming anyone. This does not teach anyone how to shoot a real gun. It does not make them violent sociopaths. It does not give them access to guns. It is just fiction.

If you want to reduce gun violence, don't do it by removing a harmless alternative. Think about why people get guns to begin with. Think about what causes people to be paranoid enough to want guns to begin with. I can tell you, it's not arcade boxes and video games.

It's a state full of idiots. A state with legislators focused on personal gain. A state with a justice system that is flawed from start to finish. A state that refuses to act in favor of its population in fear of "socialism" and "oppression". It's a state full of parents who act without thinking and hand their children items they should not have at all.

I don't disagree that you have taken far too long to fix this. It may well be impossible now. But don't stomp your feet like a child and pretend there is something else that is responsible, other than your own faults.

Best Regards,
Europe.

What's that Europe? I can barely hear you over the sound of your socialist collective financial system collapsing. You stick to your problems and we will stick to ours.

The flu kills more people in the US annually than guns, it just isn't as fun for the media machine to report that.

Also, I can think of a couple of times in the last century when Europe was damn glad that the U.S. was able to provide a generation of young men that knew their way around a rifle.

 

[Frost27]

I don't think it is the gun obsession at all.

I'm not in favor of the "Govment dun take our guns hurr durr" bit everyone in my state is spewing, but the reason these shootings keep happening is far more complex than anyone seems to realize.

If I had to point at one thing and say 'That is the reason," personally put the focus on mental health and depression. After all, there is a proven link between depression and shootings.

But state of mental health in the eyes of the public is in such a poor state. People just ignore it or assume it doesn't exist and that it's all made up. But depression is a real thing and it is not the victim's fault.

Oh I fully agree. In fact, I don't think there's a specific one reason at all for people to consider actively shooting people.

But the situation throughout the US in general is definitely what makes it easily possible to actually happen. That's where I was going with that.

Because the Right goes out of it's way to prevent the government from enforcing the few gun laws we actually have. And of course banning assault rifles is just a slippery slope to tyrants disarming the populace. Seriously, Fuck the Second Amendment.

......and the left keeps getting in the way of actually doing anything other then just more gun laws, like say a COMPLETE OVERHAUL OF THE MENTAL HEALTHCARE SYSTEM!

OT:in all fairness we dont need more gunlaws, we need the ones we have to be enforced. I live in Wyoming which is a pretty sparcly populated state yet we have more guns in our homes then pretty much anywere, yet we have very little gun crime. Why you may ask? I beleave its because the people out here not only enforce the gunlaws on the books but go the extra mile and teach their kids(when they're ready) how to use their guns safly in either defence or for hunting.

All that said i beleave if they did put anything new in gun control it would be better to require classes and a full phyc evaluation before you may percuse a handgun or assault rifle as these weapons are made for the sole perpose of killing other human beings and as such sould not be avalible to just anyone.

edit: anyone else notice that the vast majority of the people who try to pass these things are
A. from california
and
B. democrats

or is it just me?

Because Democrats are the ones who believe in exercising the Government's authority to save American lives, instead of just killing foreigners. Republicans mask their lack of humanity by claiming that having the government actually help people promotes dependency and corrodes the "maverick" American spirit. And they'd never agree to fix the healthcare system, just gut it to the point where the only thing the government will subsidize are their gay conversion camps.

Don't retreat, reload!

yet they cant pass a budget for now 5 years,(and dont say thats the republicans fault causes the dems held both the house and senate for 4 years) they ramroded a healthcare system WE CAN NOT AFFORD!, and finally they keep pulling bullshit like this were they try to pass anti videogame laws. Now i vote the person not the party and i have to say i vote more republican then demicrate because when you look at the dems they tend to be idiots with no real work experiance other then govrnment service, or they are rich through inheritence/old money and should not be making laws.

next time you want to bash a party because you cant do research on the people IN D.C. please at least try to act like your not a bigot who beleaves everything he hears from one party.

Agreed. We are where we are because of the Democratic majority for those four years. The progressive liberal Democrat practice of throwing money at your problems until they go away but never taking the time to learn a damn thing about the problem in the first place (who needs facts when you can legislate with your feelings?) is ruining us. It isn't just guns either. Obamacare is a perfect example of this.

 

[JSF01]

Actually her plan is not insane at all, if you do not take it at face value. Now I might be giving her way more credit than she deserves but in a sense it could possibly allow the accomplishment of her goal to ban firearms/heavily restrict firearms.

Recently there was a study done of people 13-25. 40% of them said the planned on purchasing a firearm with another 20% saying they were considering it.

It also found that high school students that regularly play video games were 50% more likely to report plans on owning a firearm.

That would mean to people like her, video games are causing an interest in firearms. As interest in firearms increases the likely hood of the firearms bans she is in favor of, ever passing decreases. In that case it would make sense in order to try to decrease the number of video games with firearms.

Like I said that probably giving her more credit than she deserves, and this is nothing more than the old argument of "video games cause violence".

 

[Tien Shen]

Feinstein's just unhappy her AWB floundered and so she's going after something easier, something which does not have a powerful lobby protecting it.

 

[pandorum]

As usual this makes America look bad again, the uneducated Europeans that think all Americans are obsessed our wrong. Let me stress that I am English, but I understand living in a country where your only choices are Fucking retarded left, ass backwards middle and fuckwit right its no wonder that they say this when that's your choices to put in power.

 

[JudgeGame]

I'm disappointed whenever I see articles like this show up on a video game news site. At least this time they had the integrity to mention these politicians have no power to overrule the Supreme Court. However, given that the article could still be aptly titled "Old Madman Whines" I don't see a strong argument for considering these events news-worthy. If we are just going to indulge in fear-mongering, why do we even need politicians?

On a different note, it's funny how video games incite violence in just one country while all other countries enjoying the shit out of violent video games are dandy. This is clearly racism.

 

[TrulyBritish]

This is some seriously depressing stuff. The government is dead in the water on background checks, but fake guns, gotta stop that shit right now.

In America we have low video game regulations and have lots of violence.
In Australia/Germany they have harsh VG regulations and low violence.
In Japan/Sweden/UK/etc they have low VG regulations and have even lower violence.

Other that hate-speech like games, VG regulation has no effect on the levels of violence in a country.

Kind of agree with most of that, but doesn't the UK actually have one of the highest violent crime rates in the world? Bigger than the US? Fairly sure the rest is correct though.
As for the OP, oh dear God not this again. I'm all for having less violence/shooting in games as a welcome break in video games, but because it actually trains people to kill? Hah, gods no. When are politicians going to stop faffing about and actually try to do something actually relevant to the situation. I worry when our officials can't even research something as simple as video games? It's not like they're hidden after all, or that no studies have been done examining the relationship between crime and video games.

 

[Smeatza]

Kind of agree with most of that, but doesn't the UK actually have one of the highest violent crime rates in the world? Bigger than the US? Fairly sure the rest is correct though.

Not quite one of the highest in the world. It's a slightly higher rate than the US.

OT: Crackpots in politics, what's new?

 

[Not G. Ivingname]

As for your comedians, that's what all comedians everywhere do. They make fun of things, first and foremost the society around them. It's nothing unique to Americans.

Who said it was? The US just has way more of them, and they are by and large way more world famous than most other comedians. The Daily Show is very well known in Iran for example. No other countries have that kind of wide spread popularity for their comedians.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stand-up_comedians
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_British_stand-up_comedians
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_stand-up_comedians

The US and UK are so big they have their own lists. And the US is easily twice as large as the UK list. We pretty easily poke fun at ourselves more than any other country in the world does. And yet you say we don't make fun of ourselves enough. Clearly the rest of you are the ones who take yourselves too seriously.

Just a small note.

The US has 300 million people, while UK's population is only 63 million. It would be expected for a larger population to have more people of any given occupation.

You need to search for "comedians per capita",what of a percent of the population are stand up comedians.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Hey California, how about you focus on fixing your busted economy instead of wasting money pursuing legislation that will be over turned?

They're doing both. Videogames are one of Hollywood's biggest competitors. Kill games, and hollywood goes back to its old monopoly on that sort of entertainment. The fact that that never works doesn't stop old industries from trying it every time a new industry comes to town that threatens their bottom line.

 

[TrulyBritish]

Kind of agree with most of that, but doesn't the UK actually have one of the highest violent crime rates in the world? Bigger than the US? Fairly sure the rest is correct though.

Not quite one of the highest in the world. It's a slightly higher rate than the US.

OT: Crackpots in politics, what's new?

Ok, thanks for that mate. But I guess my point still stands it's not exactly a low crime rate.
I don't know, American politicians just seem nuts to me.

 

[Mycroft Holmes]

It also found that high school students that regularly play video games were 50% more likely to report plans on owning a firearm.

That's two data points with no visible scientific connection. You need more information than that to make a correlation. Otherwise you're basically just making a guess based on what you think might be true. It could just as easily be the opposite relationship or anything in between. People who want to buy guns could simply be more likely to buy videogames in the first place. Or people who want to buy guys and who want to play videogames might simply be mostly middle class suburbanites and therefore the two overlap because of that simple correlation.

It would be like seeing a correlation between artisan sandwich consumption and coffee consumption and immediately going ah hah! eating artisan sandwiches automatically leads to coffee consumption. But maybe it's just people hanging out at Starbucks a lot. You follow?

Thank you, sir! So it's not guns that kill people. Neither is it video games. It's lack of a decent living standard which kills people. As a gun-hater and pacifist, I can't do anything but cheer at this fact.

Well you should hold off on the cheers because it is a near certainty that almost no one is going to focus on the real issue because solving it is a lot more difficult: building schools, industry, agriculture, and medical systems is really difficult. Blaming video games or guns is really easy. And people always take the easy route, as seen by all the facebook likes and petitions spawned out of Kony 2012, and the fact that the situation on the ground in Uganda has only gotten categorically worse because of it.

Plus there's a lot of people invested into the idea that it's one or the other. Admitting that it really has little to do with either, requires people admitting they were wrong, which isn't likely. People dig in all the harder when they are told they are wrong. Not that it can't be changed, but that it's a process and it will take thousands of years after either of us are dead.

Also on a side note, be donating to the NVPF if you aren't already. They do good work and are spreading the idea of pacifism around the world.

Just a small note.

The US has 300 million people, while UK's population is only 63 million. It would be expected for a larger population to have more people of any given occupation.

You need to search for "comedians per capita",what of a percent of the population are stand up comedians.

I actually did originally search for comedians per capita, but no one bothered to compile any data on that. Without a doubt though the UK has the most per capita in the world. They definitively kick our asses in that regard.

But if we are looking for the society that makes fun of itself the most then wouldn't it be the country with the most comedians? Well I would say that size of total population is irrelevant for terms of "made fun of." Most everything is made into a TV special these days or a CD or just on basic TV. It's not like the early 1900s when there were limited audiences and so more comedians would mean more people seeing it. So as I see it, the more people making fun of the country the more it gets made fun of, period. And the US wins by far in sheer number of comedians.

Although to be fair we also have Jeff Dunham; who probably cancels out at least 10 of our actually talented comedians.

 

[Something Amyss]

Well I wasn't aware of that. And no I wasn't kidding. Now just to be clear, I'm not of those extremist yahoos who thinks that no one should be able to have guns ever, however I do find it incredibly stupid that they'd rather limit the fake guns in video games rather than the real guns in real life which are the ones that are actually being used to commit the shooting massacres.

I do, too. It's just not true in Feinstein's case, as she's been fighting the fight to eliminate some of our dumber gun issues.

The saddest thing is this is more likely to see the light of day somewhere.