U.S. Senator Says Violent Games Are "Practice Simulators"

[I.Muir]

So why then say such an unfounded statement? It may very well be just another person who fears something they don't understand and too old to try at their time of life. If that is the case how likely are they to make an unbiased and informed decision which would be using that intelligence they apparently posses.

And that's my point. She "may very well be just another person who fears something [she] doesn't understand", but that's an assumption on your part. She may also have made that unbiased and informed decision, but just because it falls out against your side, you dismiss her as being "too old to try [and understand] at [her] time of life". And speaking of biases, that last part is just slander, plain and simple.

Well that's the thing.
I don't think any decision made against video games with such flimsy support to back it up CAN be an unbiased and informed decision. My personal bias does not help but as an example if It were up to me I wouldn't ban Justin Bieber music because it causes teen pregnancy without seeing some damn evidence of this being the case first.

Then again being a politician she may be blindly lashing out at something/ anything to please the people.

Remind me again exactly what part is slander and why?

 

[Korolev]

OLD PERSON IS OLD.

That is literally the only thing that needs to be said about this.

Oh and - violence existed before video games. Mongols didn't have GTA. Hitler didn't get his ideas from Call of Duty. Stalin and Beria didn't get their love of torturing from Manhunt.

Violent video games don't make people violent. Violent video games are MADE because people are violent. The urge to commit violence existed within us long before TV or Video games came about. Violence predates civilization itself. Cavemen used to bash each other with clubs. We've had a problem with violence ever since our species existed and that is a FACT.

What is also a FACT is that, world-wide and ESPECIALLY in the developed world, acts of violence have GONE DOWN over the past 20 to 30 years.

 

[Pogilrup]

So what do you want?

Arcades that require ID? Restricting it to some room separated by a beaded curtain?

I hope in the near future there is a forced retirement age for law makers. The modern age should governed by modern people!

PS: That last part made me sound like some wannabe revolutionary leader.

 

[Spartanmk1]

Diane Fienstein is on a "Moral" crusade against everything that she doesn't like. She lies, she cheats, she steals, and then she bitches when she doesn't get her way. Yet for some reason we Californians keep voting her in by well over 60% of the vote. When her election comes up, she won't even debate the contender. She is an uncaring, corrupt, and borderline evil career politician.

She is not only fighting to strip us of our rights, she is also sitting merrily on her throne of hypocritical stupidity. She once said, "Women are not capable of defending them selves with 'Death Machines' we call guns. Women are designed to protect life, not take it away." The reader should note that at one point she had a conceal carry permit and carried a pistol in her purse for "self defense."

Her Corruption knows no bounds and yet no one on the progressive left has called her out on it. She was chairperson of the Military Construction Appropriations subcommittee then stepped down after a "conflict of interests" in which the committee voted for multibillion dollar contracts to two of Richard C. Blum's defense contractor companies that she approved. Yet no one called her out on it till recently. This has been going on for years.


She doesn't care about us. She is on her own moral crusades to fill her pockets yet people keep voting her in time and time again. She lies, she steals, she cheats to get her way and no one cares. She will likely be in that seat till the day she dies, and knowing our luck they will put her brain in an robot to serve forever.


I am sorry for my senator's idiocy. Just remember, I didn't vote for her...

 

[Baldr]

Here the worst thing, I've talked to several members of the US Senators and Representatives even though I wasn't in a district or State that they were a part of, without a problem. Sen Feinstein will not take a meeting, call, email, or any communication from someone that is not a voter in her state. You have to give a message to another elected official's staffer to send a message to her office. I wanted to know her official position on America's Army, a US Government backed and publish military simulator.

 

[Norix596]

We really need to be less sensitive about this sort of things -- public figures know that big splashes can be made by identifying an enemy or scapegoat and this case is no different -- In fact this is just a hobby being railed against rather than an religious sect or ethnic group. As gaming becomes more widespread and more people who grew up gaming enter the 30-40 age group that most politicians actually worry about antagonizing I bet we'll see a lot of this game demonizing fall by the wayside.

No politician wants to antagonize an not especially partisanly divided demographic, no one contributes money to, volunteers for or votes for people who regularly insult them and insinuate they are sick murder fetishists.

 

[Gatx]

This kind of linkage between mass shootings by deranged individuals kind of has some ground when GTA was really popular, but the most popular shooters of today all cast the player as soldiers fighting terrorists. If anything wouldn't it be a practice simulator/recruitment tool for the military right (if we're using that same sort of surface level connection)?

 

[grammarye]

Ah yes, another attempt at 'I need to appear in the media; let's make a controversial statement'.

This explains why town planners are spending all their time in SimCity.

Would someone please sit this person down in front of a shooter, and then ask them to fire a real gun based on their preceding experience? Nothing like the same thing. Not one bit. No, funnily enough it's training people to shoot guns that enables them to be able to shoot guns.

So at best, this is about psychology of shooting stuff, and the vast majority of targets in modern shooters are zombies, more zombies, terrorists, pirates, Nazis, Communists, soldiers from <insert country other than the player's here>, even more zombies, or, occasionally, animals.

Presumably Saints Row the Third should already have caused large numbers of people to be beaten to death with a over-sized sextoy. The preceding fallacy makes as much sense as the original statement.

Also, I realise it may be a product of sheltered upbringing and/or pure luck, but clearly such people have never seen real blood or real injuries. I can assure them that the experience of helping someone who has been seriously injured, getting their blood all over you, smelling it, and having to clean it off (all of which ironically probably meshes fairly well with proximity of having *caused* said injuries), is not even remotely equated in videogames. Desensitising? Only if damage causes mild red bars at the edge of my eyes and guns go 'pop' instead of a really loud 'BANG'.

 

[lRookiel]

Escapist user says US Senators are "attention whores".

 

[EstrogenicMuscle]

What's sad is that this is another Democratic politician.

We have enough prudishness and lack of progress policy from Republicans as it is.

To think that there are so many Democrats that are anti-progressive is truly disturbing. You have Obama who is a moderate, who approves of drug wars and drone strikes. And conservatives who seem him as a "Progressive Black Supremacist Communist".

I worry about the political direction of this country. We need some real progressives in office. Not these two parties which share some semblance of conservatism. As it stands the Democratic party as a whole is slightly more libertarian in social matters like gay marriage, and flirts with Keynesian economics. While the Republican party, on the whole, supports authoritarian principals and free market economics.

Neither one of these are very progressive, freedom loving, or very good to the poor. Democrats are a slightly lesser of two evils, but are most certainly depressingly conservative.

And what we have here is just another conservative Democrat.

 

[Flamb3Nobunaga]

I've played shooting games since 2001 with the original TimeSplitters. I've played Halo, Call of Duty, Gears of War, Battlefield and countless others. I must be the best shot in the history of the world right?

I went paintballing last summer. I hit two people. One was an idiot who went in the open, the other was a teammate.

Wow. I've had so much training, right guys?

 

[xDarc]

They don't want people to own guns, they don't want people to have a simulated experience with guns, because when they take over they want to be able to roll right over everyone with no resistance. Democrats and Republicans, bought and paid for by the New World Order.

 

[The Lugz]

Is this just a Yank thing? I swear I've never heard British politics going on about games like this. Or is the focus of american politics on damning games just misrepresented on this site because every time anyone comes out with an offhand comment its posted as news?

that's because owning a gun is illegal in the uk outside of a hunting club

no guns = no bullshit arguments about gaming gun crime

guns are the causal factor, not games

period.

ya see that senators? your argument is dust before the winds of logic.

 

[Jacco]

Can we please just start a movement so that nobody who has ever been involved in politics ever gets to be elected again? Most of them are complete morons, and the equally stupid masses will continue to vote for the familiar name 80% of the time.

I would feel better if we just had randomly selected people picked up off the street and forced to serve to two years...

Except Hippies.

Never Hippies...

That's what the Athenians did pretty much. It worked out reasonably well for them.

 

[Farther than stars]

So why then say such an unfounded statement? It may very well be just another person who fears something they don't understand and too old to try at their time of life. If that is the case how likely are they to make an unbiased and informed decision which would be using that intelligence they apparently posses.

And that's my point. She "may very well be just another person who fears something [she] doesn't understand", but that's an assumption on your part. She may also have made that unbiased and informed decision, but just because it falls out against your side, you dismiss her as being "too old to try [and understand] at [her] time of life". And speaking of biases, that last part is just slander, plain and simple.

Well that's the thing.
I don't think any decision made against video games with such flimsy support to back it up CAN be an unbiased and informed decision. My personal bias does not help but as an example if It were up to me I wouldn't ban Justin Bieber music because it causes teen pregnancy without seeing some damn evidence of this being the case first.

Then again being a politician she may be blindly lashing out at something/ anything to please the people.

Remind me again exactly what part is slander and why?

I completely agree with the fact that it probably wasn't an informed decision, but in that case the best thing to do is write to her and explain your (/our) side of the argument. Telling the internet that she's too old to try and understand doesn't help anyone or anything, least of all the legislative process.
And as to why saying that she's too old to try and understand is slander, it's because it simply isn't true. Most politicians actually want to hear what their voters think. They need to hear what's in the public's interest, because that's the only way they're going to survive as politicians.
To name Feinstein as an example; she was one of the co-sponsors of PIPA. Now, most of the advice that went into proposals such as SOPA and PIPA came from Hollywood and game and music publishers, because big business has a more efficient lobbying infrastructure in Washington. And it's not surprising that Feinstein sat up and took notice. After all, piracy has become a big problem and millions of jobs in entertainment industry are affected by it.
The SOPA/PIPA affair got publicity, other arguments came out against it and PIPA was dropped. That doesn't mean that Feinstein co-sponsored the act out of sheer neglect, but it also doesn't help to attack her competence. There isn't a single politician out there, or even a single person, who has a flawless record wherein they make the right choice on every single issue. If there was, that person would be president for ever.

 

[Farther than stars]

Can we please just start a movement so that nobody who has ever been involved in politics ever gets to be elected again? Most of them are complete morons, and the equally stupid masses will continue to vote for the familiar name 80% of the time.

I would feel better if we just had randomly selected people picked up off the street and forced to serve to two years...

Except Hippies.

Never Hippies...

That's what the Athenians did pretty much. It worked out reasonably well for them.

Athens was run by hippies? o.0 (No wonder they got taken by the Romans...)

 

[Stillgard]

Yeah, this senator needs to review an old post by the Jimquisition that points it out perfectly clear

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jimquisition/6692-Desensitized-to-Violence

To throw a wrench in her own logic. It says in the disclaimer "You may not fictionalize anything in the game to real life." So would that make this a crime against the first amendment?

 

[Jacco]

Can we please just start a movement so that nobody who has ever been involved in politics ever gets to be elected again? Most of them are complete morons, and the equally stupid masses will continue to vote for the familiar name 80% of the time.

I would feel better if we just had randomly selected people picked up off the street and forced to serve to two years...

Except Hippies.

Never Hippies...

That's what the Athenians did pretty much. It worked out reasonably well for them.

Athens was run by hippies? o.0 (No wonder they got taken by the Romans...)

No! You're thinking of the Thespians. The Athenians were Hipsters.

 

[Mike Hout]

How illogical can Congress get? It's the lack of respect for human life in reality that causes these psychopathic individuals to do these things. Last I checked video games were not around during WW2. Or was it the violent books that drove him to kill millions of Jews?

 

[Sofus]

I play Dark Souls on my pc with an Xbox controller... does this qualify as a practice which I can use in real life????

I'm not sure that rolling around on the floor will do me much good versus someone who has a gun. I should probably mention that I don't own any type of firearm.... I live in Denmark afterall.

But yeah... be very afraid of my awesome skills at drinking coffee WHILE I rotate the camera......