8-year old shoots his grandma after playing GTA 4
 

Just happened to be watching cnn.
Source: http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/25/us/lou...ls-grandmother

tldr version: Slaughter, Louisiana trailer park. 8 year old boy headshots his grandma and kills her with a loaded gun found within the home, minutes after playing GTA 4 on the PS3.
"Under Louisiana law, a child younger than 10 is exempt from criminal responsibility"

The media is unsurprisingly blaming video games.

Rockstar's response (not sure if this was a statement made in the past or a response to this current event)
"Ascribing a connection to entertainment -- a theory that has been disproven repeatedly by multiple independent studies -- both minimizes this moment and sidesteps the real issues at hand,"

hmm... maybe I should play Fable II Pub Games and then win the lottery in real life!!!

8 year old has access to M rated games, and loaded guns. Clearly no supervision, and most likely neglected.

I BLAME THE VIDEO GAMES!

Blame the dumb ass parents that don't read the ratings.

Lol, that's America for ya.

Welcome to the 21st century. Parents not giving a single crap about what their children play.

I blame the kids environment rather than the game -_-

That is highly disrespectful, if someone you knew was killed like this, would you want people going around making jokes? No. So show some respect.

I don't care how bizarre this situation is, a human life was ended and it is not acceptable to joke about it.

What I meant to say is America has some of the crappiest gun laws known to mankind.

Why is there a '':)'' next to this thread title?

This is horrible, but you can add it to one of the many incidents that prove that america needs proper gun laws. Gun licenses. Requiring guns to be locked away properly and only used in legal areas. You know, regular functional country type stuff.

I actually feel bad for the parents. They gave birth to/ have to raise someone that killed their mother. Or put him up for adoption.

I have a sick sense of humor.


But yeah...this goes beyond just letting a little kid play a mature video game.
The kid should not have even had access to a gun. A loaded gun at that.
I mean if you're going to leave a gun laying around at least take the mag out.
Nobody would want him lol

I see this whole situation like these:
Parents (or whoever) buys an M-rated game for 8 year old with no care in the ratings
Kid plays it
Kid gets ideas
Kid shoots someone because some dumbass left a gun on the bed or something like that
Media blames video games for incident
Video game company reminds people of ratings
Media still blames video games


Didn't the same thing happen in Columbine? Media blamed Doom? I recall reading up that the one of the guys were depressed, the other insane? Is that true? I need confirmation.

This bothers me.

every video game is violent though...hell, Mario is violent.

The government has been blaming the latest media for this stuff since comic books. And just the latest media. I mean, do you really here the government bashing television any more and stating it was the problem? Or what about comic books? Or what about effing radio? The problem is that people are simply excessivly afraid of the future. People are simply seeing newfangled tech in the current generation and are afraid of it for just about no reason other than they think it's more worthy of blame than the fact that this kid was 1. 8 years old 2. Played some suggestive media and 3. Had access to a loaded firearm.

Let's blame a video game as we promote wars in the Middle East all over our media. Wars aren't violent, GTA4 is though!

They also blamed Rammstein (a German Industrial Metal band that sings mostly about sex related topics) and Marilyn Manson. Americans are ****ing dumbasses sometimes.

No they also blamed doom to as one of the shooters wrote in his diary how he used to play doom alot and the american media manipulated it to be the main reason

Damn kid should of played graal then his nan would just stand back up again after doing the little spin

I agree with this guy. Terrible parents having that kind of game lying around as well as a loaded gun. They put age restrictions on these games for a reason. A child could get easily influenced by them and imitate the actions seen in the game.

Too bad nobody notices the age restrictions anymore. Parents suck in this generation. They act as if they will never understand a game. Well, I understood them at a really young age. Not very hard. It's also not very hard to read the damn rating of a game.

Thats also what I hate about democrats. They wanna tax everyone and give money away. Make everyone else pay for someone's stupid life choices and mistakes.
I'm sure there's already a charity for victims of that nature. Extreme left wing garbage.
I'm sure we'll never see that legislation but that he even suggests it is bad enough.

funny how rexx always posts the news reports

Im the others, I mean.. How would an 8 year old find a gun in the home? Hide that sh*t please. In boxes in an attic or something.

Shiz that is what I wondered, who lets a kid have access to either a loaded gun or a gun with ammunition nearby.

Maybe they bought him a gun for his eighth birthday? maybe GTA 4 wasn't enough?

They should've bought him a better gun.

Just a shame he didn't take those dumb as **** parents out aswell

That works until the kids go exploring the house and find a box with a gun in it.

1) Invest in a lock box.
2) Keep ammo separate from guns
3) Teach kids proper gun safety. A kid wouldn't get all curious about a gun they find if they already know how they work and how dangerous they are.

My little brother has tons of toy guns, he's seen guns in movies and games... but he's also very aware of what a real gun is and knows not to touch his fathers. He's also four.

Ignorant kids will do ignorant ****, and kids are only as ignorant as their parents let them be.

U dont just say to a kid dont use a gun and place a gun on your desk because if that kid get bullied or amgry or sumthing hes just gonna shoot someone

Blame the person leaving the gun in a place where the kid could easily get it.

This is why you take a multitude of precautions when it comes to gun safety. You'll see I listed 3 things.

Yeah don't want to get 'amgry' guys.

Amgry people are scary :(

Knowing this, I'm pretty concerned about the Grandmother that was babysitting the child. The atmosphere in the house was probably trashy and the grandma didn't like the child and treated him like crap?

Possibilities. Could've happened.


8 year olds. This means the gun was not on safety lock. Unless the kid knows how to operate a gun (who tf teaches an 8 year old, c'mon.) Either he was raised by Red necks and they showed him how to use a gun, or this kid experimented with the gun before and somehow managed to figure out how to use it.

A monkey could figure out how to use a gun. It's pretty damn straight forward.

Squeeze trigger. Bang.

Loading is more complicated and they would need to know about the safety switch.

I blame the parents, entirely. They should not let an 8 year old have access to M rated games, especially ones that have such realistic violence. The same goes for R rated movies.

At that age children have a very distorted sense of reality. They are still learning about the world and what life is like, and naturally tend to learn from their surroundings and the environment that they're in. When I was 8, I still believed in Santa Claus and all that, and so did most of the people my age. I had no idea how adult life worked or how the heck my parents managed to handle everything they did. The world seemed overwhelming to me, and I was clueless. It takes time for people to fully learn how the world works and what is acceptable, and for their mind to physically develop to handle so many things. If a child plays a game in which you can freely kill innocent civilians with guns for extended periods of time, it may take over their view on life. He probably hardly realized what he is doing is "just a game", and made comparisons to RL. His mind was not fully developed and therefore not yet capable of making rational thoughts based on reality. When a child is growing up they tend to reflect their surroundings. If they spend their time surrounded by nothing but mindless violence that they can't even fully understand, they will grow up and learn based on that. I'm not saying that every kid that plays a violent game is going to be a murderer, I'm just saying that playing such disturbing games extensively at a very young age can have a dramatic effect on their understanding of everyday life.Any grown adult can clearly realize that GTA is just a game, and know that such things should never happen in real life, an 8 year old child has no clue what the world works like or what is reasonable. People need to respect the age ratings of games, they're there for a reason.

The second mistake they made was leaving a gun in the open where it is accessible to a child. It should be in a locked case, and out of reach of a child. Not necessarily to stop something like this, but to stop them from accidentally harming themselves(there have been numerous deaths from children who play with weaponry they aren't aware of how to use). Even if it was originally unloaded, I'm sure he learned to some degree how to load it from the game he played, which his parents should not have let him play in the first place.

Parents need to pay more attention to what they're buying their children. Rather than blaming the gaming industry for putting out games with content inappropriate for children, they should blame the parents for ignoring age ratings and giving their children whatever they want. Most major gaming studios have their games Rated by the ESRB, which provides a very clear description as to what types of mature content are included in those games.

Actually, video games do have influence on the emotional part of your brain, whereas changes in your mind are noticeable through a MRI scan, after playing for just one week. Most people who play 'shoot em' up games' are prone to suicidal thoughts, thoughts of homicide, and nothing positive, really. I play Call of Duty time to time... Yea it had a effect on me when I used to play maybe 5-6 hours a day.

How many people were tested?
The only thing I found from watching others play CoD is talking like an asshole, and getting extremely pissed.
Actually... Your statement DOES make sense.

ya man horrible laws!111


Anyway, why does this child have access to MATURE content and loaded weapons that possibly weren't properly concealed? lmao

You have any sources to back this up?

If playing a video game is affecting your behavior and thought process then you need to stop playing games and go get help because that's not normal by any standards.

I've played shooters my entire adolescence and I've never had any abnormal thoughts of violent behavior. I'm actually kind of a pacifist, yet I still love violent games because I know its not reality.

Compared to most countries America has crappy laws. Why do you need an automatic weapon, unless to kill someone.

Why the hell blame GTA? There is a 'Rating' for a reason, and I doubt GTA let's people under 13 to play it. So basically it's the fault of the parents.

I said they also, not that they didn't blame Doom. Maybe read before starting your post with "no" as if I'm wrong.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbi...ctors_explored

Doom wasn't the only thing blamed.

Cronos is nevar wrung

Why is the thread logo a smiley face? Please click the right icon next time.

Rexx has a sick sense of humor, didn't you know?

Why are you asking a question that has been asked before? Please read the threads post's next time.