School shooting, now hitting europe (and games are involved)

Quote from Sentura

as much as everyone likes to blame everyone else, my personal opinion is that the world today is a very hateful place, what with the different governments acting hostile towards people and are for the creation of wars (see: right wing parties). without going too much into politics ill suffice to say that reign of these things (whom nobody suspects) pushes people to the edge even more. seeing that there's nothing to live for only presses on urges to die.

Your personal opinion is also rather very much like my own personal opinion, as I see it. But I won't go into that. As for the school shooting, I don't really much of an opinion on it, since there's just been too many these days. To be fairly honest, I'd gladly take a bullet if I can take them down with me in the process if it ever happened around here.

Quote from Quakis

To be fairly honest, I'd gladly take a bullet if I can take them down with me in the process if it ever happened around here.

You and me both. Valhalla, here I come.

since when were you a viking?

I think maybe the world today is a much more civil place now than ever before in history. The difference is that our communication and media technology have increased in an exponential way so that it is much easier and faster to get news and information of the bad things that do happen around the world. As a result it only *seems* as though the world is a much more hostile place now than in the past.

Don't get me wrong though, bad things still do happen obviously, and we still have a long ways to go.

I like the notion that "every age believes their youths are the worst there've ever been". I guess that kind of applies to the world as a whole because there's no way our current world is as bad as it's been in the past, yet it's quite easy to look at it and think "How could it be worse than this?".

Of course, some brief history lessons teach you otherwise. This sure beats the days where you'd never know if your village might be sieged one night, with rapes and murders for all.

I'd almost be inclined to say the world is more civil and less hateful than ever. We've done nothing but progress from stuff like revolutions, genocides, nuclear attacks, and cold wars.

Quote from Sentura

since when were you a viking?

Half Swedish, and half Scottish that turned out to be a bunch of lost Norwegians.Does that count?

Going with what Thrik was saying, yes, we've made progress, but when bad things happen, they're worse than before. Everything is changing, including what we compare current events to, and hindsight is always 20/20.

The media needs to sort itself out, too. When anybody can have their posthumous 15 minutes of fame -- simply record your deranged 'manifesto' and pose with some guns, then make it accessible after your death -- it's sending out the wrong message to these people. It seems every killer who leaves a cache of videos & (I use the term loosely) writings gets them aired on every single network going. It would be enough to state that the person involved left rambling notes / videos and then pass them on to the police / court enquiry to be used in evidence. Shining a spotlight on someone who doesn't deserve any kind of platform for their views is just an all round bad idea. I'm not saying that removing the platform will eradicate or even significantly reduce the killings, but it's surely the decent thing to do. Do we really need a video of someone aiming a gun at the camera and spreading their message of hate to millions of people? If a handful of viewers harbour fantasies of doing the same thing, it may just give them the impetus and belief to go through with it.

Quote from Thrik

I'd almost be inclined to say the world is more civil and less hateful than ever. We've done nothing but progress from stuff like revolutions, genocides, nuclear attacks, and cold wars.

of course we have! i dont think you can picture amount of wanton destruction world wide we would have if a nuclear war escalated. some political overlords, it seems, haven't seen the big picture though (see: iran, pakistan, n. korea etc.), and do not understand that throwing one bomb would ultimately lead to a rocket exchange that would ruin not alone the planet, but also extinguish life as we know it.

the fact that we merely distance ourselves from things does not prevent them from happening; and while you think that the world was bad some 1000 years ago, remember that there were no global wars 1000 years ago, no drugs, and so forth. society has changed us from being busy 100% of the time to a time with too much time on our hands and too much luxury and i honestly think it has gotten out of hand. the way people behave, the bizarre things people do in their spare time... i guess you can imagine what i mean without me having to name some examples here.

the world is a hateful place today, there are so many new inventive ways of being malevolent and only so much fewer to being benevolent. the way the world has been going for the past 2000 years does not give me good incentive to think that anything will change for the better; but then again what could i have expected? we're only humans and humans make mistakes; though it's about time we start to tread lightly if we don't want to make our next mistake a final.

I think the media(news) is just as much to blame as TV, movies, videogames, etc.

If you look at the school shooting history in the US it usually comes in waves, the late nineties being the worst, seems like there was one every other month. And it all came down to the media dwelling on it constantly 24/7.

I'm not saying they shouldn't report it, but when they release all the footage of the columbine shooters, or the manifesto of the guy from virginia tech it does 100x more harm than good.

This guy used youtube beforehand so there was nothing that could be done, but I hope that no media organisation ends up airing that trash.

In the end, though there is never one thing that motivated a person like this to do what they did but rather a multitude of things and it's ignorant to try to single out one thing.

Personally I agree with the media in connecting video games with video games. Of course it's not always the case, and I really don't know the facts on this particular story seeing as both the of links supplied in this thread are no longer avaliable.

I think the majority of video gamer players learn a certain "killing" skill and aspect to them. I personally play all type of first person shooters, and some were more violent than others such as Postal. When you play these games you learn techniques and a sense of killing.

I call total bullshit if not everyone atleast once played out a gun shooting involving you. I know I have numerous times pictured myself in a bank robbery or a shootout. And where does alot of those visions come from? Video games. I think the difference between myself and this student or any other school-shooter is I'm not insane. You take a look at the majority of students who shot fellow classmates most suffered from depression, bullying, mentally challenged, or social outcasts. When you mix those with video games you've basically found someone who loses touch with their reality.

Quote from Thrik

Not really, especially in London.

I meant 'relatively' as in to, say, Finland and America. In case you weren't aware both countries have more civilian gun owners than almost every other country in the world, which makes it significantly easier to get your hands on one than it is in the UK where we have pretty much the tightest gun law/control in the world.

It may be easy if you know the right people in London and a few other key parts of the UK, but by and large it's much less simple a task than it is in other countries. The gun used by the psycho this thread is about was probably stolen from a relative of the shooter rather than something he sought out and bought from an arms dealer.

I'm going to assume it's no coincidence that the majority of these school shootings by very young people tend to occur in countries with higher general gun availability to the population. Probably makes it easier for such thoughts to infect your mind if you know your dad/granddad/etc always has a gun lying around the house.

Not sure about that Thrik. You can find illegal guns on every street corner over here and school shootings, like those in the USA, are practically inexistent. Unless it's a gang fight of course, but that's another subject.

I blame all this "I've got to be popular" mentality. Of course it happens everywhere but it's stronger in countries such as the USA, where kids are raised to be a competitive person and if they fail they are cast out from society. They eventualy get fed up with it and give up, wasting years locked in their bedrooms playing games and making CS maps, untill the day they finally snap and go around killing everyone.

I know nothing about the finnish society, I can't really comment on this shooting case specifically. I just hope it was an isolate case instead of a major social problem, like it is in the USA.

I'm finnish and i've read pretty much all of his silly messages. The guy seemed quite intelligent actually, while at the same time like an ass with big ego and you could easily see that this wasn't a normal guy at all. He was also depressed if i remember correct, what a surprise. Games had probably nothing to do with it.

I know one girl whose friend's brother got shot, it's really unreal to know that the shootings happened quite near me.

Curman, it's a plausible argument but, in my opinion, you have to lump games in with other forms of media. Let's face it, does any form of media do slick & glamorised killing better than films & tv shows? Currently, I don't think so. However, games get much more criticism purely due to a lack of understanding & the fact that the media is always looking to blame society's latest perceived ill.

More to the point: Do you feel you would be more inclined to resort to violence just because of games? Do you feel you would be a more effective killer because of games? Would it be specifically because of games or because of violent media in general? I do think that exposure to violent media can have an effect on people (particularly disturbed people who are looking for something that is 'in tune' with their, shall we say, tastes). Could a game potentially fuel their fantasies and delusions? I think it could. However, I don't think that, in the majority of cases, a game can make a person violent. If the person is already violent or mentally ill, it may reinforce or fuel their behaviour. However, by that stage I think pretty much any form of violent media would do the same. I'm sure you've all read about weirdos who get arrested for murder, then the police search the perpetrator's house and recover a large quantity of extreme slasher flicks & horror masks.

Your own thoughts about shootouts etc. could come from anywhere. Some of my own more lucid thoughts have actually been as a result of reading --rather than watching or playing-- something. I find it very hard to get involved in something when I'm moving a mouse to aim my gun while staring into a monitor. It's fairly ridiculous. As games get more and more realistic and newer, more immersive methods of interaction arrive (VR, wiimote etc.), this debate will probably shift gears, though. For example, I could well believe that playing arcade gun games could teach a person to react in a certain way. Physical action & co-ordination + stimulus = learned response. Remember FPS doug and his "every time I pick up a gun, it automatically points at somebody's head?" speech? It's not quite as ridiculous as it sounds. It is ridiculous if you play FPS games using a mouse, though. I can't really picture myself instinctively aiming a gun due to playing FPS shooters. There's a total disconnect between gaming & the physical reality unless the controller is akin to the real tool you'd use to carry out the action, IMO. My brother has a fairly realistic & heavy BB handgun and holding it feels alien to me. I've played thousands of hours of FPS games and it doesn't feel at all comfortable to hold or aim a realistically sized gun.

If I were a nut-job who was out to do maximum damage, I'd probably do something physical like airsoft or paintball to learn the ropes. Fairly realistic guns + physical activity + adrenaline. BAN THIS SICK FILTH NOW!1

Quote from Thrik

FFS. More young lives extinguished by another mental fuck who seems to like the idea of going around a school and indiscriminately murdering people.What is it about schools and colleges that nutters want to go around killing anyone they see? I seem to hear about it happening in schools and colleges more than I hear about it happening in, say, shopping malls and stuff.

Horrible stuff, and genuinely frightening knowing some psychotic fuck in your own kids' school could end up doing it. Good job guns are relatively difficult to come by in the UK, especially for kids.

because kids are cunts, and when you mix ability to get guns, mental disorder, and years and years of bullying (mental or physical) then people are going to get killed. It's not a big mystery.

Parents need to pay more attention to their kids when warning signs are displayed (both bullying and being bullied), and children should be taught that teasing leads to bullying leads to their brains lying on the cafateria floor.

Since when has it benn perfectly acceptable that bullying goes on? It's a modern phenomenon, and so is shcool shooting; again, hardly takes a lot to see where the problems are coming from.

Stop blaming video games, it;s not like developers go out of their way to build murder simulators, what kind of bullshit is that..

i'm surprised so little people named the responsibillity of the parents? i agree with most of the stuff said but i also think the parents pretty much failed in this case. how could they not see this? how could they have seen their own son fall into depression and isolation and NOT give a shit or do anything about it? how could they have let this happen??

i have friends where the elders pretty much lost all contact with just because -and yes, its tragic- they simply do not care enough for their children. for them, kids are only a burden. and i see this happen alot more these days..

i think if a kid misses the warmth of a save and loving home, shit's eventually going to hit the fan pretty hard, especially in cases where the kid has an instable personallity..

there's one thing i didnt agree on though.. i dont think this boy was insane.. sick maybe, but insanity or losing touch wich reality is something i didnt quite see in this whole thing. he knew exactly what was going on and chose his place in this whole.. whatver twisted place that was.

Well, as far as I know the story the gunner had been teased all through his life, which I imagine is enough to turn just about anybody into a nuthead. Now when I first heard the news, I somehow instantly thought the guy must have bought his gun from this company called Terä-asekeskus (let's say.... blade center in english) which sells a shitload of guns, swords and knives and has pretty sick ads on their website.

I was right, the company locates in the same town. The creepy thing is that the company has many videos exactly like the "just testing my gun" one.

I also just found out that Finland has third most guns per capita in the world. However, gun ownership isn't very common, it's just that hunters have like ten guns each and other people don't have any.

Aghhh not again, I don't know what else to say..

Quote from TomWithTheWeather

I think maybe the world today is a much more civil place now than ever before in history. The difference is that our communication and media technology have increased in an exponential way so that it is much easier and faster to get news and information of the bad things that do happen around the world. As a result it only *seems* as though the world is a much more hostile place now than in the past.Don't get me wrong though, bad things still do happen obviously, and we still have a long ways to go.

Just about bang on really Tom. In a world of X billion people there will always be someone who ends up in a place where they want to go out and kill others. It's horrific for sure and I hope to never have any first hand experience of it but at the same time it's pure statistics.

Quote from teeluu

I'm finnish and i've read pretty much all of his silly messages. The guy seemed quite intelligent actually, while at the same time like an ass with big ego and you could easily see that this wasn't a normal guy at all. He was also depressed if i remember correct, what a surprise. Games had probably nothing to do with it.I know one girl whose friend's brother got shot, it's really unreal to know that the shootings happened quite near me.

hah .. yea.. they feel as cool ones (when holding guns)