Video Game Firearm Safety Course
Okay, not really a video game firearm safety course.
A few times in the past couple of weeks I’ve had discussions with people that revolved around new shooters, and bad influences. One of the huge problems you’ll find in urban areas is “thug culture.” It’s bred from lots of different things - disdain for police, rap role-models, and of course, video games.
It seems like just one of those factors feeds the flames of the others and so on and so forth to the point where … well … ridiculousness ensues. Now what we have is firearms being portrayed to young kids in a completely unrealistic light with no basis in reality.
For people who do respect guns and gun ownership, that’s a tough hill to climb - teaching new shooters with impressionable young minds while battling this kind of thug romanticism.
As if rap videos aren’t enough, there are video games out there that glorify disrespect and the thug culture. Now it’s cool to be an uneducated, drug-dealing, gang-banging murderer. Meanwhile the rap stars who promote that lifestyle with so much bling on screen are living their high life in security while their fans who many times are really living in bad neighborhoods where the sound of shots going off is a nightly occurrence are trying to emulate them without the multi-million dollar contracts.
Have a look at this - a screenshot from a game called “Saint’s Row”:
It’s almost comical, really. How hard is it to train a kid to respect firearms if he’s playing games like this every night with his friends?
And let me state unequivocally here - I’m a gamer. I’ve played Grand Theft Auto, GTA III, Vice City. I grew up with an Atari 2600, cutting my teeth on Pitfall and Combat. I’ve spent hundreds and hundreds of hours with various incarnations of that pudgy little Italian plumber in the overalls, and likewise hundreds running around the land of Zelda.
But these games out now … they’re a little different. Have another look - this one is GTA San Andreas:
Shootouts in the streets, guns being held sideways, drive-by shootings. I’m not going to eviscerate the video game companies for putting these games out (I wish they spent as much time on quality as they did on making a fast buck through shocking screenshots and programming for thugs), and certainly censorship isn’t the answer.
All games come with a rating system, and many like this are rated “M for Mature”. Thing is, you’ve got ignorant parents getting out and buying games like this for their kids without knowing a thing about video games, the content, or anything their child is interested in.
Do these games contribute to a violent society? No, I don’t think so. If you had a game called, “Virtual Church Pastor” where you had to run through a bad neighborhood and get people to stop killing each other, the game wouldn’t make any money. If you played a corrupt Pastor who operated a secret stripper club in the back of his Church who’s objective it was to con as many religious sheep as possible out of all of their money so you could buy more expensive hookers and cars, well you’d have a hit on your hands.
All this comes back full circle to teaching new shooters. How do you do it when this is their only influence and only interaction with firearms. There are kids out there who aren’t teenagers who can identify on sight any one of a dozen different handguns … but they’ve never touched one.
One last screenshot just to drive the point home:
Mercifully, it looks like this collaborative game featuring Snoop Dogg is not going to be made. But look at the screenshot. Two thugs gunning it out at close range in the front yard of a neighborhood, holding guns sideways, with a child’s toy in the yard. I don’t want to sound like a stuffy old guy, but seriously … this is a bad influence. Not because it turns gaming kids into killers - I don’t think there’s enough evidence to that effect - but because it indoctrinates them with a romantic sense of gang-banging and makes it nearly impossible to de-program them.
Take a kid growing up with games like these to the range, and he’ll hold the pistol sideways thinking he could actually hit something by looking cool. It’s sad, because it makes proper education so damn hard.
Liberty on November 28th 2007 in Boomsticks!
Robb Allen [Visitor] responded on 28 Nov 2007 at 11:18 am #
Even worse is what it does to children’s minds when it comes to conditioning.
I’m still reading “On Combat” by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman (he of the Sheep, Sheepdogs, and Wolves legacy). In there he details why military training doesn’t generally produce psychopaths, but that video games can.
The soldier is taught how to “turn it off”. I was taught in the Marines that we killed with one hand while saving lives with the other. Civilians were never to be fired upon. There were things you simply did not do. And when the platoon leader said stop, you stopped.
Video games teach the shooting part, but they don’t teach the “stop” part. I’m playing BioShock right now and of course, like every other game you kill everything that comes on your screen. This can also include 6 year old little girls (I play the harder way and let them live rather than kill them).
My problem is that I can’t decide what to do about it. I can’t, in good faith, use the force of the govt to shut down the industry or censor them, nor can I use the same force to require parents to… well… be parents.
I won’t let my kids play these games in my house. I will also teach them discipline, especially in regards to firearms, in hopes that I can influence them enough. They’re both girls, so hopefully it won’t be as big of a challenge.
As for the reality of guns, well let’s just say the Brady Bunch and Victim Promotion Center only know what they see on the latest Die Hard movies.
I love it when I see someone get shot with a .38 Special and they get thrown back 20 feet and their chest literally explodes. Or the good guy shoots two pistols in two hands, hitting their targets 80% of the time. No wonder people have such a misconception about firearms!
Liberty [Member] responded on 28 Nov 2007 at 11:45 am #
Ooooh, Bioshock! I’m currently in the midst of my Mass Effect addiction. Pausing my Gears of War addiction in the mean time. The Oblivion addiction is dormant … for now.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve developed the habit of counting shots when I’m watching a movie. Just to see if a particular firearm is of the “unlimited ammo” variety. Like Commando or First Blood.
And no, I don’t want my son playing games like these either. If he wants to get any shooting in we can take the Daisy to the backyard and aim for cans.
I don’t know that there’s any single solution to it other than treating it like a fad. I feel the same frustration you do there. Censor? No. Parenting classes? That’s not going to work.
How about only allowing parents to buy one M-rated game a month! Or when the game isn’t being played it has to be stored in a locked container apart from the console with the game case open and the disc outside of it? Heh.
Robb Allen [Visitor] responded on 28 Nov 2007 at 1:04 pm #
That’s…. an idea I might just run with. ;)
Liberty [Member] responded on 28 Nov 2007 at 1:09 pm #
Heh. Send me the link when you do.
Angus Lincoln [Visitor] responded on 28 Nov 2007 at 3:38 pm #
A great post! If a company developed a safe gun handling video based on target shooting and point accumulations to aquire a winning status, combined with bonus points for safe handling(following the 4 rules for example), failure to follow safe firearm handling would result in penalties or simulated “accidents” that might drive home the reality of mishandling the firearm. I think it could be a lot of fun to create a game highlighting the virtues of shooting as a sport and hobby.Teaching young ones the proper mindset to approach a firearm with will go a long way towards fewer gun related deaths, but perhaps it is way too late for this generation. If I developed games like those you referenced, I’d have a hard time not feeling like I taught a lot of kids and adults the wrong way to use firearms.
Liberty [Member] responded on 28 Nov 2007 at 3:47 pm #
I wonder about that too. Are people developing these games shooters themselves? I don’t think your average street thug is programming in their mom’s basement when they’re not out bustin’ caps in respective asses. Someone’s making cash on it, that’s for sure.