“During the past week, it’s been impossible to avoid the media’s coverage of what was the worst school shooting in U.S. history. Hermits have probably heard about this tragedy, with the video footage of the cops on the scene taken by Virginia Tech student Jamal Albaughouti on his cell phone somehow permeating their dreams.”
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During the past week, it’s been impossible to avoid the media’s coverage of what was the worst school shooting in U.S. history.

Hermits have probably heard about this tragedy, with the video footage of the cops on the scene taken by Virginia Tech student Jamal Albaughouti on his cell phone somehow permeating their dreams.

There were even Facebook groups about it just hours after it happened.

But can tragedies like this be prevented?

Probably not.

Some are questioning why an e-mail wasn’t sent out right after the first shooting at about 7:15 that morning, informing students and closing the school. It wasn’t sent until about 20 minutes before the second shooting at 9:45 a.m.

Even then, there aren’t many students checking their e-mail that early anyway, especially while driving to school.

What doesn’t make sense is how the shooter even got out of the dorm in which he committed the first shooting of two people. Gunshots are tough to sleep through.

Instead of hopping on the bandwagon of debating whether it could have been prevented or placing blame on the inadequacy of the police force, there’s another issue that needs to be addressed: What motivates someone to do something like this?

Who knows what will trigger someone to commit such terrible acts?

Jack Thompson.

Jack Thompson is an attorney from Florida who has a long history of blaming video games for shootings such as this. Michael Carneal, Dustin Lynch, Devin Moore, Jacon Robida, Cody Posey, Dylan Klebold, Eric Harris and now Seung-hui Cho are only a fraction of shooters committing similar acts that Thompson has claimed were influenced and inspired by video games such as Doom, Grand Theft Auto, Bully and Resident Evil, among others.

His logic is that people become so immersed in this type of violence that they can no longer distinguish between real life and video games, and that they view their behavior as acceptable without realizing the consequences beforehand.

To Thompson, video games are the main reason behind such tragedies. He neglects other factors such as upbringing, social life, family circumstances, mental illness and just plain insanity, dismissing them as being unimportant. Sounds like he’s pushing a personal agenda.

In fact, Thompson was on FOX News as a School Shooting Expert hours before authorities released any information about the suspect or his motive, linking this shooting to video games and making references to other shootings that he’s claimed the same thing about.

This man has taken a human tragedy and objectified it to further his own personal agenda against violent video games.

Is anyone else offended by that?

It’s also fairly likely that he’ll even press charges against one or more of the larger video game publishers for making whichever game he feels like bashing.

It’s true that we live in a society in which violence is seemingly glorified by the media. We see it constantly in movies, on television, in the newspaper, and, yes, in video games. In a sense, we’ve become somewhat desensitized to it.

But claiming that some video games need to be banned because they cause people to commit mass murder is like claiming we should go back to the days of Prohibition because more children are born with fetal alcohol syndrome each year than soldiers that have died in Iraq. Yes, it’s that illogical.

Obviously, everyone who is exposed to media violence does not decide to shoot up a school. The responsibility for such actions lies within the individual who did it, not the media. Someone made a conscious decision to do it, for whatever reason.

People like Jack Thompson need to stop placing blame where it doesn’t belong and do something more productive to combat acts of violence.

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