Opinion: Did They Ever Play A Video Game?
Submitted by Carson Now Reader on Fri, 01/25/2013 - 3:55pm
Charles Joseph Whitman, in 1966 killed 14 people and wounded 32 others in a mass shooting rampage located in and around the Tower of the University of Texas in Austin on the afternoon of August 1, 1966. Three people were shot and killed inside the university's tower and 11 others were murdered after Whitman fired at random from the 28th-floor observation deck of the Main Building. Did he ever play a video game?
Colin Ferguson-December 7, 1993, Colin Ferguson, 34, a Jamaican immigrant opened fire on helpless commuters aboard a Long Island Railroad train, killing six and wounding 19 before he was subdued. With so many witnesses, the only defense was insanity, which Ferguson's attorneys did. They claimed exposure to racism drove him into a "Black Rage." Ferguson fired his lawyers, claiming he was not insane, and insisted on the constitutional right to defend himself. His performance in court reinforced the validity of the insanity plea. Did he ever play a video game?
In 1966, Richard Speck, a twenty-four-year-old sailor walked into a female student nurses dormitory and systematically murdered eight students. Did he ever play a video game?
Coral Eugene-Watts, confessed to stabbing, strangling, hanging and drowning 12 women in Texas and one in Michigan, in 1982. He was suspected in 26 other slayings. Did he ever play a video game?
John Wayne Gacy, he began murdering in 1972: he mostly assaulted then strangled employees of his landscaping company and other male youths then buried them around his house. He was finally arrested at the end of 1978, and was convicted of 33 murders two years later. Gacy was executed by lethal injection in 1994. Did he ever play a video game?
Karla Faye Tucker–along with her boyfriend was convicted for hacking a man and woman to death with a pickax during a 1983 break-in. She said she experienced an orgasm while hacking up the bodies. Did she and her boyfriend ever play a video game?
If you are looking for simple answers to the violence in America don’t look to violent video games as the cause…it started with Cain and Abel, and I can assure you, Cain never played a video game either.
The raw truth is that there is hideous pathology in America that we are afraid to discuss or admit to…we are just good at killing each other by any instrument of lethality we can lay our hands on.
Maybe…just maybe, we can begin to stop the violence and killing, not by passing laws, but by remembering the lyrics of a song by my old friends, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young…”Teach your children well…”
