No one needs to take responsibility

This is nuts. Someone kills his father, and because he played GTA: Vice City, it’s not really his fault?!

The latest lawsuit lays the blame for the muders at the feet of GTA: Vice City. It describes Cody Posey as being obsessed with the title and says that had Posey not played the game, “he would not have killed.” The suit accuses the Take-Two and the other defendants of a “civil conspiracy” in creating and marketing the game, saying that the possibility of “copycat violence” should have been so plainly evident to them that they should never have released the game.

How bloody ridiculous. Games, movies, books, music, and whatever medium you wish to pick on do not make people commit violent crime. They choose to do it. Someone who was going to be violent may look to these influences for inspiration, but if it wasn’t GTA it would have been something else. Maybe it would have been the film Elephant.

It is irresponsible and stupid for people to blame a video game for someone’s decision to shoot and kill his abusive father. Violence on teevee and in video games do desensitise people to pain and suffering, I agree with that, but someone who is normal and non-violent isn’t ‘turned’ by watching something or playing a game, they have to have that in their psyches in the first place.