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Meta, Activision Sued By Parents of Children Killed in Last Year's School Shooting (msn.com) 153

Exactly one year after the fatal shooting of 19 elementary school students in Texas, their parents filed a lawsuit against the publisher of the videogame Call of Duty, against Meta, and against the manufacturer of the AR-15-style weapon used in the attack, Daniel Defense.

The Washington Post says the lawsuits "may be the first of their kind to connect aggressive firearms marketing tactics on social media and gaming platforms to the actions of a mass shooter." The complaints contend the three companies are responsible for "grooming" a generation of "socially vulnerable" young men radicalized to live out violent video game fantasies in the real world with easily accessible weapons of war...

Several state legislatures, including California and Hawaii, passed consumer safety laws specific to the sale and marketing of firearms that would open the industry to more civil liability. Texas is not one of them. But it's just one vein in the three-pronged legal push by Uvalde families. The lawsuit against Activision and Meta, which is being filed in California, accuses the tech companies of knowingly promoting dangerous weapons to millions of vulnerable young people, particularly young men who are "insecure about their masculinity, often bullied, eager to show strength and assert dominance."

"To put a finer point on it: Defendants are chewing up alienated teenage boys and spitting out mass shooters," the lawsuit states...

The lawsuit alleges that Meta, which owns Instagram, easily allows gun manufacturers like Daniel Defense to circumvent its ban on paid firearm advertisements to reach scores of young people. Under Meta's rules, gunmakers are not allowed to buy advertisements promoting the sale of or use of weapons, ammunition or explosives. But gunmakers are free to post promotional material about weapons from their own account pages on Facebook and Instagram — a freedom the lawsuit alleges Daniel Defense often exploited.

According to the complaint, the Robb school shooter downloaded a version of "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare," in November 2021 that featured on the opening title page the DDM4V7 model rifle [shooter Salvador] Ramos would later purchase. Drawing from the shooter's social media accounts, Koskoff argued he was being bombarded with explicit marketing and combat imagery from the company on Instagram... The complaint cites Meta's practice, first reported by The Washington Post in 2022, of giving gun sellers wide latitude to knowingly break its rules against selling firearms on its websites. The company has allowed buyers and sellers to violate the rule 10 times before they are kicked off, The Post reported.

The article adds that the lawsuit against Meta "echoes some of the complaints by dozens of state attorneys general and school districts that have accused the tech giant of using manipulative practices to hook... while exposing them to harmful content." It also includes a few excerpts from the text of the lawsuit.
  • It argues that both Meta and Activision "knowingly exposed the Shooter to the weapon, conditioned him to see it as the solution to his problems, and trained him to use it."
  • The lawsuit also compares their practices to another ad campaign accused of marketing harmful products to children: cigarettes. "Over the last 15 years, two of America's largest technology companies — Defendants Activision and Meta — have partnered with the firearms industry in a scheme that makes the Joe Camel campaign look laughably harmless, even quaint."

Meta and Daniel Defense didn't respond to the reporters' requests for comment. But they did quote a statement from Activision expressing sympathy for the communities and families impacted by the "horrendous and heartbreaking" shooting.

Activision also added that "Millions of people around the world enjoy video games without turning to horrific acts."


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Meta, Activision Sued By Parents of Children Killed in Last Year's School Shooting

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  • by strUser_Name ( 7991504 ) on Saturday May 25, 2024 @10:49AM (#64498183)
    Correlation does not equal causation. Rather looking at surface level commonality, why not look at mental illness or culture? There are loads of countries with lots of guns, yet none of the problems America experiences. It has to do with the mental well-being of a country.
    • by PessimysticRaven ( 1864010 ) on Saturday May 25, 2024 @10:57AM (#64498195)

      That would require people taking personal responsibility, and Americans are deathly allergic to that.

      • by serviscope_minor ( 664417 ) on Saturday May 25, 2024 @11:48AM (#64498297) Journal

        That would require people taking personal responsibility, and Americans are deathly allergic to that.

        No, precisely the opposite. Americans (and to a lesser extent but not enough Brits) are obsessed with personal responsibility. But it doesn't work because you have a "personal responsibility" to not raise mass shooters, but the victims have personal responsibility for what? Not get shot? Personal responsibility only works when the person who is nominally responsible is the one to suffer the consequences.

        The only thing that will have an effect here is collective responsibility, i.e. society and the government.

        Crying "personal responsibility" is basically saying someone else should fix this in a way that does not affect me in any conceivable way whatsoever.

        • Personal responsibility only works when the person who is nominally responsible is the one to suffer the consequences.

          Well they did die too...

        • No, it means you punish the people who break the law instead of twisting yourself into knots justifying punishment for people that didn't break the law.

          • That's where we draw the line on responsibility? The law? The law serves responsibility, it's there to encourage and aid good behavior. Good responsible behavior is not determined by the law.

            So if people keep acting badly then the law is clearly insufficient. Maybe the law needs to be changed, maybe we need a new law, maybe we need something else in addition to the law.
    • Most of the countries that have lots of guns have them under lock and key compared to the US, and none of them are mental health utopias. The reason for the US' rate of mass shootings is easy access to guns, it's the only thing that's unique about the US among first-world countries with significant firearms ownership rates. Blaming mental health is just as silly and wrong as blaming videogames or rap music.

      • by nehumanuscrede ( 624750 ) on Saturday May 25, 2024 @11:52AM (#64498305)

        " The reason for the US' rate of mass shootings is easy access to guns "

        An incorrect statement. One that is used far too often by the anti-gun crowd unfortunately.

        One of the modern problems America faces younger people keep being told that whatever happens, it's not their fault.
        Somehow, even if they lash out with violence, they're always the victim. :| Zero accountability for their own actions.

        The problem is neither guns, nor access to guns. It is, and always will be, the person behind the trigger.

        I'm going to ask you the same question I ask of anyone else who makes the claim that guns are the problem.

        That question being:

        If the guns or availability to said guns are the problem, can you explain why Mass Shootings didn't become the National Pastime
        until 1999 when a particular duo decided to shoot up their High School in Columbine, Colorado ?

        Modern firearms, even the AR-15 platform, have been available to the general public since the mid-60's. There were no storage
        or lock requirements. In fact, most of them were kept in a gun cabinet in the home made of some very nice wood with a glass front
        and interior light to show them off to whomever came over.

        They were kept in gun racks in the back of trucks. They were taken to school for the purpose of the Shooting Club or, for those who
        lived in the Country, to go hunting once school was done for the day.

        The point is, the very same types of guns were available and access to them was even easier than it is today, yet with some very
        rare exceptions ( The UT Austin Tower shooter for example ), Mass Shootings were almost unhead of. Especially if we're comparing
        them to the number we see today. ( Which is damn near every week it seems )

        Since the firearm variable is common, there has to be something ELSE that has caused an alarming rise of Mass Shootings.

        My own observation is the people in this Country are angry, desperate and hopeless. The American Dream, for them, is quite
        dead and they have little reason to believe their life is going to get any better.

        Don't believe it ?

        Leave the Country for a while. Six months will do it. Do some overseas travel then come back.

        You WILL notice the attitude / personality differences between Americas citizens and just about anywhere else very quickly.

        • I'm going to ask you the same question I ask of anyone else who makes the claim that guns are the problem.

          That question being:

          If the guns or availability to said guns are the problem, can you explain why Mass Shootings didn't become the National Pastime
          until 1999 when a particular duo decided to shoot up their High School in Columbine, Colorado ?

          Easy enough, the idea that mass shootings were rare before 1999 is simply wrong. Here's a graph of mass shooting injuries and fatalities from the early '60s to to mid-2010s:

          https://thesocietypages.org/fe... [thesocietypages.org]

          We can see that there was a lull from the late 60s to early 80s but 1999 only stands out as the end of a high period before another lull in the early-mid '00s.

          Curiously the increase in mass shooting injuries & deaths has a similar shape to a graph of guns-per-person in the US, especially since the late-00s:

          https://www.aei.org/wp-content... [aei.org]

          Most bizarrely it's an even closer match to firearms manufactured in the US:

          https://www.zippia.com/wp-cont... [zippia.com]

          • by Shadow of Eternity ( 795165 ) on Saturday May 25, 2024 @01:02PM (#64498439)

            Your first graph defines "mass shootings" to include drug deals and muggings as well as a gang drive by where there were a bunch of other people 2 blocks away. Your second graph shows that despite a profound increase in gun ownership the rate of violent crime has dropped precipitously and held relatively steady since. Your third graph isn't even relevant.

        • If the guns or availability to said guns are the problem, can you explain why Mass Shootings didn't become the National Pastime
          until 1999 when a particular duo decided to shoot up their High School in Columbine, Colorado ?

          The fuck are you talking about? America has a long proud tradition of mass shootings. Wikipedia even had to go out of its way to sort them by decade.

          Modern firearms, even the AR-15 platform, have been available to the general public since the mid-60's.

          Mid-60s you say? There were 14 mass shootings in America in the 60s, most towards the latter half of the decade and a massive MASSIVE increase in the 70s. I think you kind of just counter proved your own point.

          But hey it's all America's problem. It's not like countries like Australia decided to make access to weapons more difficult and in doing so virtually eli

          • by haruchai ( 17472 )

            It's not just mass shootings, it's all deaths by firearms.
            Among advanced countries, America is the runaway champ, or USA! USA!
            Can't recall the year but Time Magazine once devoted an entire weekly issue to all persons killed in a random week of the previous year. I'm reasonably sure they published over 400 photos.

            But 2 years ago, they did publish an article pointing out that mass shootings account for only a fraction of child deaths by gunfire
            https://time.com/6182856/child... [time.com]

        • Additionally, rifles in general (including the ar-15) are only used in a small number of shootings each year. Pistols are by far the weapons of choice in shootings.

        • My own observation is the people in this Country are angry, desperate and hopeless. The American Dream, for them, is quite dead

          It's called the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it. -- George Carlin [youtube.com]

  • by wierd_w ( 1375923 ) on Saturday May 25, 2024 @10:50AM (#64498185)

    This has been independently researched to fucking death. There is no real corellation between game violence, and real gun violence.

    https://fortune.com/2023/05/02... [fortune.com]

    I am all for restricting supply of real AR-15s, as the vast majority of people have no need of such a tool. This is in the same mindset of restricting supply of lab glassware, or pseudophedrine.

    But going after fictional depictions of them, is magical thinking.

    Sorry.

    • by Firethorn ( 177587 ) on Saturday May 25, 2024 @11:26AM (#64498257) Homepage Journal

      On restricting access to AR-15s:
      1. They're the most popular kind of rifle out there. It's equivalent to trying to ban, say, pickups, specifically the F-150.
      2. Banning lab glassware and limiting pseudoephedrine has only made controlling my allergies more difficult, it hasn't stopped the tweakers at all. So what's the benefit again?

      I'd argue that banning AR-15 rifles is missing the point. When I pulled the weapons used for over a hundred spree shootings, I found that around 70% had handguns. Less than half had an AR-15 type rifle. Overwhelmingly, those with an AR-15 and NOT a rifle were teenage types who couldn't legally get a handgun.

      Some alternatives:
      1. Stop blaring the names of shooters everywhere, copycatting is a known thing.
      2. Better suicide prevention. The Japanese managed to get their suicide rate under control. Believe it or not, the psychological profile of most spree killers is that of a suicide, not something else. So anti-suicide programs should catch them as well.

      • by kriston ( 7886 )

        Overwhelmingly, those with an AR-15 and NOT a rifle were teenage types who couldn't legally get a handgun.

        This doesn't make sense. Isn't an AR-15 a rifle? How is it easier to get an AR-15 than a handgun?

        • Rifles often are easier to get. Predominantly, they are not used criminally, like handguns are.

          • I personally view handguns as being more dangerous than rifles. They're easier to conceal, and they're more likely to be fumbled. I personally get very anxious merely holding them, and get no enjoyment firing them at the range.

            Rifles are a much different story. More precision weapon, harder to conceal, harder to accidentally discharge, easier to hit your intended target and not an unintended one. In other words, much harder to shoot yourself in the foot with.

            • They're easier to conceal, and they're more likely to be fumbled.

              And for fools who learn how to use them from watching TV and/or movies, much less likely to be properly held or used. Ever notice how the bad guys hold handguns in one hand, often holding it so that the gun's horizontal and they can't even see where it's pointing and blaze away while the good guys use a two handed grip and shoot single aimed rounds? When that happens in Real Life, guess who's going to miss most. Not the cops, that's for
        • editing failure, I meant to say "and not a handgun were teenage types who couldn't legally get a handgun".

          Sorry about that.

        • Overwhelmingly, those with an AR-15 and NOT a rifle were teenage types who couldn't legally get a handgun.

          This doesn't make sense. Isn't an AR-15 a rifle? How is it easier to get an AR-15 than a handgun?

          Much easier to get a rifle than a handgun because a handgun can be easily concealed. In my town once I have my firearm purchaser ID (requires background checks and fingerprinting) I can buy rifles but to get a handgun I need to obtain a separate permit which permits me to buy a single handgun.

      • by haruchai ( 17472 )

        "Believe it or not, the psychological profile of most spree killers is that of a suicide, not something else"
        Most of them are highly misogynistic or have been charged with domestic violence hence the push in some places to have anyone convicted of partner assault to have their weapons confiscated

        • Are we forgetting about the Lautenberg amendment? [wikipedia.org]
          People have been losing their rights to firearms for life for DV convictions, including misdemeanors, since 1996.

          There is no "push" for it, it's already enacted at the national level. There was a lot of hullabo at the time, because it turned out a lot of cops had misdemeanor DV convictions, and the law didn't have any exemptions for convictions before the period - so the cops were "instantly" losing their ability to legally carry a firearm. There were a bun

    • The facts are in! Video games don't drive people to violence. Drugs, mental disease, abuse, and poverty are the sorts of things that drive people to violence.

      Of course, you can't sue any of those things. But you CAN sue a maker of video games who has deep pockets.

      On the other hand, "freedom" includes the option to obtain things that one does not need. That includes guns, which people can and should be able to obtain for recreational use (so long as such use is legal of course).

      If we are interested in sa

      • by HiThere ( 15173 )

        When you add " (so long as such use is legal of course)" you undercut your stance. If that's the bound, then any law forbidding a particular weapon would mean you "shouldn't" have access to it.

        So I rather agree with your point, as stated, but believe that "automatic" and "semi-automatic" firearms should be forbidden in urban settings. And I'm not sure that "restricted" shouldn't be "forbidden". And once you have "single shot" firearms, then sights make a big difference. Telescopic sights have no acceptab

        • Indeed, you are splitting semantic hairs.

          I meant legal use in the sense of "don't shoot other people. Don't bring in to federal buildings. Don't shoot in the middle of a city"

          As opposed to: "bring to a firing range, shoot at proper targets there." Or, "bring to legal hunting grounds and shoot at animals there (with proper licenses and compliance with all regulations)." Or "keep in your own home" and, if necessary "use for self-defense on your own property."

          • by HiThere ( 15173 )

            So are you arguing that people should be able to possess atomic bombs as long as they don't misuse them? I rather doubt this, but I can't tell exactly where you draw that kind of line.

            • I never said anything about atomic bombs, so clearly no, I am not arguing in favor of atomic bomb use. You brought that up yourself to draw a false equivalence.

              So, let's do a comparison:

              Practical for home defense?
              Rifle: Yes.
              Atomic bomb: no.

              Safe recreational uses (e.g. shooting range):
              Rifle: Yes.
              Atomic bomb: No.

              Practical uses (e.g. hunting and eating what was hunted):
              Rifle: Yes.
              Atomic bomb: No.

              Contains hazardous radioactive components:
              Rifle: No.
              Atomic bomb: Yes.

              Potential number of people killed/injured if i

              • by HiThere ( 15173 )

                Yes, and that was intended as an unreasonable example. But you didn't say where you draw the line, or why.

                As a wild guess I'm guessing that the critical defining characteristics of what you consider defensible are:
                Practical for home defense?
                Safe recreational uses (e.g. shooting range):, and
                Practical uses (e.g. hunting and eating what was hunted):

                None of those seem, to me, to justify automatic weapons. Merely single shot. One could argue that telescopic sights are necessary for hunting, but since some pe

                • AR-15 is semi auto. Pull trigger, one bullet.

                  It lacks selective fire, and cannot do 'burst', or 'auto'.

                  You wouldn't want it to anyway.

                  It is a modern rifle, that looks modern/military like.

                  There is a mystique to owning it that is BS, and a fear of it being owned, that is equally BS.

                  It's a tool. A dangerous tool, but still a tool.

                  It has perfectly valid uses.

                  Those uses dont typically manifest INSIDE a city. Residents OF a city, may use one OUTSIDE a city; that's fine. They just need to store it correctly.

                  Peop

                • I thought my post was quite clear. There doesn't need to be an exact precise line drawn to see the enormous difference between your two examples, and that home ownership of rifles was clearly justified on several points whereas home ownership of nuclear weapons was clearly unjustified on several other points. So there is a line "somewhere between them" but these two points are so far apart that this line does not need to be precisely specified.

                  And in any event, we are talking about complex objects that do

    • I am all for restricting supply of real AR-15s, as the vast majority of people have no need of such a tool.

      Baseball bats and kitchen knives kill far more than AR-15s do. You “all” for restricting supply of those, or are you not even remotely trying to make a logical point here?

      If you don’t understand why the 2nd Amendment cannot afford to differentiate between the tools it protects, then perhaps you deserve to have every Right and Freedom it protects and secures, taken form you. By your own Government.

  • by Hey_Jude_Jesus ( 3442653 ) on Saturday May 25, 2024 @11:02AM (#64498209)
    from people & companies not involved. They are hoping to get a settlement because a court case won't stand up.
  • by v1 ( 525388 ) on Saturday May 25, 2024 @11:03AM (#64498211) Homepage Journal

    I grew up watching a coyote throw sticks of dynamite and huge spinning blades, and a rabbit dropping anvils on heads. But I don't think anyone from my generation got into trouble with dynamite and anvils, because we had parents that took responsibility for raising us, and taught us right from wrong, fantasy from reality, how to deal with our emotions, etc.

    So maybe stop blaming the world for your failure to raise your child? Pay attention to your kids. Teach them right and wrong. Be there for them and support then when they need it. Step in and take action when you see them headed down the wrong path. Don't turn a blind eye to warning signs that everyone around you says they noticed. Don't expect the world to raise the perfect child for you. Be the parent your child needs you to be.

    • This.

      In addition to the large metastudy Fortune mentions, that shows essentially 0 corellation between game gun violence and actual gun violence, there have been corellations with DIFFERENT questions.

      One big one, involves 'violent games as catharsis', with an assertion of reduced actual violent behavior. That particular claim has been found to not hold water. Playing violent video games makes people 'feel better', but does not actually reduce actual violence.

      https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.go... [nih.gov]

      Additionally, li

      • by wierd_w ( 1375923 ) on Saturday May 25, 2024 @11:23AM (#64498249)

        Whoops. Submitted too soon.

        https://www.aacap.org/AACAP/Fa... [aacap.org]

        Taken together, the real corellation seems to be suggested to be quality parental discretion, with incremental and guided exposure with counselling and care.

        Aka, proper parenting, which fosters proper ideation and consideration with regard to violence.

        Again though, banning the depictions are not a substitute for the parenting, and might actually be deleterious, as fake violence, like videogames, provide for learning and parenting opportunities in which there are no actual victims or actual harm.

        Devoid of either proper parenting, or exposure opportunities that are guaranteed safe, do you really think kids will just be perfect angels?

        No friends. No.

        Going after fictional huns is a reflexive motion of overworked parents. Either ones that are deluded about how kids behave innately without parenting, looking to reduce the burden of being a parent-- or-- emotionally distraut parents acting out, looking for anyone and anything to blame for their child's death.

        In this case, the primary causal people (the gunman, and the parents that simply failed to raise him at all) have already been punished.

    • This isn't the killer's parents suing, these are the parents of the victims suing. What you're saying is akin to you should have teached your kids to no walk into my fist.

      • But the failure here is the parents of the shooter, in the small print are they even being sued? Or is it a money grab.
    • But I don't think anyone from my generation got into trouble with dynamite and anvils, because...

      ...because dynamite wasn't easy to come by as a 10 year old. But if we had gotten our hands on some I guarantee you we would have tried to use it.

    • by e3m4n ( 947977 )
      The parents are so busy on all the social media apps and their own flame wars they dont notice the world around them. Let alone that their kid is being bullied into turning into a sociopath. School is worse than the lord of the flies anymore. Noe its all done omline and anonymously. Kids are constantly getting messages from unknown accounts encouraging them to kill themselves. When they do cave, they take out their tormentors with them.
  • All these suits should be summarily dismissed. But judges have to run for office, and voters are idiots.

    I'm surprised they're not suing the water company because if the shooter had been dehydrated he wouldn't have done his deed, or the car company of the car he drove to school. Or, hey, the clothing company of clothes he wore because he could never have done it naked,

    The only people who should be sued is the school, since they did not keep the guy from getting in. Even the cops who were do-nothing losers

  • Going for gold... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by MpVpRb ( 1423381 ) on Saturday May 25, 2024 @11:20AM (#64498239)

    ...in the olympics of stupid lawsuits
    The shooter is guilty, and only the shooter
    Greedy lawyers seem to believe that they can go after anyone with money who is even slightly related to the crime
    It wouldn't surprise me if they sued the company that made the shoes the shooter wore or maybe the food he ate

    • by HiThere ( 15173 )

      This one isn't quite that stupid. You can only call it objectively unreasonable if you believe that advertising has no effect. Repeated studies have shown that it has at least some effect (though often not as much as the advertiser claims).

      I'm not sure that a crime has to be successfully committed in order for conspiracy to commit that crime to itself be a crime. Here I think they're trying to argue that the conspiracy existed, and I find that quite plausible. (I'm less certain about it having a measur

      • If the kids wouldn't have died if not for Call of Duty that's a tragedy, but it has no bearing on it being protected speech.

        There is no conspiracy, violence is a mere side effect. Even if it were statistically expected, it was not intended. I can statistically expect to kill some kid every time I take the car rather than my bicycle.

    • by haruchai ( 17472 )

      If the killer borrowed your car to get to his destination, you may be charged as an accomplice under felony murder laws

  • by OrangeTide ( 124937 ) on Saturday May 25, 2024 @11:34AM (#64498269) Homepage Journal

    Is Activision facing issues in Europe where their games are causing a rash of mass shootings? Or does this only happen in the US, where people can buy lots of guns and be surrounded by a gun culture unwilling to deprive irresponsible or mentally ill people from their Constitutionally protect firearms?

    • Finally someone with a bit of sense, BUT we had mass shootings here too, but not as many as in the US, and funny enough, those that had happened was due these people getting their guns from being in a gunclub (gunclubs perse aren't a real problem IMHO, as long as users aren't able to take the guns home).
    • Oh you didn't hear? The Call of Duty version sold in Europe replaced guns with loudspeakers shouting woke pronouns and t-shirt canons launching pride flags.

  • They should sue the maker of the shooter's clothes, after all he wouldn't have been able to reach the school naked.

  • It was two years ago, not one.

  • by iAmWaySmarterThanYou ( 10095012 ) on Saturday May 25, 2024 @12:36PM (#64498381)

    I never backstabbed anyone for extra damage.
    I never worshipped the devil.
    I never took my 100 ton Atlas through the downtown shooting up buildings and stepping on cars, firing PPC blasts at everyone.
    I never stole cars, sold drugs, attacked other countries, or took over the world with my alien army hyped up on spice.
    I never conquered the galaxy after my scouts started finding habitable worlds.
    And I never mowed down countless people with an AR15 because I had one in a video game.

    • I have to admit, if someone ran down random alleys of the town eating pills while running away from ghosts, I'd be questioning his mental state...

    • I never backstabbed anyone for extra damage.
      I never worshipped the devil.
      I never took my 100 ton Atlas through the downtown shooting up buildings and stepping on cars, firing PPC blasts at everyone.
      I never stole cars, sold drugs, attacked other countries,
      And I never mowed down countless people with an AR15 because I had one in a video game.

      Well then shit, you ain't hardly lived, buddy! You need to get out more and commit some atrocities!

  • ... the more they remain inane.

    First it was comic books. Then it was D&D. Then it was Doom. Now it's Call of Duty, and the manufacturer of a weapon that's been around since the 1960's.

    I get that they're grieving, and I can't imagine what they've gone through-- but creating more scapegoats isn't the way.

  • will they sue (Score:5, Informative)

    by gabrieltss ( 64078 ) on Saturday May 25, 2024 @12:59PM (#64498433)
    The police?? They were told to stand down. If they had done their job things would have turned out totally different.
  • by JustAnotherOldGuy ( 4145623 ) on Saturday May 25, 2024 @01:40PM (#64498519) Journal

    This lawsuit, regardless of any merit, will fail.

    Is there merit to it? I don't know. But it will fail.

    It's a bit simplistic to blame this on video games, no matter what.

    I don't see kids running around cosplaying Hello Kitty Adventure Island, which I would kinda expect if real-world behavior is in fact mirroring video games.

    Did it influence them to some degree? Probably, but I hesitate to point a finger and declare I found "the problem". It's a wee bit more complex than that.

  • Three or four generations of movies and TV shows, and a lot of literature going back long before that, have glorified violence. Violence is built into our culture because it's built into us - we are animals after all, and predators in our own right.

    For our civilization to work the way we want, that violence needs to be diverted and sublimated - it needs to find expression in ways other than senseless, wanton killing. Movies, video games, and sports are some of those safe(r) outlets for violent impulses.

    Mu

  • by sound+vision ( 884283 ) on Saturday May 25, 2024 @02:12PM (#64498551) Journal

    The parents have the urge to blame someone.

    They can blame the shooter; he's already dead, that's not satisfying.

    They blame the cops; but not much accountability or change was won there.

    The governor's solution is "Umm... mental health", which everyone takes as a joke, because they know what kind of provision the state gives them for healthcare. (None.)

    So they start casting the blame in ever more distant and futile directions.

  • I hope they loose, except maybe for the lawsuit against the weaponsmanufacturer. Call of duty and social media didn't have anything to do with what happened, society did. It's not like there weren't any mass shootings at schools before call of duty and social media existed. News coverage might be even more at fault these days for all the violence than any videogame.
    • >"I hope they loose, except maybe for the lawsuit against the weapons manufacturer."

      Why the exception? Please explain how the weapon's manufacturer was, at all, involved in the mental state of the shooters or their actual misuse of the weapons?

      And then explain why Toyota or Chevy is not responsible for a drunk driver mowing down people? Or Stanley is not responsible for a crazed person using a hammer to bash in someone's head?

      A weapons manufacturer *is* responsible/liable for the MALFUNCTION of a weapo

  • A mere $2 million total for all the families of the dead kids?
    The state should have been forced to pay up too as the vast majority of armed chickenshits who dithered while little children died were TXDPS.
    I don't think also suing the officers will get them much but those fucking cowards should never be allowed to work in law enforcement anywhere, ever again

    https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/22... [cnn.com]

  • I reunited with an old friend who had clearly become mentally ill since I last saw him. He spoke of suicide to combat his hallucinated demons. I contacted the state police and learned that *I* could not ban/flag him from getting a gun legally. The best I could do would be to file a case where we would go to court and there could be a months-long, gun-restraining order, at best. After which, of course, he would know who took him to court. That's ridiculous. I believe in the right to "bear arms" persona
  • >"Defendants are chewing up alienated teenage boys and spitting out mass shooters," the lawsuit states..."

    Um, nope. If anything, schools and parents are doing that. Parents with little discipline, poor/no values, no valid/good/stable male role models in the home, no limits on Internet/social media access, and little involvement in actually raising their children (and in some cases, being way over-protective). Schools with treating boys as "defective girls", while confusing them and medicating them (wi

  • ... alienated teenage boys ...

    As usual, step 1 just happens and nobody is responsible. Wrong: If you don't want males "radicalized to live-out violent" video-games, give them a place in society.

    For men, success has always had a narrow definition. Now, that it's more difficult for men to conform to confining traditions, they spend less time trying to be 'normal'. That allows self-isolating activities such as Qanon fantasies and video-games, where anger and self-destructive habits can overwhelm the mind.

    The youth of today have Fac

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