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Former FBI profiler: 'Video Games Do Not Cause Violence'

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Under the category of "Doh! We knew that," a former FBI profiler on Sunday warned that some gun advocates were making a mistake by rushing to blame the December mass shooting of 20 children in Connecticut on violent video games.

Following a CBS News report that investigators had found a "trove" of video games in the home of Newtown shooter Adam Lanza, conservatives like Glenn Beck jumped to the conclusion that the games had been a "gateway drug" to the slaughter at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

But during a panel discussion on Sunday, former FBI profiler Mary Ellen O'Toole said evidence did not support that theory.

"It's my experience that video games do not cause violence," O'Toole told CBS News. "However, it is one of the risk variables when we do a threat assessment for the risk to act out violently."

"It's important that I point out that as a threat assessment and as a former FBI profiler, we don't see these as the cause violence," she added. "We see them as sources of fueling ideation that's already there."

Texas A&M International University psychology professor Christopher Ferguson pointed out that youth violence had recently declined to the lowest level in 40 years at a time when video games had become more violent.

"I think we have to put this discussion, to some extent, in historical perspective," Ferguson explained. "And when new media come out that they tend to go through a period of what we call moral panic, in which they are blamed for all manner of societal ills. And probably the best example of this was from the 1950s, when we had Congress and psychiatrists who were claiming that comic books were responsible for not only juvenile delinquency, but homosexuality."

"We're in a mode of worry about -- or panicking about this type of media. We may do some putting the cart before the horse, and we may see some people sort of starting with a conclusion and trying to assemble data in a very selective way to try to support that conclusion."

A 2002 study published by the U.S. Secret Service found that only 12 percent of perpetrators of school violence had an interest in violent video games. But 37 percent “exhibited an interest in violence in their own writings, such as poems, essays or journal entries.”



Stephen Colbert's Double Barrel Blam-O-Rama

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Stephen Colbert had a field day with every one of these gun nuts that have come out of the woodwork now that it looks like there could finally be some movement on gun control and with Vice President Biden meeting with his task force after the latest mass shooting.

No one was spared from Alex Jones screaming at Piers Morgan on CNN, to Larry Ward and his remarks about "Gun Appreciation Day" and Martin Luther King, to James Yeager and his threats to start killing people if there are any new gun control laws passed.

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Just in case anyone didn't think that Michelle Malkin's display on Fox & Friends was quite enough with them carrying water for Wayne LaPierre and the NRA, they decided to bring in for good measure right wing rag The Daily Caller co-founder, and heir to the Swanson food fortune, Tucker Carlson, to lay the blame for the school shooting at Sandy Hook at the feet of President Obama, Democrats and Hollywood liberals. Because we all know that guns don't kill people, people who watch violent movies do.

Tucker Carlson: Obama Ignores Violent Media Because ‘Hollywood’ Donates To The Democratic Party:

The Daily Caller’sTucker Carlson appeared on Fox & Friends this Saturday and slammed President Obama for refusing to acknowledge the media’s role in our violent culture for fear of losing “Hollywood” donations. “Hollywood is one of the largest donors to the Democratic Party,” Carlson said, and because of this, the Obama administration ignores the violent media.

Host Dave Briggs asked Carlson if he thought Hollywood was “hypocritical” in speaking out against gun violence but never admitting their contribution to the problem. Co-host Alisyn Camerota suggested Hollywood is a “powerful lobby” that “bears some responsibility for the culture of gun violence”. According to Carlson, the main question Hollywood should be asking is whether “watching violence movies” and “playing violent video games” affects children. Carlson admitted “we don’t know” whether the media desensitizes people to violence but he believes “common sense suggests maybe.”

Carlson lamented that the role of media in America’s violent culture hasn’t been examined fully. He underscored his point that the reason for this is because Hollywood makes large contributions to Democratic to Democratic candidates:

“This is something Hollywood should be taking a close look at it. There ought to be some soul-searching. There ought to be, in the words of the left, some corporate responsibility here. And yet, you do not hear members of Congress on the Democratic side suggest this because they’re taking hundreds of millions of dollars from Hollywood.”

I'm not going to defend children being allowed to watch violent movies or play violent video games, but when it comes to controlling what adults watch, I guess Tucker suddenly doesn't like that "freedom" he and his fellow wingnuts are always railing about. Sadly no one bothered to ask Carlson why people in other countries manage to watch these same movies or play these same games, and somehow they don't have the same level of gun violence that we do here in the United States.

I'd also like to know just what they think any Democrats are supposed to do about what movies Hollywood puts out there. They seem to love the 2nd Amendment, but think it's perfectly acceptable to throw out the 1st if it suits their political agenda on any given day of the week, and as long as it means protecting the gun manufacturers in America and their profits.



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Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) and conservative columnist George Will told a Sunday panel on ABC News that gun violence in the United States was caused by mental illness, video games, violence in the media and even "unparented" boys from single-parent homes -- but they refused to accept that gun control was part of the problem.

"Look, I'm a concealed-carry permit holder," Chaffetz explained. "I own a Glock 23. I've got a shotgun. I'm not the person you need to worry about. And there are millions of Americans who deal with this properly. It's our Second Amendment right to do so. But we have to look at the mental health access that these people have."

"The gun rules are very stringent. There's a lot conjecture out there that I don't think would necessarily solve this particular problem. And I want to look at anything we think will solve all the problems, but we have to, I think, look at the mental health aspect."

"As a parent, we all shed a tear," Chaffetz added as he choked up. "You put violence and death and gore in a movie, you're not going to get an R rating. You do something else, okay. I got to tell you, I think the movie ratings are terribly misleading when it comes to violence, death, gore and glamorizing."

Will, however, pointed to boys in single-parent homes as a source of the problem.

"We ought to bring in Mayor Rahm Emanuel of Chicago," he insisted. "Chicago is an epidemic of violence with young, largely unparented -- that is, no father in the home -- adolescent males. That's a problem quite separate from this."

The conservative columnist also worried that the massacre of 20 children at an elementary school in Chicago would be used to "ratchet up the security of schools and elsewhere in public spaces."

"Our public spaces are already blighted by this," Will ranted. "For generations, people have been using the water on the [National] Mall to run little sailing boats. Now, the government in its wisdom has banned remote-control little boats on the mall water in Washington because it somehow represents a security threat to the country. We have to be a little bit reasonable."