Kids and Guns: Friends Forever

The headline reads, Ohio Teen Killed Mom Over Video Game.
This is something I need to sound off on. Now.

ELYRIA, Ohio (Jan. 13) - Although a teenager's obsession with a violent video game may have warped his sense of reality, the boy is guilty of murdering his mother and wounding his father after they took "Halo 3" away from him, a judge ruled Monday.

"I firmly believe that Daniel Petric had no idea at the time he hatched this plot that if he killed his parents they would be dead forever," Lorain County Common Pleas Judge James Burge said.

Bullshit. I think the kid knew what he was doing. He's 17 years old, for god's sake. You can't tell me his concept of reality is that fucked up at age 17.

Ultimately, I don't think this is a matter of insanity at all. The guy killed his parents for taking away his game; he didn't do that because he's insane, he did it because he's an addict aching for a fix. At best, he was going through withdrawal symptoms typical of an addict and made a semi-impulsive decision to kill them. At worst, he's just a sick little shit who cares more about the game than his own parents.

You know, what bothers me the most about this is that no one bothers to bring up the logical question here: if a boy has reached age 17, and yet is still so immature as to be addicted to a videogame and lash out at his parents like that, could it possibly be that they are to blame here?

Listen, Halo is not responsible for what this kid did. Bungie Studios didn't raise the punk for 17 years. The parents failed, and so the kid fails; end of story.

I'll tell you something else, too: Life in jail isn't the answer. It never is, but especially not for a case like this. If you ask me, this kid either needs serious extensive rehab, or a lethal injection. Either way, we need to fix the problem, not just push it into the corner and try to forget about it.

Politicians, lawyers, and various other talking heads love to point fingers at video games, but that's the easy way out, and it's not based in reality. I know plenty of well-adjusted individuals who play violent games. They don't bring those actions into their own life because they can distinguish between fantasy and reality. Why? Because they were taught the difference by their parents and teachers, the people who they looked up to.

Now, everyone knows I'm a big gamer, but I know games are an escape from reality, not a full-on lifestyle. Kids and adults alike get sucked into video games when they lack happiness and fulfillment in their real lives. If adults allow the next generation to collapse into such meaningless misery that they need the escape of videogames, drugs or alcohol to cope, they have no one to blame but themselves.