John Ashcroft
Within the span of three weeks last month, 10 students were injured in a shooting at a high school near El Cajon, California, while two students were killed and 13 injured in a shooting at a high school near San Diego, California. In the first case, the alleged shooter was 18. In the other, a 15-year-old high school freshman was arrested. The San Diego case was the nation's deadliest school shooting since the Columbine High School massacre in 1999 in Littleton, Colorado, where 12 people were killed by two students who eventually committed suicide.

Something like this always makes people examine how and why this happened. The answer is never easy, but invariably everyone will come to one conclusion or another. And lately, the most prominent whipping boy has been video games.

Earlier this week, Attorney General John Ashcroft took out his whipping stick and blamed video games. He pointed at two cases as prime examples for his video game crusade:
  • In the Littleton case, the killers played DOOM. And it was later found that at least one of the shooters was so involved with the game that he even designed levels for it.
  • In a 1997 case in Peducah, Kentucky, a 14-year-old shooter who killed three and wounded five had never had experience with guns before his shooting spree. However, testimony at a congressional hearing revealed that he had plenty of "training" with "first-person shooter" games.
Retired Lt. Col. David Grossman has joined the crusade, commenting in several cases, including a school shooting in Jonesboro, Arkansas, in 1998, that video games are to blame for the rise in violence among students.

These are three of the more prominent cases, but shootings in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Bethel, Alaska, also gave rise to similar claims that games were to blame.

At this very moment, congressional hearings are being held on the topic. The Federal Trade Commission has investigations ongoing about the marketing practices of game producers and distributors. And if the hard drive of any sicko who opens up on a school has a violent game on it, the cries for change in the video game industry will get even louder.

Well, I'd like to offer my own take on the situation and say "Bullshit."

The original DOOM: Hotbed of controversy
Hundreds of thousands of people have played DOOM and designed levels for the game. The key is that almost all of us know the difference between popping a couple of aliens and gunning down a kid. And forgive me for being a little skeptical, but playing video games is "training" for using real weapons? Come on! It doesn't teach you about recoil, loading and unloading, aiming ... you are using a mouse and keyboard, for crying out loud!

And in the Columbine case, DOOM was assailed because one of the killers created DOOM levels that looked like his neighborhood. If he had used a graphics program to draw up floorplans of the school, would we be attacking the makers of the graphics program for being irresponsible? I sincerely doubt it.

Next: The real culprits...