The terms sociopath and psychopath were invented and applied long before any vid games.
'Going postal' was common in lexicon well before first person shooter games were even thought of.

Sick and broken people will always find a way to feed their obsession/s.

Blaming vid games for our sicknesses is like saying pedophiles never existed before the internet.

I do think that trivializing violence probably contributes to desensitizing some to it. Just gut feeling.

I also know that what I think about it means squat.

 Quote:

I do think that trivializing violence probably contributes to desensitizing some to it. Just gut feeling.

I also know that what I think about it means squat.

Ditto!

I think the the problems being alluded to in this thread go far deeper than simple vid games, tv shows or movies.
And to that point, I'm reasonably sure they are not even part of the solution, that is, if there is a solution.

Video games don't make people do anything. They can and do, however, facilitate ease of training along with fine tuning of fine motor reflexes and adding a certain amount to the overall desensitization from the media and entertainment industries.

Take driving simulation games like Forza, Gran Turismo, Grid, and so on. With those games, you learn a myriad of real racing techniques with real life physics, on quite a few real life tracks. If you're using a force feedback steering wheel set, the only thing that's missing is actually being in a race car. The skill sets you learn are extremely easy to translate into a real car once you adjust for the feel. The exact same can be said for first person shooters for people with any experience in firing even bb/pellet/airsoft guns. For either, the person at the other end of the information is entirely responsible for their own actions with these learned skill sets.

What this does is turn the shooting at my high school during my freshman year ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindhurst_High_School_shooting ) from four dead and 10 wounded into Columbine and Virgina Tech.

Contrary to removing violent forms of entertainment, I think teachers with the correct aptitude should be CCW, trained in how to respond, and re-certified yearly in that task.

I remember playing castle wolf-stein...