NRA president Oliver North decries 'culture of violence' but worked on 'Call of Duty

[GMDino]

https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2018/05/21/oliver-north-pitched-violent-video-game/631312002/

Quote:Incoming National Rifle Association president Oliver North has already grabbed national attention for his take on the root causes of America's mass shooting problem after a Texas high school student killed 10 people in a bloody rampage. 


The retired Marine lieutenant colonel blamed a "culture of violence" for recent school shootings and implied that the prevalences of prescriptions such as Ritalin for young people could also be a factor during an appearance on Fox News Sunday. 


But in 2012, North worked as a promoter, script consultant and voice actor for the popular first-person-shooter game Call of Duty: Black Ops II.


"The problem that we’ve got is that we’re trying like the dickens to treat the symptom without treating the disease," North said during a discussion about the rise in school shootings. "And the disease, in this case, isn’t the Second Amendment. The disease is youngsters who are steeped in a culture of violence. 


More: Oliver North poised to become next National Rifle Association president


"They have been drugged in many cases," North continued. "Nearly all of these perpetrators are male and they are young teenagers in most cases. And they have come through a culture where violence is commonplace. All we need to do is turn on the TV, go to a movie. If you look at what has happened to the young people, many of these young boys have been on Ritalin since they were in kindergarten." 


As a war game, Black Ops II is violent by definition, and after its release one reviewer said it was "about as violent as it could get."

He's sweetheart moron.

[Griever]

yeah, lets listen to the guy who sold guns to the Contra...

[GMDino]

(05-22-2018, 09:10 AM)Griever Wrote: yeah, lets listen to the guy who sold guns to the Contra...

No, no... Obama gave Iran weapons!  I heard it on FOX News! 

[*bfine32*]

(05-22-2018, 12:20 AM)GMDino Wrote: https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2018/05/21/oliver-north-pitched-violent-video-game/631312002/



He's sweetheart moron.

The above commentary is absolutely priceless in its irony. 

[*PhilHos*]

(05-22-2018, 12:20 AM)GMDino Wrote: https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2018/05/21/oliver-north-pitched-violent-video-game/631312002/



He's sweetheart moron.

You do realize that  Call of Duty was rated M for Mature meaning that only "kids" aged 17 or up should have been playing it. It's not North's fault that so many parents suck at being parents.

[GMDino]

(05-22-2018, 03:57 PM)PhilHos Wrote: You do realize that  Call of Duty was rated M for Mature meaning that only "kids" aged 17 or up should have been playing it. It's not North's fault that so many parents suck at being parents.

All I realize is that North is blaming anything he can...even things he supports.

Oh and the shooter in Houston was 17 wasn't he?  Sooooo.....yeah.

[*PhilHos*]

(05-22-2018, 04:03 PM)GMDino Wrote: All I realize is that North is blaming anything he can...even things he supports.

Oh and the shooter in Houston was 17 wasn't he?  Sooooo.....yeah.

First off, I didn't see how he explicitly blamed video games.

More importantly, how is he blaming something he supports if the thing he supports is not for kids?

[Yojimbo]

Wasn’t the basis of his argument debunked after the NRA tried to use it after Parkland, when you point out that all the other developed countries in the world have the same games and movies as we do, yet no (or significantly less) mass shootings.

[GMDino]

(05-22-2018, 04:15 PM)PhilHos Wrote: First off, I didn't see how he explicitly blamed video games.

More importantly, how is he blaming something he supports if the thing he supports is not for kids?

He's blaming violent "culture" of which he promoted through video games.

Again 17 years old....kid.

I mean it's better than blaming ritalin, or too many doors in schools.

But I can understand people defending him.  He's always been a stand up guy.

[Au165]

(05-22-2018, 04:16 PM)Yojimbo Wrote: Wasn’t the basis of his argument debunked after the NRA tried to use it after Parkland, when you point out that all the other developed countries in the world have the same games and movies as we do, yet no (or significantly less) mass shootings.

Yes, it has been pointed out for years however it is a nice talking point people revert back to. 

[*PhilHos*]

(05-22-2018, 04:20 PM)GMDino Wrote: He's blaming violent "culture" of which he promoted through video games.

Again 17 years old....kid.

I mean it's better than blaming ritalin, or too many doors in schools.

But I can understand people defending him.  He's always been a stand up guy.

I'm not defending him, but his "support" of a particular video game that is not designed to be played by kids is not antithetical to thinking that violent culture is to blame.

[GMDino]

(05-22-2018, 04:22 PM)PhilHos Wrote: I'm not defending him, but his "support" of a particular video game that is not designed to be played by kids is not antithetical to thinking that violent culture is to blame.

Sure it is.

As you said "17" is still a kid playing the game.  

And it is part of the violent "culture" he lumps in with movies and television.  

Nonetheless I'm sure I can't change your mind so have a great day!

[*PhilHos*]

(05-22-2018, 04:25 PM)GMDino Wrote: Sure it is.

As you said "17" is still a kid playing the game.  

So a 5 year old is the same as a 17 year old?

(05-22-2018, 04:25 PM)GMDino Wrote: And it is part of the violent "culture" he lumps in with movies and television.  

Did he specifically say video games? In your OP, he didn't.  So, then you are re-defining what North meant when he said 'violent culture'. This, from the same human (don't want to assume your gender) who is routinely critical of those who try to defend Trump when they try to explain what he meant to say.
Be critical of his argument all you want. As others have said, it's already been proven wrong, but there's no reason to try to paint his argument as ironic when it's not.

[*Nately120*]

We do have an angry and violent culture that is played for big bucks. Also, maybe the fact that we've been at war for 100% of a 17 year olds life affects such things.

[GMDino]

(05-22-2018, 04:32 PM)PhilHos Wrote: So a 5 year old is the same as a 17 year old?

...sigh...

No. Is 17 still a kid?

Did a 5 year old shoot up a school? No.

Are they serving herring where you work?

(05-22-2018, 04:32 PM)PhilHos Wrote: Did he specifically say video games? In your OP, he didn't.  So, then you are re-defining what North meant when he said 'violent culture'. This, from the same human (don't want to assume your gender) who is routinely critical of those who try to defend Trump when they try to explain what he meant to say.
Be critical of his argument all you want. As others have said, it's already been proven wrong, but there's no reason to try to paint his argument as ironic when it's not.

The title of the OP doesn't say he "blamed video games".

He did not specifically say video games. He blamed a "culture of violence". Video games like the one he promoted are part of the culture. Especially as the NRA (which he is the new president of) has blamed them in the past. And the article points out that without saying he said them.

I suppose him not including video games this time make him more of a hypocrite as his own organization does include them when there is a shooting. Not when they are trying to promote themselves.

I can't make it clearer, and frankly I don't know why I tried again.

[*PhilHos*]

(05-22-2018, 04:40 PM)GMDino Wrote: No.  Is 17 still a kid?

Did a 5 year old shoot up a school? No.

Based on this, then, we can see that GMDino beleives that playing a video game has the same effect on a 17-year-old as it would on a 5-year-old.
17 is NOT still a kid. According to multiple organiztions, 17 is old enough to play certain video games and watch certain movies. They are considered by everyone but you to be a different breed apart of "kids". Plus, in one year, they will officially be considered an adult. No, 17 is NOT a kid and things like movies and video games and TV will have a different effect on a 17 year old than it will on a 15 or 13 or 10 or 7 or 5 year old or any other younger-than-17 year old, generally speaking.

(05-22-2018, 04:40 PM)GMDino Wrote: The title of the OP doesn't say he "blamed video games".

He did not specifically say video games.  He blamed a "culture of violence".  Video games like the one he promoted are part of the culture. 

According to YOU.

(05-22-2018, 04:40 PM)GMDino Wrote: I can't make it clearer, and frankly I don't know why I tried again.

I'm so sorry I tried to have a discussion with you. I guess you want to be more like Trump: surrounded only by people who agree with you.

[GMDino]

(05-22-2018, 05:34 PM)PhilHos Wrote: Based on this, then, we can see that GMDino beleives that playing a video game has the same effect on a 17-year-old as it would on a 5-year-old.

I don;t think violent video games cause violence at all.  Soo...

(05-22-2018, 05:34 PM)PhilHos Wrote: 17 is NOT still a kid. According to multiple organiztions, 17 is old enough to play certain video games and watch certain movies. They are considered by everyone but you to be a different breed apart of "kids". Plus, in one year, they will officially be considered an adult. No, 17 is NOT a kid and things like movies and video games and TV will have a different effect on a 17 year old than it will on a 15 or 13 or 10 or 7 or 5 year old or any other younger-than-17 year old, generally speaking.

At 16 you can drive a car and in just two years you will be an adult!  LMAO!

I didn't start the "17 and up" argument.  You did.  You inferred that because the video game Ollie promoted was 17 and up it can't affect kids.

(05-22-2018, 05:34 PM)PhilHos Wrote: According to YOU.

No....

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/21/nra-video-games-gun-violence_n_2348219.html

Quote:Guns should not be the focus of public attention following the massacre of children at an elementary school in Connecticut, the top lobbyist for the National Rifle Association said Friday. The real problem, said Wayne LaPierre, the CEO and executive vice president of the organization, is the cultural glorification of gun violence, especially in video games.

“There exists in this country a callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry that sells, and sows violence against its own people,” LaPierre said at a tense press conference one week after a gunman killed 26 at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school.

As examples, LaPierre singled out a handful of games available on the popular Xbox 360 and PlayStation systems: “Bulletstorm,” “Grand Theft Auto,” “Mortal Kombat” and “Splatterhouse” — along with a little-known, Web-only low-tech game created a decade ago called “Kindergarten Killers.”

The NRA has taken the transcript down.

http://money.cnn.com/2018/03/08/media/video-game-industry-white-house/index.html

Quote:President Donald Trump is sitting down Thursday afternoon with the video game industry, more than a week after he suggested that violent games can breed dangerous thoughts in young people.

"The video games, the movies, the Internet stuff is so violent," Trump said at a White House meeting on school safety last week. The meeting was held in the wake of a deadly school shooting in Parkland, Florida.

"It's hard to believe that, at least for a percentage — and maybe it's a small percentage of children — this doesn't have a negative impact on their thought process," he added. "But these things are really violent."

Those words might sound familiar. Politicians and other public figures have a long history of viewing the gaming industry as a catalyst for acts of violence.

Related: Trump's meeting on video game violence could prove contentious

The debate over brutality and bloodshed in video games stretches back decades: The '70s arcade game "Death Race," for example, drew public ire because it allowed players to run over enemies for points.

Later titles like the early 1990s gory fighter "Mortal Kombat" even led then-Democratic senators Joseph Lieberman and Herbert Kohl, to call a hearing on video game violence. Shortly afterward, the industry created a ratings system to regulate how mature games are marketed.

But the debate's "watershed moment" didn't come until just before the turn of the century, according to Chris Ferguson, a psychology professor at Stetson University who has written extensively about video games.

After two teenagers killed 12 of their peers and a teacher at Columbine High School in 1999, it was widely reported that they had played the shooter game "Doom."

"The tone after Columbine was one of absolute certainty," Ferguson told CNN this week. "Society was absolutely behind this issue of linking video game violence to mass shootings."

Less than a month after the shooting, the former House Speaker and Republican Newt Gingrich said that "Hollywood and computerized games have undermined the core values of civility."

Democratic President Bill Clinton asked the federal government that June to look into whether media companies, including the video game industry, were marketing violent content to young people.

In the months and years that followed, politicians continued to turn a critical eye toward games.

Hillary Clinton, for example, campaigned against violence in games as a Democratic senator in the mid-2000s. She sponsored a bill that would have penalized the sale of adult games to minors.

The bill never passed, and similar efforts at the state level were eventually overturned in the courts. The Supreme Court ruled in 2011 that California could not ban the sale of violent video games to children.

Writing for the majority, Justice Antonin Scalia said that video games deserve First Amendment protection. He also cast doubt on the idea that violence in games could cause real-world acts of aggression.

"Psychological studies purporting to show a connection between exposure to violent video games and harmful effects on children do not prove that such exposure causes minors to act aggressively," Scalia wrote. "Any demonstrated effects are both small and indistinguishable from effects produced by other media."

That decision — and the research into connections between violent games and violent behavior — did not quell the debate.

"There were politicians on both the left and the right who were expressing concern about violence in video games," Ferguson said.

In 2012, when a 20-year-old man killed dozens of children at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Senator Lieberman, now an Independent, said that young men who commit mass shootings "have had an almost hypnotic involvement in some form of violence in our entertainment culture, particularly violent video games."

Advocacy groups on both sides of the gun debate also criticized the gaming industry, though to different ends.

"Guns don't kill people. Video games, the media and Obama's budget kill people," said NRA head Wayne LaPierre at a press conference after the Sandy Hook shooting.

Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense, which promotes gun control, called on the gaming industry in 2013 to cut ties with weapons manufacturers that allow developers to feature real-world guns in games.

President Barack Obama called for Congress to fund research into video game violence as part of a 23-point plan to reduce gun violence. And Vice President Joe Biden met with members of the video game industry and researchers, including Ferguson, at the White House.

After the most recent shooting in Parkland, Florida, however, Ferguson said the debate has shifted. (It's not entirely clear how influential video games were on the shooter, though the Miami Herald reported that he played them.)

Related: White House continues to delay gun proposals amid uncertainty

A Florida Republican representative told NPR that the "biggest pusher of violence is, hands down, Hollywood movies, hands down, the video game market." And Kentucky's Republican governor told a local radio station that some video games "celebrate the slaughtering of people."

"It's been Trump and mostly Republicans," Ferguson said of the changing debate. "It seems in some ways to be a more deliberate effort to shift the conversation maybe away from gun control onto video games."

The debate has evolved among advocates for gun control and reform, too. Five years after it said that the "link between video games and real-world violence continues to be investigated," Moms Demand Action shied away from placing any specific attention on video games. The organization told CNN on Tuesday that business leaders "regardless of industry" should promote gun safety — and that video games weren't the cause of the country's gun violence.

"Americans play the same video games, watch the same TV shows and experience mental illness at the same rates as our peers in other high income nations," founder Shannon Watts said in a statement to CNN. "What separates America is our weak gun laws and unacceptable rates of gun violence. Americans want action on gun safety, not video games."

Been going on for years.  Republicans and those on the take from the NRA make claims.  Others want studies.

The NRA diverts to "culture" to blame.

Sidenote:  A subscription to NRA.tv makes a great gift!  

(05-22-2018, 05:34 PM)PhilHos Wrote: I'm so sorry I tried to have a discussion with you. I guess you want to be more like Trump: surrounded only by people who agree with you.

Nope.  But you aren't going to acknowledge that North is simply beating the NRA drum on this despite his willingness to promote violent video games.  Doesn't matter if it's true that the games cause violence or not.

That would be like North complaining about how a President handles a deal with Iran.

That would never happen.  

[Benton]

(05-22-2018, 03:57 PM)PhilHos Wrote: You do realize that  Call of Duty was rated M for Mature meaning that only "kids" aged 17 or up should have been playing it. It's not North's fault that so many parents suck at being parents.

A teen can get both call of duty and a firearm fairly easy, even though in many states they aren’t allowed to have either without parental consent.

[*PhilHos*]

(05-22-2018, 09:29 PM)GMDino Wrote: I don;t think violent video games cause violence at all.  Soo...

No, but whatever effect they DO have, you apparently think it's the same for a 17 year old as a 5 year old.

(05-22-2018, 09:29 PM)GMDino Wrote: At 16 you can drive a car and in just two years you will be an adult!  LMAO!

And I'm sure that something like a violent video game or movie would affect a 16 year old different than it would a 5 year old. It seems you do not agree.

(05-22-2018, 09:29 PM)GMDino Wrote: I didn't start the "17 and up" argument.  You did.  You inferred that because the video game Ollie promoted was 17 and up it can't affect kids.

No, re-read that again. What I implied was that because the video game Ollie promoted was NOT intended for kids, it's not ironic for him to think violent video games negatively impact kids. 

(05-22-2018, 09:29 PM)GMDino Wrote: No....

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/21/nra-video-games-gun-violence_n_2348219.html


The NRA has taken the transcript down.

http://money.cnn.com/2018/03/08/media/video-game-industry-white-house/index.html

Sigh ... The point is that North did not explicitly state video games are part of the "violent culture" he was railing about.

(05-22-2018, 09:29 PM)GMDino Wrote: Nope.  But you aren't going to acknowledge that North is simply beating the NRA drum on this despite his willingness to promote violent video games.  Doesn't matter if it's true that the games cause violence or not.

I'd be more than happy to be critical of North for thinking violent video games cause violence ... if you could prove he thinks it. Which you have yet to do.

[*bfine32*]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/david-katz-neighbours-speak-shock-124439778.html

Thought this could go here as good as anyplace.

Quote:The young men had gathered at Chicago Pizza in Jacksonville, Fla., to conduct some serious business: crushing one another at “Madden NFL 19” as their fans watched online.

The finalists in Sunday’s regional video game tournament would proceed to the Madden Classic in Las Vegas, where the top prize is $25,000. David Katz, a slender 24-year-old who nicknamed himself “Bread,” had traveled from Baltimore to compete — only to be eliminated, witnesses said.

But Katz wasn’t done. As his competitors continued to game Sunday, Katz got a handgun and opened fire in the pizzeria. Horrified fans watched the violence unfold on a livestream online.