I think you have a really good point. Being a kid can be very stressful and painful, unfortunately. But when I was in school, I remember some pretty vicious fights, but not murders or suicides. WTF is going on? Jesus Christ.

[QUOTE=Rochard;19482790]

I think it's TV. The TV we watched thirty years ago was tame and lame. The crime shows on TV were more "white collar" (theft, missing persons, etc) and no one ever got hurt. Now it's all about brutal murders, realism, people getting killed.[/QUOTE

And 20-30 years ago every time a kid killed himself or did something terrible, people asked "what heavy metal music did he listen to?"

No difference. Blaming a "thing" besides what's happening at home isn't going to take society any closet to fixing the problem.

+1 :thumbsup

+1 :thumbsup

I'm going to add YouTube and other "media" outlets like that to the mix. In elementary school the "hardcore" kids in my class had to go to the library and look at the holocaust and Vietnam photos in the TimeLife books to get their gore fix. Now they can go to YouTube while skipping school at their friend's house and watch helmet cams from ACTUAL live firefights in Iraq and Afghanistan. They can hear the soldiers joking about shooting and killing people. That's not a video game, but it's certainly portrayed as one. And if they're just "surfing the internet" on their own, there is NOBODY around to put it in context for them. No older, wiser brother or uncle or father to say, "That's not showing you the real cost of war" or "No, you can't watch that. You wouldn't understand/not old enough."

ok, back to my work...

And 20-30 years ago every time a kid killed himself or did something terrible, people asked "what heavy metal music did he listen to?"

No difference. Blaming a "thing" besides what's happening at home isn't going to take society any closer to understanding or fixing the problem.

Hence the parents..

The culture in this country breeds this shit. Easy access to guns certainly doesn't help, but not every country that has easy access to guns has this problem. This is American culture at its finest and is mostly a product of the shit we bombard kids and everyone else with in TV, movies and other media and parents not doing their fucking jobs. Parents in the US these days will only raise their kids if it's convenient. It has to go beyond simply feeding and potty training them like most people seem to think.

charles manson's "family" said they grew up watching people being killed all the time on tv with shows like gunsmoke, have gun will travel, etc as some kind of reason for having a love of violence so its probably not much different today. much more graphic i guess but my point is people have been blaming television for society's woes since it was invented.

yeah, the judas priest and ozzy trials were nothing more than an attempt to make money out of the incidents. turned out the kids had deep emotional issues and were abused/molested but oh no, it was the music.

media isn't a *thing* in the sense you are using the term. it is not an inanimate object. it is corporation comprised of people. in fact, it is legally a person. a gun is not legally a person like a corp is.

and news CORPs are legally bound by operating in the best interest of its shareholders, i.e., the bottomline. how does a news corp increase that year after year and against competition? increase viewership by sensationalizing.

The media is the biggest part of the problem in my opinion right under parents. Not sure what you are referencing to but I meant "thing" as in "gun", "video game", "band/song/music", "medications" etc. as I said, music was always blamed in the past, since It clearly isn't the problem, people moved on to blaming other "things".

I think it's complex. I think it's like health issues. When its reported that someone died of dancer for example, it's always followed by "well, of course, he did a lot of xyz, so...." It's the same behaviors when such acts of violence occur. Because who wants to feel like their life can end at any moment? Its a defense mechanism. People have a tendency to look for an easy fix because it gives us comfort to believe we can quickly control/stop/prevent it. But that's just us lying to ourselves because its easier to go around the problem and pretend it doesn't exist than to confront it, the risks, the horrors of failure and to go through life knowing your kid might get shot next or be the next shooter.

oh, i misread your reference to thing, thought you were applying it to media.

aslo, i agree, i don't *blame* the media but as i've done in this thread, i do opine that the media plants the germ of an idea, and that then is fostered by other factors.

i know i've gotten many ideas in my life that germinated from something i saw on tele. fortunately, i'm not wired to get the idea that stabbing and shooting others is a viable option.

Yeah.. and while their at it they should also look into your obvious steroid abuse

I don't often get involved in these kind of threads but this had to be quoted. 100% on the money.

Well thats quite the accusation 1. Untrue and 2. has nothing to do with this thread or my reply.

Youd be surprised how large diet especially in this day and age of GMO's plays on a developing mind and body.

Im sorry that me being in shape and dedicated upsets you, when you train for 7 years of your life and people make accusations like that it just makes me feel even better about my training and diet. Guess I'm doing something right! :1orglaugh:1orglaugh

Upsets me? Nothing in a forum upsets me. I just thought it was strange you would want to look into their diets.

What parents. They are off doing other things.

Im saying that the parents should be held accountable by the authorities for allowing their weapons to be accessed so easily.

We had firearms growing up. We discussed firearm safety, but there was no discussion about not shooting other people or bringing them to school. We never ever EVER touched the firearms without direct permission.

and where did you learn this?

Ding Ding Ding. :thumbsup:thumbsup:thumbsup

Grand Theft Auto games.

See sig.

.

That's some legit advice... I can dig it. :thumbsup

I'm going to say everyone is wrong and blame the kids alone. 2 crazy kids planned to kill classmates, whoopty fuckin' doo. There are a couple crazy kids everywhere, kids that never did what they were told no matter how they were raised, best we can hope for is that they don't get these kind of ideas. But some of them do and the ones that do WILL find a way to do whatever they want, because they're fuckin crazy nothing anyone can do about it. The world isn't perfect and everyone isn't the same, and there will always be a maniac kid or two in some areas, life goes on (for most).

Agreed on the publicizing it and copy cats thing though, they need to just keep shit like this hush hush and not give the other crazy kids ideas..

People always gonna hate.

I don't recall. I don't ever recall my parents saying "don't touch". I don't ever recall discussing it. It was just implied by force of my step father's belt?

I think that's true. Other countries have TV that is as (if not more) graphic than here in the US. They don't have our gun problem. It's something else I think.