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Speaker claims video game violence may influence school shooters
"You can't deny we'll reap what we sow," said Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, a West Point psychology professor, who spoke to several hundred in attendance at the Boys & Girls Club of Camarillo's second annual ONEClub Breakfast in Camarillo. Law enforcement, school and elected officials listened as Grossman spoke at the March 20 event about the culture of violence being a root cause of violent crime- barely a month after a 15year-old Camarillo boy was killed on an Oxnard middle school campus. A 14-year-old classmate has been accused of the shooting and awaits trial. When police close in on them, young killers often commit suicide, indicating they don't want a gun fight but "a body count," to rack up as many bodies as possible as if in a video game, said Grossman, author of a number of books on children and violence, including "On Killing," nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1995. Grossman, also a professor of military science and an Army Ranger, founded a new field of scientific endeavor called "killology" and has testified before state legislatures and U.S. Senate and congressional committees. Just how prevalent the problem has become has been obscured by medical advances, Grossman said. If the violence that occurs on school campuses today had occurred in the 1970s, the murder rate would be four times what it is now, he said. But laying all the blame for children committing murder at the feet of violent video games is a quick fix that fails to take into account important factors, such as less parental involvement and children growing up in a violent environment, a University of Southern California sociologist said in a March 2007 Reuters interview. Karen Sternheimer found in her study the U.S. juvenile homicide arrest rates dropped 77 percent in the decade since the release of the video game "Doom," which experts credited with influencing the two Columbine High students who went on a shooting spree at school and killed 13 people and themselves. "It's a complicated problem than merits more than a simple solution," Sternheimer said in the Reuters interview. Her article, "Do Video Games Kill?" appeared in the February 2007 issue of American Sociological Association's Context magazine. Grossman said society can't afford to be in denial that children are capable of mass murder. Denial keeps teachers and students, though well-trained in how to react to a fire, ignorant about what to do to defend and protect themselves when a student goes on a shooting spree, Grossman said. He said most people make the mistake of shying away from talking about the gruesome yet all-too-real subject. Schools should institute lockdown drills, Grossman said, and limit entry to a single, secured point- deterrents likely to make a killer look for easier targets. And he advocates for organized activities that teach children discipline. None of the young killers he studied had participated in sports or were members of the Boys & Girls Club; the only unifying factor was their interest in violence he said. A recent Stanford study on childhood obesity found that when children played video games less and engaged in physical activity more, bullying and violence at school decreased significantly, Grossman said. "I absolutely agree with him," said Kathy Long, Ventura County supervisor, after the meeting. Communities must talk about the potential for violence, Long said. Pleasant Valley School District trustee Patty Lerner agreed. The community should endorse public dialogue about school violence "because nobody's immune," said Lerner, the mother of a 15-year-old son and 12-year-old daughter. The discussion may be unwelcome and even uncomfortable, but "we make ourselves vulnerable" if we don't have it, said Pleasant Valley trustee Sandra Berg. |
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