A thought for our times
03/04/2003 10:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
izmeinaApril is a month full of awful anniversaries. First there was the Oklahoma bombing, then the David Koresh business but scariest of all was the Columbine school massacre. Compared to recent events.. the death of 14 children seems hardly to rate a mention any more. It was Saddam Hussein's Idol Josef Stalin who once said... "One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is just a statistic." or words to that effect.
The portrayal of the latest round of mass killings as some sort of video game arcade (but as the cartoonists note... without the reset button) reminded me of a documentary broadcast four years ago just after the Columbine massacre.
" If we acknowledge that there is a resistance to killing, and if we acknowledge the fact that it's being done to our soldiers and our law enforcement officers with great safeguards, then there's one last thing we need to realise, and that is to recognise the fact that it is being done indiscriminately to our children. We have something we can contribute to the civilian world, and that's one of the areas I'm working on a great deal, and that has to do with how the point and shoot video games are making killing a conditioned response. The kids are playing the games. I served as a consultant in the Paducah school shootings; a 14-year-old boy named Michael Curneil had never fired a pistol before in his life before stealing that gun, had fired a .2-calibre rifle one time in camp. Michael Curneil in Paduka, Kentucky, brings a 22-calibre pistol to school and opens fire. Now the FBI says that the average law enforcement officer in the average engagement at an average distance of 7 yards hits with less than one bullet in five, less than 20% hit ratios. You know, and the real dynamics, moving targets are so hard to hit, the people just don't stand still for it. Moving targets are hard to hit, the physiology, and when you begin to use your lose your fine motor control and this whole dynamic is happening to you, and oh, by the way, they're shooting back at you, OK, all these dynamics can come together to make it so that it is extraordinarily hard to hit a target, just firing is a significant achievement. Hitting is another whole thing. And the only way you're going to be capable of hitting is through practice, practice, practice, practice.
Well see the thing about Michael Curneil is he had played the video games, he had played and played and played these video games. He picked this gun up and he held it up in a two-handed stance. He got this blank look on his face and he opened fire, there's a prayer group that's meeting out in the foyer of the High School and they begin to break up. Now they were moving when he opened fire and they were all moving, milling, scrambling targets when he began to fire. He fired eight shots at eight different milling, scrambling screaming children. How many hits does he get? Eight shots, eight hits, five of them are head shots, the other three are upper torso. And he had never fired a pistol before in his life. He stole the gun, he fired some practice shots the night before, that's it. But he had played the video games. He stood up there and he held the gun up in a two-handed stance. Throughout the crime he never moved his feet. He held the gun up, he never fired far to the left, he never fired far to the right, never fired up, never fired down, he just put one bullet in every target that popped up on his screen. What was he doing? He was playing a video game. Do you see what I'm saying? "
Lt Dave Grossman
The rest can be found here
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/bbing/stories/s23921.htm
The portrayal of the latest round of mass killings as some sort of video game arcade (but as the cartoonists note... without the reset button) reminded me of a documentary broadcast four years ago just after the Columbine massacre.
" If we acknowledge that there is a resistance to killing, and if we acknowledge the fact that it's being done to our soldiers and our law enforcement officers with great safeguards, then there's one last thing we need to realise, and that is to recognise the fact that it is being done indiscriminately to our children. We have something we can contribute to the civilian world, and that's one of the areas I'm working on a great deal, and that has to do with how the point and shoot video games are making killing a conditioned response. The kids are playing the games. I served as a consultant in the Paducah school shootings; a 14-year-old boy named Michael Curneil had never fired a pistol before in his life before stealing that gun, had fired a .2-calibre rifle one time in camp. Michael Curneil in Paduka, Kentucky, brings a 22-calibre pistol to school and opens fire. Now the FBI says that the average law enforcement officer in the average engagement at an average distance of 7 yards hits with less than one bullet in five, less than 20% hit ratios. You know, and the real dynamics, moving targets are so hard to hit, the people just don't stand still for it. Moving targets are hard to hit, the physiology, and when you begin to use your lose your fine motor control and this whole dynamic is happening to you, and oh, by the way, they're shooting back at you, OK, all these dynamics can come together to make it so that it is extraordinarily hard to hit a target, just firing is a significant achievement. Hitting is another whole thing. And the only way you're going to be capable of hitting is through practice, practice, practice, practice.
Well see the thing about Michael Curneil is he had played the video games, he had played and played and played these video games. He picked this gun up and he held it up in a two-handed stance. He got this blank look on his face and he opened fire, there's a prayer group that's meeting out in the foyer of the High School and they begin to break up. Now they were moving when he opened fire and they were all moving, milling, scrambling targets when he began to fire. He fired eight shots at eight different milling, scrambling screaming children. How many hits does he get? Eight shots, eight hits, five of them are head shots, the other three are upper torso. And he had never fired a pistol before in his life. He stole the gun, he fired some practice shots the night before, that's it. But he had played the video games. He stood up there and he held the gun up in a two-handed stance. Throughout the crime he never moved his feet. He held the gun up, he never fired far to the left, he never fired far to the right, never fired up, never fired down, he just put one bullet in every target that popped up on his screen. What was he doing? He was playing a video game. Do you see what I'm saying? "
Lt Dave Grossman
The rest can be found here
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/bbing/stories/s23921.htm
