German Police Union Leader Adds To Chorus Calling For Video Game Ban

from the fingering-the-blame dept

Fri, Mar 27th 2009 5:25pm — Carlo Longino

After the tragic school shooting in Germany a couple of weeks ago, politicians almost immediately (and predictably) called for a ban on the sale of violent video games. Now, a leader of the German police union has also called for a ban, claiming that in "every" violent episode like the school shootings, the shooter has had an "addiction" to violent video games. Proof of the link between violent games and people acting out violence in real life remains tenuous, but the union boss says "when a chance to remove a probable cause exists, it must be used." Okay, sounds good. Violent people probably eat sandwiches, so let's ban them, too. I bet they have all ridden in cars, too, so riding in cars must cause violent behavior -- ban 'em. This correlation/causation thing is easy, isn't it?

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Filed Under: ban, germany, video games

13 Comments

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Anonymous Poster, 27 Mar 2009 @ 5:33pm

Wait, I thought the Germans were trying NOT to become Nazis again.
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- Michael Whitetail, 27 Mar 2009 @ 9:03pm
  
  Re:
  It's slightly different than that. The Germans are trying to stay on this side of the Fascist Line, but their overzealous methods of trying to keep violence in all its forms away from people is doing nothing more than building resentment in the population.
  
  If they don't watch out, a young charismatic leader will emerge decrying the oppressive government while at the same time empowering youth to rise up for their beliefs. Sound familiar?
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  - Anonymous Coward, 31 Mar 2009 @ 7:57am
    
    Re: Re:
    oh...you're talking about jesus right?
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Mar 2009 @ 5:38pm

Common Denominator
Im their search for a common denominator, I wonder how far they looked.

Video games are an easy perp.

Did they look at what prescriptions they were on, or had just stopped taking? Probably not.
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- ToySouljah, 27 Mar 2009 @ 9:45pm
  
  Re: Common Denominator
  That's what I keep telling people that ask me about it. I was personally on anti-depressants and had to stop them (weened) since they were messing with my head. My family saw the changes and called my doctor and he suggested for me to be weened off of them since stopping them all of a sudden can be dangerous...for yourself and others. They seriously need to do some more research on those drugs. The sad part is that they are now being made available to children under 12. So I expect to see more suicides and mass killings from even younger people.
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V Player, 27 Mar 2009 @ 6:12pm

HOTD
I play "House Of The Dead: Overkill". You can never be too sure of when the next Zombi...err, I mean MUTANT attack will come.
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Phillip, 27 Mar 2009 @ 6:53pm

Evil Carbon Based Life
I bet they also all:
slept so lets ban beds and time off
breathed so lets ban oxygen
were made of carbon as inanimate objects can't cause violence they can only be tools
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- Felix Pleșoianu, 28 Mar 2009 @ 12:37am
  
  Re: Evil Carbon Based Life
  In the Judge Dredd comics, there was a story arc about some Judges from another dimension who decided that, since all crime is commited by living beings, life itself is a crime. So they killed everyone and everything on their planet, including themselves (they found a way to function after death - psionics are real in the Judge Dredd universe). Then they tried to move on to other dimensions, starting with ours...
  
  I guess Judge Dredd was never very popular in Germany.
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  - Anonymous Coward, 28 Mar 2009 @ 11:52am
    
    Re: Re: Evil Carbon Based Life
    That was a horrible movie
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Dan, 27 Mar 2009 @ 7:32pm

banning things?
The Nazi's gained power by banning things like Jews, free thought, free speech, free press, free association, democratic elections, who knew where it could lead. The Nazi's did, they called it the master plan. The British are starting nibble at the edges of this same concept. Anyone care to guess where it could lead?
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kwl14, 29 Mar 2009 @ 8:36am

German Police
If the German Police and EU governments think that banning video games is going to solve their violence problems it won't. The one's doing the violence are not playing video games.
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wow gold, 29 Mar 2009 @ 6:35pm

Supervision
Banning video games will be hard to implement. I think parents should be cautious enough what video games they'll purchase for their kids and they also need supervision while playing to avoid these crimes.
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E, 30 Mar 2009 @ 11:24am

They should take a statistics class. It might help. Or not.
http://xkcd.com/552/
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