Regarding Jack Thompson’s letter to the editor (“Banning games,” Voice of the people, May 28), I’d like to comment on the notion that violent video games are responsible for kids killing kids.
I was in high school when the video game Doom was popular and I apparently was at a very suggestible age.
I spent my entire junior year “killing” my best friend in Doom over the modem.
At school, I was far from popular (as my amount of gaming can attest to) and had to put up with many classmates I simply hated.
Shockingly, despite hundreds of hours of digital killing sprees, I never shot my fellow students.
Why not?
All the ingredients in the recipe for disaster were there, so why isn’t my name mentioned next to Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris? Because unlike them, I knew right from wrong. My parents instilled in me the basic moral values that Dylan and Eric lacked.
I don’t care how many violent video games kids play, if parents take an absentee role in their child’s life, if they fail to teach their children the simple difference between right and wrong, then they are the ones who are responsible. And no lawsuit against gamemakers is going to make up for that.
