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i saw this article in the patriot news today about more controversy on video game violence and how it affects teens...they're still bringing up columbine as a reason to make violent games extremely restricted. never mind they didnt play viedo games before the incident, they went bowling.

i hate the goddam posse of soccer moms trying to beat developers into being scapegoats because their children threw a controller once after dying in luigis mansion or some stupid s hit.

  • 07.12.2004 12:33 PM PDT
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ugh if i say this no one will believe me but i will anyways
my first friend (i used to live in hillbilly country) did something bad
i used to live in tennessee but we moved away
and one day we were reading the paper and it was like "josh buckner has ki.lled several people"
he said that he was playing gta3 and then he went out and shot at a tractor trailer and other cars on the highway with a shot gun and he killed a few people

  • 07.12.2004 12:37 PM PDT
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They just dont want to admit the violent world we were born into is to blame.

  • 07.12.2004 12:37 PM PDT
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i will get the link to the article

  • 07.12.2004 12:37 PM PDT
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Teen snipers plead guilty




By: Ray Snader, Tribune Correspondent August 28, 2003





Two Newport teenagers, charged with sniper style shootings that occurred June 25, were ordered into state custody for an indefinite period this morning, after they entered guilty pleas in a shooting incident that left one man dead and a woman injured. The shots were fired from a wooded area near the highway.

Stepbrothers William Buckner, 15, and Joshua Buckner, 13, who were arrested after the shooting incident on Interstate 40 near mile marker 437, just east of Newport, have been under house arrest after being freed on $100,000 bond each by Judge John Bell.

Aaron Hamel, 45, of Knoxville, who was driving westbound, was killed by a bullet that struck him in his head. His Toyota pickup then crossed the grass median and struck a guard rail.

Kimberly Bede, 19, from Moneta, Va., was a passenger in another vehicle when she was shot in the hip. She was hospitalized for several days.

Judge Ben Strand, sitting in for Bell, who has been called to active military duty, said he would have preferred to sentence the boys to a definite period, but under the law he could not do that. He told Bede and members of Hamel's family that he wished he could "do more" with regard to the punishment. Under state law the boys can be kept in state custody until they are 19. Before they are released a court will consider the recommendation from officials of the Department of Children's Services.

As the trial got under way this morning, District Attorney General Al Schmutzer told Strand the boys would enter guilty pleas with sentencing left up to the court.

The teens nodded their heads "yes" or answered "Yes, sir" when they were asked if they were satisfied with their representation by Defense Attorney Clyde Dunn. They had similar responses when the judge asked them if they were guilty of reckless homicide, aggravated assault and reckless endangerment.

Schmutzer detailed the shooting in which Bede was shot and Hamel was killed, as well as the arrest of the teens. The prosecutor said the boys were found on a four-wheeler near the scene, but initially denied firing at the vehicles. They later said they had been shooting at pigeons in the area, but in a third statement admitted they were firing and attempting to strike the sides of tractor trailer trucks.

Both teens had fired .22 caliber rifles. The defendants said they had gotten the idea from watching a video called "Grand Theft Auto."

"Will said he fired two shots in rapid succession and he believes he hit the pickup truck (driven by Hamel)," Schmutzer said. He added that shell casings found at the scene could not be matched with either gun taken from the boys and bullet fragments taken from the head of Hamel were too disintegrated for a ballistics test.

The teens said they had stolen the two rifles from a case in their parents' bedroom a week earlier and had hidden them in the woods until the day of the incident.

Schmutzer said DNA testing on a cigarette butt found at the scene tied Josh Buckner to the crime.

Bede testified she has not been able to go to school or to work since she was shot.

Asked by Schmutzer about the impact the incident has had on her, Bede responded "I'm a wreck. I keep thinking about what are my chances that something like this could happen again."

The mother of Hamel, Rosemary Hamel, of Windsor, Canada, testified her son was a registered nurse who loved people and in the past had cared for children with terminal cancer.

"In my mind I keep seeing David in his truck with a bullet in his head. That will never leave my mind," Mrs. Hamel told the judge.

Denise Deneau, also of Canada, is a cousin to Aaron Hamel and was a passenger in his truck at the time of the shooting. She said she had come to Tennessee to visit with the victim and they had spent the day in North Carolina. As they traveled west toward Knoxville, where the victim had recently moved, "This bullet came through the window. The glass shattered and as I leaned forward I felt heat pass my face," she told the judge.

Deneau said she initially believed she had been struck, but then felt the pickup truck go out of control.

"I saw blood coming from David's head and I realized we were going through the median. I thought I was dead," she said. The woman added she could do nothing to stop the truck and thought the vehicle would go over the guard rail "and we would tumble and tumble and die in flames."

In fact, the small Toyota vehicle came to rest against the guard rail.

Fifteen relatives of Hamel and Bede sat in the courtroom shaking their heads and sobbing as Deneau related her story.

Dunn told the court anything he said "would be hollow and our hearts are breaking for them," referring to the earlier testimony from Deneau, Bede and Hamel's mother.

Dunn described the shooting as "a foolish and illegal act that produced an unintended and horribly unfortunate result." He said he had denied the teens' request to communicate with Bede and Hamel's relatives until today. He said earlier this week the boys did write letters in which they expressed remorse for the shooting.

William Buckner, in his letter, said even though he is pleading guilty, "I know you will still hate me and I'll hate myself. I pray for you and know what I did was stupid. I hope God will give you comfort. I am so, so sorry."

Joshua Buckner, in his letter, says he didn't mean to hurt anyone, but "this will stick with me the rest of my life. The Lord in heaven will be with me, but it will take time to heal this."

Dunn asked the judge to grant the boys probation because of their remorse, cooperation with law enforcement officers and the fact that neither have previous criminal records.

Schmutzer, in response, argued that to grant the defendants probation would be to "depreciate the seriousness of the situation." He said while the death and injury were not intended, "this was about as reckless as you can get-firing on traffic, understanding that the vehicles had people in them."

Strand said the school records of Joshua were "atrocious" last year, and the parents did not try to help educators and "that alone shows me probation is not something I would consider." He said parents need to know they can keep their children out of situations such as the one faced by the defendants.

Strand said he saw a news program in the past about "Grand Theft Auto" and he found it ironic he was called upon to deal with a situation the program addressed. He also found it tragic that Aaron Hamel had worked with troubled youth in the past, and that "one of the people killed in this incident was the very kind of person that these young men need."

"I hope whatever happens today, you will become useful members of society. I apologize for anything I have done to create additional publicity in this case" Strand said. "I have been concerned about the amount of publicity and expected at any time someone would bring a monkey into the courtroom. I hope the case can be resolved in a way that it won't come back to haunt you in the future."

  • 07.12.2004 12:39 PM PDT
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Posted by: LoNEr ofa RAngEr
ugh if i say this no one will believe me but i will anyways
my first friend (i used to live in hillbilly country) did something bad
i used to live in tennessee but we moved away
and one day we were reading the paper and it was like "josh buckner has ki.lled several people"
he said that he was playing gta3 and then he went out and shot at a tractor trailer and other cars on the highway with a shot gun and he killed a few people


Ughh.. Another example of one idiot ruining it for the inteligent few. I swear, some people should be caged of from the rest of society. Josh Buckner included.

  • 07.12.2004 12:40 PM PDT
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HERE IS THE GOODER ONE
Two teenage boys "accidentally" killed a man while shooting at cars on the highway. The victim's family is now suing someone else.

A couple weeks ago, Joshua and William Buckner (ages 14 and 16, respectively), of Newport TN, decided they were bored. Solution? The boys took a couple .22-caliber rifles to a secluded area overlooking I-40 and started shooting at cars. According to several articles like this one, they had snuck the guns from their parents' bedroom and hidden them in the woods about a week prior to the shooting. Anyway, so they started shooting at cars, and (get ready for the big surprise now) killed a man in one car and wounded a woman in another. According to the two boys, they had just been trying to hit trailers and the like, and had never had any intention of hitting people.
But here's where the story gets interesting. Like many teens these days, the Buckners had recently been playing Grand Theft Auto. In court, they claimed that their innocent little target practice was also an attempt to recreate scenes from the game. So now, in a truly American take on the concept of justice, the families of the two victims are suing Rockstar Games, the company that publishes the GTA series. According to that last article I linked, this suit "could be the first to rule on whether watching and playing violent video games [causes] excess aggression in children."

Okay, you know the story, now let's see what problems we can find with it. First off, we have two kids, both of whom are obviously on the lower end of the common sense spectrum, playing a game which shows the fun and often humorous side of sniper rifles and vehicular homicide. Why exactly were they being allowed to play? Oh, and remember that line from the beginning about how they stole their parents' guns a week before the shooting? That's seven whole days people. How does anyone not notice multiple guns missing from their own bedroom for seven whole days?!?! That being said, can anyone think of any reason the parents should not be taking the chunk of responsibility that's instead being thrown at a game manufacturer?

And then there are the arguments more directly related to the game. The theory behind this lawsuit is that violent video games make people violent. This has been debated possibly since before there were actually video games, and is still far from being settled. Most of the bona-fide scientific research that I've encountered shows that enough exposure to violent media of any sort does indeed increase aggression in the viewer (see, for example, the work of IA State's Craig Anderson). This does not necessarily mean that you behave more violently, just that your attitude or thoughts tend to be more aggressively-oriented. As millions of gamers will attest, playing the most violent of games has yet to make anyone but a few scattered asshats actually become more aggressive or violent. These claims are not mutually exclusive, and the truth probably involves a combination. I, for example, have been into violent games ever since I got hooked on Wolfenstein 3D at the age of 9, and while I have yet to actually attack a single person, my thoughts about people who anger me do tend to involve a lot more bloodshed than they probably would had I never played violent games. Fortunately, I'm one of those astonishingly few who can differentiate between games and reality, and control myself well enough to not act out the fun-filled fantasies that flood into my mind while I do things like read this site.

To get back to my point though, the idea that a game manufacturer would be held responsible in a case like this, where parental negligence is about as easy to ignore as a giant squid, is ridiculous. I could go on longer -blam!-ing about it, but I think I've run out of useful things to say, so I'll end with a paraphrase of David Cross: "To those who say that media violence is responsible for real life violence... what video games was Hitler playing?"

-Josh
University of Rochester, Department of Psychology (undergrad)

oh, and a couple little side notes on video game research - 1. Craig Anderson, who I mentioned above and who was cited in the article I linked, may not have done as good a job establishing a games/behavior link as he likes to think. There were apparently some problems with his experimental setups, the most egregious of which was that his variable condition was usually having subjects either play Doom, or some insanely boring nonviolent game with no plot and no way to be compared to a first-person shooter, according to a guy I spoke to who saw Dr. Anderson's presentation at a conference one or two years ago. 2. I will be doing my own video game study sometime later this year, focusing on stress and anxiety rather than aggression. The catharsis theory has already been trashed as far as aggression goes, but I'll see what comes up with these factors, and I will definitely keep you all posted of my results. No idea when they'll be coming in though, but hopefully by spring)

  • 07.12.2004 12:41 PM PDT
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www.morons.org/article.jsp?sectionid=8&id=3958

  • 07.12.2004 12:42 PM PDT
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I agree that Video Games can be a big cause of Violence among youths, However, it is not video games alone. I can't tell you how many times i have seen parents taking their 5 year old kids in to see R rated movies that contain sex and violence, or they use bad language around them on a regular basis. If the parents allow the children to see this stuff when they are young, it will desensatize (spelling) them to these things later in life. Parents should have an active interest in their children from day one, and not stop until they leave the house. I think with columbine you had a perfect example of Parents not taking an active interest in their childrens activities. A good parent would know who its childs friends are, and whether or not they are trying to hide drugs, guns, pornographic material and the like. Until a child is 18, and while they are living in the parents household, they have NO rights to privacy when it concerns these things. And don't let anyone tell you otherwise. I know all the youths who cruise this site may disagree, but since you are not old enough to vote, or live and support yourself, you have no opinion that counts in this matter.

Here is why this kind of a problem will never go away. You need a licence to drive, but you don't need s**t to get prenant, have a child and then be a bad parent, anyone can do that, and it seems that some do.

  • 07.12.2004 12:48 PM PDT
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There's so much violence in society that you can't mark out video games as the sole problem. Watch CNN, FOX, MSNBC, or any other news program and I'll guarantee that most of it will either show violent images or be related to violence in some way. Nearly every movie has some amount of violence in it.

Humans are violent by nature. All the media and whatnot that have violent themes aren't the cause of our violent behavior, they simply reflect it. Sure we are all influence by the media, but what it all boils down to is an instinctual violence, left over from the days when it was violence that kept us alive as a race.

People who play violent video games or surround themselves with violent media need to be able to suppress that violent instinct or channel it into something constructive.

  • 07.12.2004 12:49 PM PDT
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the bottom thing is really true

  • 07.12.2004 12:50 PM PDT
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oh, come on klurejr. no offense, but you're talking like you were born 18 years old. i know plenty of 18 + year olds who are complete morons and i wouldn't trust with a loaded firearm. "NO rights to privacy?" that , along with those commercials with teenagers who are thankign their parents for grounding them , is why kids grow up hating their parents, and never want to listen to them, and do ridiculous things out of spite.

also, where do they get the guns to shoot at cars? uh, hmmm, oh yeah, their parents rooms. you'd think the parents would have enough brain power to lock the gun up or NOT OWN ONE AT ALL. its not video games' fault that their parents are idiots.

  • 07.12.2004 12:54 PM PDT
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[quote]Posted by: Geronimo
There's so much violence in society that you can't mark out video games as the sole problem. Watch CNN, FOX, MSNBC, or any other news program and I'll guarantee that most of it will either show violent images or be related to violence in some way. Nearly every movie has some amount of violence in it.


in reality, the news is the most violent thing on television...and the most accessible.

  • 07.12.2004 12:55 PM PDT
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Posted by: Screaming Gerbil
oh, come on klurejr. no offense, but you're talking like you were born 18 years old. i know plenty of 18 + year olds who are complete morons and i wouldn't trust with a loaded firearm. "NO rights to privacy?" that , along with those commercials with teenagers who are thankign their parents for grounding them , is why kids grow up hating their parents, and never want to listen to them, and do ridiculous things out of spite.

also, where do they get the guns to shoot at cars? uh, hmmm, oh yeah, their parents rooms. you'd think the parents would have enough brain power to lock the gun up or NOT OWN ONE AT ALL. its not video games' fault that their parents are idiots.

Maybe you misunderstood my reasoning.

As stated above, the guns were stolen from the "PARENTS" bedroom and were gone for 7 days. Any parent who does not notice two guns missing for a few days is seriously lacking... And no I was not born at 18, but My parents had a close enough relationship with me to know i was not doing anything Illegal under THEIR roof. i asume you are a teenager yourself and thus have a strong opinion, but really, as long as you live under your parents roof as a minor (under 18) you have NO rights to privacy of an illegal nature, none, period. You may not have a full understanding of this till you have grown up. I am not saying I didn't hide things from my parents, cause i did. But guns... come on.

Secondly, i hold the Parents very responsible for their childrens actions. The two boys in the case above stated the idea coma from the video game GTA3. If the kids you have are not able to comprehend the difference between videos games, and what is acceptable in real life they should not be allowed to play them. Rockstar cannot be held liable, the parents should be, they are the idiots who didn't look at the rating on the box when they bought the Violent Video game for their child.....

But in the End, yes, Video games, one in particular caused this terrible incident to happen. Parents, take control of your childrens lives before one ends up shooting me in the head on the interstate.

[Edited on 7/12/2004 1:05:00 PM]

  • 07.12.2004 1:01 PM PDT
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NO rights to privacy of an illegal nature, none, period

yes, i agree with that. i misunderstood.

  • 07.12.2004 1:04 PM PDT
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Posted by: Screaming Gerbil
NO rights to privacy of an illegal nature, none, period

yes, i agree with that. i misunderstood.

word.

  • 07.12.2004 1:05 PM PDT

If you look through history, there is always something that is supposedly making the world go bad. First Beer, then Comic books, now Video games. In ten years we'll have something new to complain about- trust me.

  • 07.12.2004 1:20 PM PDT
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I post something half decent and i get banned two seconds later

  • 07.12.2004 1:20 PM PDT
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my parents wont let me buy gta because of that

  • 07.12.2004 1:21 PM PDT

Posted by: Loner Of Ranger
my parents wont let me buy gta because of that


Probably because you are impulsive and irresponsible.

Just a guess.


[Edited on 7/12/2004 1:26:00 PM]

  • 07.12.2004 1:25 PM PDT
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Posted by: Xeroh
[color=pink]But still...There are REALY STUPID teens out there who think there "gangsta" or somthing and they start shooting things... WHy should we be judged on somthing one stupid kid did?[/color]

did you read any of the posts above? If your child has those tendacies, the parents should not let the children have the fuel to promote them.

Honestly, I would of liked to see the parents of the columbine kids go to jail with their kids. Maybe then some parents would pay attention the what is happening under thier own roof.

  • 07.12.2004 1:27 PM PDT

Posted by: klurejr
Posted by: Xeroh
[color=pink]But still...There are REALY STUPID teens out there who think there "gangsta" or somthing and they start shooting things... WHy should we be judged on somthing one stupid kid did?[/color]

did you read any of the posts above? If your child has those tendacies, the parents should not let the children have the fuel to promote them.

Honestly, I would of liked to see the parents of the columbine kids go to jail with their kids. Maybe then some parents would pay attention the what is happening under thier own roof.


I agree totally. Parents need to controll their kids.

  • 07.12.2004 1:28 PM PDT
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from the article:

"Does is it make any rational sense to you that we're going to pass a law someplace that says we're not going to prevent minors from buying Passion of the Christ or Kill Bill or Texas Chainsaw Massacre in a local store but you can't buy Resident Evil?"

  • 07.12.2004 1:36 PM PDT
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Posted by: Screaming Gerbil
from the article:

"Does is it make any rational sense to you that we're going to pass a law someplace that says we're not going to prevent minors from buying Passion of the Christ or Kill Bill or Texas Chainsaw Massacre in a local store but you can't buy Resident Evil?"

I am not sure I understand the quote, but no, minors should not be able to buy these things without thier parent or guardian doing it for them. The same goes for Alcohol and cigarettes, Minors are not of an age to make those kind of decisions for themselves.

  • 07.12.2004 1:38 PM PDT

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