Is it just me, or does Grossman look like Jim Carey in that pic?

I'd love to see Grossman's findings be provable here in my home country. Majority of the thugs here - mostly underage, and hence kids - don't even have access to a console.

And I fubared my tags :)

@Dan

Me too...I live in Wisconsin, and they talked about it at my local high school.

Sucks because they probably will...I mean, a 20 year old deputy with a promising career goes apeshit and kills six people? Of COURSE the games caused it...

@ CommiePuddin:
That's what I should have said first, oy. That's what was stated in Psychology.
Anyhoo.

If Fox News started really going after video games obsessively such as slamming it repeatedly in The O'Lielly Factor, this would all be sheer entertainment.

Again? You are one piss poor cop. Remind me to steal this guy's badge someday.

That way he'd look just like any other Hooker on the roads.

I'll ask this guy the same things I ask Jack - show me some proof. Show causation.

Oh great this guy again and no surprise he's spouting how games are the cause of violence, even though there not and have been proven not to -_- .

@ everyone

Col. Grossman calls himself a cop? I hope he loses his badge, as well as his license to practice law. I think he is another antigamer, who might side with Jack Thompson and Lyndon LaRouche, but I don't think that he is a leader like them. He is only a member of their antigamer crusade. Col. Grossman is a disgrace to be called a cop. I'm sorry that I have to say that, but it's my freedom of speech.

@BlackIce

I'm going with the monkey on this one.

"The ironic thing about Grossman’s message to yesterday’s audience is that the Lancaster County seminar was largely generated as a response to last year’s horrendous massacre at the Amish schoolhouse in Nickel Mines, PA…"

Haha, fail!

@ Soldatlouis

He is not a cop? I did not know that! Thanks for the information!

he's not even a soldier anymore.

Grossman may legally be allowed to use the title Lt Col, but he embarasses the services by doing so in his constant misinformation whoring.

@Nekojin:

Even so, I don't think there's much we can do about :/ .

He's an expert witness for Jack Thompson? Surely that undermines any and all credibility he would otherwise have.

Notice as how JT's career is seemingly going down the tubes, Grossman rises to prominence again? I guess he figured it was time to become a media figure once again now that Thompson will soon no longer be able to make the talking head circuit. :\

has he even updated his material since he first started spouting this propaganda? from what i can remember, he's been saying the same thing for almost a decade (give or take).

Okay, where's that people chief who created the Police Quest series? I haven't heard anyone complain about that.

Spike in school violence? Please site your statistics and source.

Also, from all known sources to date, his statement about blaming TV and games is wrong. How long before the ESA starts suing for defamation? It couldn't be too soon.

Well, to be fair, we might still have the News Ticker.

And there was something else, but I can't remember.

Oh those violent Amish gamers... wait, what's that? There are no violent Amish video gamers?

This guy's following in the footsteps of JT a little too closely, and me thinks some of JT's insanity wore off onto him.

More seriously these guys are sick, what sort of person shows up to a place where kids were killed, and then spouts off some nonsense about how "the video games made them do it". Even worse is this guy's up there spouting crap as if it's fact, knowing it's wrong. People who show up at a place of tragedy or in response to a past tragedy and say video games are responsible should be locked up for a long time and be required to take psychiatric evaluations unless they can completely prove 100% that the video games did in fact cause it and that it wasn't at all related to them already being violent or abused.

Back to being less/not serious I think that if they spout that crap, including outright lies, then police brutality should be involved when bringing them in. A little incentive to not lie the next time they talk.

@Ix

Four Words: Jack Thompson, Virginia Tech

Spike in school violence? Are schools no longer being attended by 'youth' anymore or something? Why do the FBI reports show marked decreases in youth violence?

Don't take the word of a human on the subject of Causality seriously.

http://www.mercenary.net/blog/index.php?/archives/5-Causality.html

People need to stop referring to him by his rank-he's NOT active duty anymore. He is a FORMER Army ranger-not a current one.

@Ix
I'm not 100% sure, but the Amish Schoolhouse murders were perpetrated by a commercial milkman. Even though he was not Amish, his influences were not sited much. I think they claimed "sexual abuse," which may have been a factor, but it doesn't take any of the blame away from the murderer.

@ Nekojin :

"Clarification on the first statement: Much of Grossman’s early work is based on data concerning fire rates (how many soldiers actually face the enemy and fire their weapons) among soldiers in wars. Some of this information was given to him by a superior, who later admitted to completely fabricating the figures. Despite this public acknowledgment that the figures are completely false, Grossman still uses them."

I suppose you're talking about Brigadier SLA Marshall's statistics. Here are all the links to the controversy regarding his work :
http://www.theppsc.org/Grossman/SLA_Marshall/Main.htm
http://www.warchronicle.com/us/combat_historians_wwii/marshallproblem.ht...

And concerning Grossman, here is a refutation of his work by Officer Thomas Aveni from the Police Polisy Study Council :
http://www.theppsc.org/Grossman/Main-R.htm

I like the headline "Training for Tragedy". It really captures the knee-jerk how-can-we-catch-your-attention awesomeness of 11 o'clock local news.

What's always bothered me most is not that people like Thompson and Grossman are allowed to spout falsehoods at every turn--I support free speech even when I don't like what's being said--but that they're allowed to tout such falsehoods as fact to people who don't know any better.

When they tell uninformed people that games train kids to kill, that there are studies and statistics to prove it, those people believe them. Thompson at least makes himself outself out to be a complete nutter, so the number of people who take him seriously is dwindling.

Grossman, though, is retired Army and as such his "statistics" and "facts" carry a certain level of credibility. If we knew nothing about games I'm sure we too would be tempted to trust someone, seemingly of authority on the subject, who presented theories supported by data from the United States Army.

It's no wonder, then, that with every school shooting or act of youth violence we get some police chief or whoever claiming that video games are to blame. A representative of the United States Army said so; it has to be true.

@Korrd

Remember Gen. Westmorland a few days before the Tet Offensive? Well, more than a few people I know will do that after reading this.

@ApokalypseNow

Yeah. That too

When all you've got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

"He says it’s our jobs to deter what our kids take in."

Well, at least he got part of it right.

Korrd,

The guy is retired-not active duty, so he is not, in fact representing our military. It's like all those commentators you see on news channels like CNN or R. Lee Ermey on the Discovery channel-they are often consulted, because they may know something based on prior experience while serving, but none of them are official representatives. Now R. Lee Ermey's behavior is far, far more honorable than Grossman's is of course. Grossman is just trying to exploit his prior service and not much else.

@ gs2005
That's exactly my point. It's not that Grossman is representing the United States Army, it's the perception that he is, and the authority and trust afforded him by that perception, which he abuses in order to present as fact unfounded opinions and information that is known to be false.

I'm surprised no one has blamed games on the shootings in WI yet.

@ gs2005

Not to mention that R. Lee Ermey is a lot more lulzy without making a fool of himself. Full Metal jacket pwned.

Errr... Wait. I just realized I wrote that earlier post backwards. Dammit!

@Nekojin
Just so we can put the facts in people's faces, how about you provide the resources to disprove him and make him look like an uneducated person who watches nothing but Fox News, oy.

Well, considering a cop in WI just allegedly murdered 7 people - can we also say police training causes people to kill?

What I really want to know is, why aren't there more people, both from the game industry and from other sources, coming out to refute these kind of claims when they know they're wrong 10 ways from Sunday?

The reason why people like Grossman freely go around claiming they know the truth is because nobody's following them up to refute their claims with pure fact.

And even though it would be great to see someone from the game industry expose their falsehoods point for point, it would be best to have people from the psychological community, scientific community, and law enforcement to knock them down a few pegs.

I think we should try and put some facts on him and see his response. Tells us whether he's as smart as Jacko or not.

It's not the games. The many incidents in the news recently did give the public some insight into the psyche of the shooters involved, they were all under some type of mental duress. In the case of columbine the shooters were bullied to the point where they got even with those who did the bullying. The virginia tech incident,well he was legitimately mentally deficient. How he was able to gain administration into such an institution is beyond me. It does begin at home, with the parents. If parents are poor role models how could the children be any different. There are many who play FPS games on the console or on the PC if it's the games how come we aren't out there shooting people. And believe me there are many out there who are deserving. Something I've seen less of in the past two decades is the admonition an adult usually gives to someone when that individual(s) has done something wrong to another. If this continues we will be that much closer to pure living hell.

@ Richard Eng
Makes much more sense in my opinon. But just in case someone challenges this, we should have solid evidence of that.

The data shows that most smart people drink water. Therefore, water makes you smart. Right?

Pandralisk, shut the fuck up. This has nothing to do with religion you jackass.

"Pandralisk, shut the fuck up. This has nothing to do with religion you jackass."


Pandralisk is suffering from some sort of persecution disorder. Which would match up well with him being the Jack Thompson of Religion. As Jack thinks that all the people he's pissed off are actually a conspiracy out to get him Pandralisk believes that everyone who disagrees with him is "OMG Teh Chriztens!"

Wow...nice to see that this man is still spouting lies, and to people who know darn well that no videogames had any part in the losses they've suffered. Is he TRYING to sound insensitive, callous, and ignorant by assuring them this meaningless violence is attributable to something the shooter wasn't involved in, or does he honestly so intently believe videogames cause shootings that he would deny any occured before or absent the influence of games?

So, is he a cruel jerk, or a bigoted moron?

He's willing to give people a patently false cause of a tragedy they are still struggling to understand on an emotional and rational level. And he had the gall to act as if he has provided the penultimate solution to all their questions. I suppose he assumes that people in an area so largely occupied by Amish are idiots, now, and that we will gladly accept any scion of technology as the reason for all ills?

Way to go, Lt. Colonel--Retired--Grossman for putting your perceived expertise to a use that so demeans the purpose you intend. You've insulted the adults of our region by belittling our intelligence; lied to us because you are so blinkered by a desire to paint video games in the role of villain that you stopped searching for solutions to the real culprits; and wasted on proletizing for your own backwards cause a chance to provide an honest, thoughtful, and potentially useful observation about admittedly difficult and arguable means of combatting the social elements that contribute to or fail to deter such crimes.

I don't know whether to be more sickened or angered that he used this platform to denigrate video games when our friends and neighbors were looking for real answers based on real facts, for things they can do to help prevent such horrors in the future and keep their kids safe.

Only a self-righteous prick or a zealot would face such people with what is effectively a glib catchphrase and a demonization of their children as potential criminals for no reason other than that they play videogames, as most younger people do (outside of the technology-free zones). Why doesn't he help people by giving us reasonable deterrents to such crime instead of lambasting today's whipping boy, or newest widespread media form, videogames?

History won't remember him, or those like him, kindly. It will say that Grossman took attention and resources away from real problems to advance his pet cause. That he wasted his spotlight on portraying videogames as some sort of possessing demon that overtakes young minds and programs them to kill. That had he expended some of this determined effort on effecting positive social change--in the areas which ARE proven to significantly impact violence and instability--maybe he could have had a deep and beneficial impact in deterring or reducing such crimes.

And it will do so in perhaps one line, not willing to fill more space with the report of a man just like so many before him, one who could have effected positive change in society but instead chose to focus on lambasting an art form he feared and didn't understand. Yet another shrill harridan whose shortsightedness made him into a vigilante so intently focused upon beating down video games that he accomplished nothing to advance the safety and security he believed himself to be garnering "for the children".

"how about blame it on men instead, then you get almost 100% accuracy."

Jack Thomspon: "These people are literally training with their penises to commit these crimes!"

Ah, Grossman, the Poor Man's Jack Thompson

@haters

My critics are suffering from the delusion that people who want video games are not influenced, in any way, by an agenda derived from explicitly religious values.

"expert witness in Jack Thompson’s Alabama Grand Theft Auto lawsuit against the video game industry."

And thus, he has no credibility whatsoever.

Dave "Forrest Gump" Grossman should just shut the fuck up, he's out of his element, as Walter from The Big Lebowski would say.

If video games "cause" school shootings, then pencils cause misspelled words and forks and spoons cause obesity.

@Tye The Czar

There's a reason no-one outside of the US watches FOX News. We hate the bastards. Worse than ABC.

@ Austin Lewis
Succinctly put. I've the same type of relationship with a dear friend and we have those conversations regularly.

Any true atheist would be ashamed of Pandralisk's attitude. He's as bigoted as the Christians he hates, just on the other side of the argument.

Truancy: The root of all school safety problems!

“No child falls through the cracks. They are dropped through or shoved through by lazy, emotionally immature adults and unethical professionals”

After the Columbine shootings I made this statement during an interview on national television. The reporter asked if I really believed that statement and I replied, “absolutely!”

But you may ask what this statement has to do with the issue of truancy? Simple, truant children – who are routinely late or absent – come from dysfunctional homes. Those homes in my experience are lead by caregivers who are more concerned about there own pleasures and convenience than the welfare of their children. Some may say that this is an unkind assessment. My response to them is simple, visit these homes and you will see that this is not an aberration.

While some caregivers have a difficult time because of poverty, work schedules or transitioning to a single parent household; the majority simply refuse to exercise self control or basic order in their homes.

And this assessment is supported by various national studies. Research from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention and the U.S. Department of Education have found that child neglect and family disorganization are major factors in truancy. The OJJDP also found that “Truancy has been clearly identified as one of the early warning signs of students headed for potential delinquent activity, social isolation, or educational failure via suspension, expulsion, or dropping out.”

More disturbing is a document that I have used for many years in criminal profiling, the Juvenile Sex Offender Assessment Protocol (J-SOAP-II). In this well respected assessment tool, caregiver issues and truancy become connected as impetuses for teen sex offender development:

Inconstant and instable caregivers before the age of 10. Multiple changes in caregivers and living situations.
Chronic truancy, fighting with peers or teachers.
Dr Gerald Patterson sums up the issue this way, “Parenting plays a critical role in the development process of children. Early discipline failures are a primary casual factor in the development of conduct problems. Harsh discipline, low supervision, lack of parental involvement all add to the development of aggressive children”

Bullying, sexual harassment, negative behavior cliques and aggression towards staff are all done by children who come from dysfunctional homes. But beyond the home environment, schools have a big stake in controlling truancy. Not only is it a major part of NCLB compliance but it affects all school safety issues. The US DOE has tracked the following school issues that directly contribute to truancy.

· Lack of effective and consistently applied attendance policies.

· Poor record-keeping, making truancy difficult to spot.

· Teacher characteristics, such as lack of respect for students and neglect of diverse student needs.

· Unsafe environment, for example a school with ineffective discipline policies where bullying is tolerated. [5 percent of students in grades 9 through 12 skipped school because they felt unsafe at school or on their way to or from school.]

Truancy happens in rural, suburban and urban schools and all classes of families. School must take control of their truancy problems or they are bound to be overtaken by it.

A well managed school is a safe school! SERAPH.net

"The ironic thing about Grossman’s message to yesterday’s audience is that the Lancaster County seminar was largely generated as a response to last year’s horrendous massacre at the Amish schoolhouse in Nickel Mines, PA… the one committed by a 32-year-old non-gamer."

Classic. Dennis wins a muffin.

Filefront has a forum, and this particular news article was posted there. Jack Thompson decided to drop a stinky little present of a post in response to that thread. Rather than respond there, with the notably lower readership, I thought I'd bring his commentary here for dissection.

Thompson's comments are in italics.

I can give you 20 school shootings by gamers, who trained on the games, such as Weis in Red Lake, the Dawson College shooter in Montreal, Carneal in Paducah, Klebold and Harris in Littleton, the school shooter in Wellsboro, PA, the school gunman in Fairfax, VA, the school shooter in Anchorage, the Lords of Doom school shooters in Ft. Myers, Malvo as the DC Sniper, Chas. McCoy, the serial highway shooter in Columbus, Jason McLaughlin in Cold Spring, MN, Joshua Cooke in Herndon, Va.

Do you gamer nerds want me to continue? Jack Thompson

Let's dissect these school shootings that Jack Thompson refers to.

Weis in Red Lake

His name is Jeff Weise. This happened on March 31, 2005. He had a distinct fascination with Adolf Hitler and neo-Nazi ideals. There is no evidence of video games involved in this case at all; the only thing even REMOTELY bearing on video games is the fact that he created two pointlessly violent Flash animations and uploaded them onto Newgrounds.

the Dawson College shooter in Montreal

Kimveer Gill is the name of the shooter in this case, which occurred on September 13, 2006. Gill briefly received military training from the Canadian Forces Leadership and Recruit School in Saint-Jean, Quebec, from January 17 to February 16, 1999. He did not complete his basic training for unknown reasons.

Gill's blog posts are full of violent rants against the system, society, and humanity in general. The only video game connections are that he once posted, "Life is like a video game, you gotta die sometime," and he had a fascination with both the Columbine massacre and the video game made about it (which reportedly made the creator of the game physically sick.)

There is considerable evidence in Gill's blog posts that he was bullied and picked on in school, despite other students denying that he was. His Vampirefreaks.com profile (now gone) is extremely telling, especially his likes and dislikes.

Finally, a handwritten diary found by police at Gill's home revealed the extent of Gill's anger. "It was very obvious his state of mind was deteriorating greatly over the last three weeks," a police source said. In a statement made on Friday, October 20, 2006, the head of the major crime squad for Montreal police Richard Dupuis states: "We know he was angry against the world, so it was a kind of vengeance...There is no explanation why Dawson. It could be Dawson, it could be another place".

(Citations, quotes, and details from the Wikipedia entries on both the massacre and Gill himself)

Video games did not "train" Gill. The Canadian Military did. They realized that he was "unfit" for military service before he received extensive weapons training, but he did receive basic weapons training from them. There is considerable evidence that he was a mentally unbalanced man to begin with. Video games did not make him kill.

Carneal in Paducah,

I don't think that there's anyone who follows video game politics who doesn't know the name of Michael Carneal. On December 1, 1997, Michael Carneal entered his school and opened fire, killing five students and injuring three more.

Despite repeated media statements that Carneal never fired a weapon prior to that date (including and especially Lt. Col. (Ret.) David Grossman's own statements to that effect), there is CONSIDERABLE evidence that Carneal had extensive experience in firing pistols, rifles, and shotguns, including target shooting at a summer camp he was sent to.

Thompson's own case attempting to sue video game companies over this tragedy was dismissed in 2001. The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that it was, "simply too far a leap from shooting characters on a video screen to shooting people in a classroom."

Klebold and Harris in Littleton,

AKA, the Columbine Massacre, April 20, 1999. Official reports following investigations into the causation of this event show that both young men were mentall disturbed; Eric Harris is described as being a clinical psychopath, while Dylan Klebold is described as a depressive. Investigations focused heavily on the social structures in high schools, and especially into the bullying that is commonplace on high schools across the country. The fact that Harris created levels for the game, DOOM, is little more than a red herring, akin to claims that the boys were part of the, "Trenchcoat Mafia," a small social group of semi-outcasts and misfits; a claim that was quickly disproven, but continued to be claimed. Claims that Harris created DOOM mods that recreated the layout of his school and populated by students and faculty of his school are unproven, little more than an urban legend.


the school shooter in Wellsboro, PA,

On June 4, 2003, 12-year-old David Robey loaded a large duffel bag with guns, and entered his school, apparently planning some sort of school massacre. He went into the boys' bathroom with his friends, where he started unloading the weapons. The friends backed out of the bathroom and alerted school authorities, who called the police. As the police arrived on the scene, Robey took one of the pistols, and shot himself in the head.

I can find no citations anywhere that reference this incident with video games at all.

the school gunman in Fairfax, VA,

I'm assuming that you're talking about the Virginia Tech massacre (in Blacksburg, VA, not Fairfax), perpetrated by Seung-Hui Cho on April 16, 2007. I can't find any reference to a school shooting in Fairfax.

Cho had a LONG history of mental instability that went unreferenced during his high school and college days, something that both the college and state were censured for - people with psychological problems are banned from buying and owning firearms in Virginia, but Cho's purchase of two guns (a Walther P22, and a Glock 19) went unchallenged.

Thompson appeared on the air BEFORE anything was known about the shooter, boldly declaring that he was a video gamer, and that violent video games would be found in his room. No such games were found - no consoles, no game discs or cartridges, nothing even remotely related to video games. Cho's roommates denied that Cho ever played video games, saying that all he did with his computer was write. The Washington Post reported, early-on in the investigation, that Cho's high school friends said he played Counterstrike as a teenager, but quickly pulled the story, presumably over a lack of verifiable sources. To the best of my knowledge, the Washington Post has never explained why they pulled the story; Thompson insists that it's part of a conspiratorial cover-up.

the school shooter in Anchorage,

On February 18, 1997, 16-year-old Evan Ramsey walked into his high school a few min-
utes before classes were scheduled to begin and opened fire on classmates and staff.
The school principal and one student were killed, and two others were wounded.

Evan Ramsey had a history of uncontrollable anger, and being bullied by larger classmates. I can find no citations anywhere that reference video games in this case.

the Lords of Doom school shooters in Ft. Myers,

I was completely unable to find any references to this until I tried, "Fort Myers teacher killed" as my search string, prompted by a vague reference from a rabid anti-gaming blog.

Kevin Foster, Peter Magnotti, Chris Black and Derek Shields called themselves the Lords of Chaos (not Lords of Doom, as Thompson calls them). As a small gang (declaring themselves a "militia"), they started fairly young, performing petty crimes like shoplifting, breaking into a gas station, and the like. They escalated to setting fire to the Coca-Cola building, a historic landmark in Florida, and other higher-profile crimes like carjacking.

On April 30, 1996, the gang was planning on throwing cans of peaches through school auditorium windows when the school's band teacher, Mark Schwebes, ran across the boys. He recognized them, and saw that they were wearing latex gloves and carrying large tin cans. He told them that he was going to alert the sheriff's deputy assigned to the school, and the boys decided that they had to kill him. They visited the teacher at his home, and did just that.

At no point during the trial of Kevin Foster, the ringleader of the gang, did either side ever bring testimony about video games at all. No mention of video games is ever made in relation to this case - except where the speaker alters the gang's name to Lords of Doom, attempting to link them to the Doom video game, as Thompson does.

Malvo as the DC Sniper,

Let's set aside he fact that this isn't a school shooting at all. Lee Boyd Malvo was trained and encouraged by John Allen Muhammad, a former Army infantryman who qualified as Expert, the highest rating given, with the M16 rifle. This is the weapon that was used in the DC sniper shootings. The only connection to video games in this case is that there was extensive speculation BEFORE these two were caught that the shooter had "trained" on video games, but once the shooters were caught, and it was determined that Muhammed was an Army rifleman. No claims of video game influence were presented during the trial.

Chas. McCoy, the serial highway shooter in Columbus,

aka the 2003-2004 Ohio Highway sniper, this also is not a "school shooting." This is actually the one case where Thompson has half a point. Charles McCoy Jr., the murderer in this case, had a Playstation and a copy of The Getaway game with him when he was arrested by police, and had several other violent video games at his house when it was searched by the police. However, the defense attorneys for McCoy rejected Thompson's insistence that this evidence be submitted for Thompson's favorite, the "Video Games Made Me Do It" defense. They instead chose to go after a straightforward insanity plea, which failed, resulting in a deadlocked jury. At that point, McCoy opted to plea-bargain for 27 years in prison, instead of a death sentence.

Jason McLaughlin in Cold Spring, MN,

On September 24, 2003 at the Rocori High School in Cold Spring, MN, Jason McLaughlin brought a .22 pistol to his school in order to shoot fellow classmate Seth Bartell. He fired two shots, one of which hit Bartell in the chest, the other of which passed over Bartell's shoulder to strike another classmate, Aaron Rollins, in the neck. Rollins died that day, while Bartell died several days later. McLaughlin insists that he didn't intend to kill Bartell, that he wanted to wound Bartell, and scare him out of teasing McLaughlin.

There is no evidence of video games being linked to this shooting.

Joshua Cooke in Herndon, Va

On Monday, February 17, 2003, Joshua Cooke shot his adoptive parents with a shotgun, then called 911 to turn himself in. His defense team originally attempted to plead the, "Matrix Defense," in opening statements claiming that Cooke actually thought he was in the virtual-reality world of the Matrix, but when it came time for Joshua to enter an official plea, he answered, "Guilty." Evidence was entered for the sentencing section of the trial that there may have been abuse by Cooke's foster parents, then further abuse by his adoptive parents. The defense argued that Cooke had a diminished capacity to tell right from wrong.

There is no evidence of video games being linked to this shooting.

It is very interesting to note how many of the school shootings involve harrassment and/or bullying of the students before they went on their murderous rampages. It is likewise interesting to note that in many cases, no mention of video games is made until Jack Thompson appears on the scene to "assist" the defense.

Wow... just wow. That has to be the the most epic post I've seen this week if not ever. A winrar is you.

*hand Nekojin over 9000 internets*

Insults?

I just describe your religion's God and Value system in the manner in which they appear in the Bible. As I've said many times before, I'm sorry if you've been spoon-fed that "God is Good" so much that you've yet to read your Bible and discover the hateful, vindictive, backwards, and contradictory aspects of your religion.

@ Nekojin

excellent post. I'd love to see you on a panel show with JT, just to see each and every bit of 'evidence' he presents get shredded.

Nekojin wins 1,000,000 internets.

To add to your post, Charles McCoy Jr. claimed he did the shootings because of continous news coverage of Michael Jackson.

Okay Pandralisk, since you seem to have such a DEEP understanding of christianity, what are you suggesting we do? Cause so far, I've seen nothing but mindless bitching and yet offer up no alternative. I don't think you could really come up with one that wouldn't offend anyone, but then again, I don't think you really care about that at this point.

Whee, let us not for a second waste time on lax gun laws, and how they get into the hands of kids.

I like this Idea very much

I'm a bit late in responding, but Nekojin... that was fantastic. Very well done, mate.

As if it's not already obvious, this is what needs to be done when Thompson, Grossman, or anyone else makes such claims--the facts need to be readily available to debunk those claims.

The problem is that they make so many ridiculous assertions that it's practically a full time job to research the facts behind each.