Battleangel

In principle, I could agree with the basic premiss. But as the article says, most violent crime is committed by kids who have never owned an XBOX or whatever. They just come from a crappy background and you can be sure that the American society, or indeed the Swedish for that matter, wouldn’t be interested in dealing with the really hard issues. So it’s basically evasion. That is why legislators keep bullshitting us. And aren’t really entitled to whine until they’ve solved the bigger issues first. Like say, perpetual imperial wars.

Wired - No definitive link has ever been discovered showing violent video games cause violent behavior. Even so, thousands of law-enforcement officers on our streets are being told otherwise.

Meet Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, one of law enforcement’s most in-demand speakers and trainers. Grossman, an ex-Army Ranger and West Point psychology professor, has been on the road 300 days a year since 2001, speaking mostly to law-enforcement departments and academies. He’s booked solid through late 2006.

One of Grossman’s key messages is that “violent media and video games are the largest single threat to modern civilization.”

Actually, the largest single threat to modern civilization is people with the a military rank, like say “lieutenant colonel,” and those that worship their function, even allow them to participate in civil society. I find it ironic that someone like Grossman, himself a killer (not the XBOX kind, but rather a real one) and an apologist for such a culture by the very rank he holds, is out preaching. And not just preaching to anyone but specifically to law enforcement, many of whom come from prior military service as I understand it.
The US excels at not taking responsibility as usual, and would rather look for faults in others and peripheral flaws than face up to the really tough issues. For the longest time, this behavior puzzled me greatly, but it makes sense once you realize, not what it does for America (or other nations) but rather what it doesn’t do and how effective a distraction it in fact is.