Despite the fact we are thousands of times more likely to suffer violence as the result of our car hitting another car (unintentionally) the fear of random violence perpetrated by strangers grows stronger all the time. So let me add another fear to your lives!
Assassination Generation by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman
When we read about mass shootings at Pulse Nightclub, massacres at Aurora Colorado, Columbine High School, Sandy Hook Elementary school, Virginia Tech University and a raft of other places; we have to wonder if this is a new phenomenon in history. What causes some quiet loner to pick up an automatic weapon and start shooting random people? Is our generation of mankind the first to have so many people, in peacetime, be slaughtered by strangers?
Author Lt. Col. Grossman has made a study of this. Apart from the title, which I think needlessly sensationalizes a well-researched book, Assassination Generation is an important read for parents, teachers, youth workers, lawyers and lawmakers.
Grossman has a fascinating background. Serving many years as a career combat soldier in the U.S. infantry and in the Airborne Division as a paratrooper and officer, and later as a Professor of Psychology at West Point and Professor of Military Science at Arkansas State University, Grossman brings unusual expertise to this nasty topic. His psychological area of study is on how people kill each other. That's right.
His previous books have dealt with the difficulty of training professional soldiers to actually shoot to kill an enemy. His research indicates that people have a built in resistance to taking the life of another human. Statistics for kill rates for soldiers in riflemen companies in various wars shows that no matter how accurate a soldier may be at shooting at a paper target they must still be trained at length to overcome this resistance before they will shoot to kill another human being. Assassination Generation makes a good case for showing that shoot-to-kill video games are as effective in overcoming a person’s reluctance to take a life as the best military training is. Our shoot-to-kill video-game players, in other words, learn to take the actual lives of humans just as soldiers do.
Assassination Generation is a readable and well-researched statistical case for connecting the rise of mass shootings in the world with the rise in popularity and availability of highly graphic ‘first person’ killer video games. In these restricted or adult-rated games, the player assumes the role of rogue cop, lone-wolf soldier, frustrated armed guard, or just about anyone with varied weaponry and unlimited ammunition and uses these to kill people. Sometimes the killed people are ‘bad guys’ and sometimes they are innocent bystanders. Kills are rewarded with points or advancement to a higher level in the game’s structure. These sick games show killing as graphically realistic and messy. Each shot is accompanied by details of corpses, blood spatter, chunks of flesh flying, people begging for mercy and all sorts of nasty stuff most of us will never see in a normal lifetime.
Grossman does not argue for an absolute ban on these snuff games but makes the case that ratings for these games are not well regulated or consistent. Games identified as dangerous to young minds are still too easily purchased by youth. The harmful effects of these games on young minds is more long-lasting than the effects on adults. He shows how the billion dollar media industry lobbyists have caused confusion over the ratings issue, leaving some of the most destructive video games too easily available to children.
Grossman shows that increased used of media leads not only to violent behaviours but to other aberrant behaviours in youth too. Interestingly, children and teenagers now spend more time on video screens and interactive electronic media than any other activity besides sleeping.
Grossman makes some basic suggestions as to how parents can prevent harm form overuse and addictions to video games.
The only jarring note is that Grossman does not line himself up with the 85% of Americans, who want more restrictions on automatic weapons. He avoids the obvious connection between angry lunatics being able to own ever more sophisticated types of automatic weapons and the murderous head count of American folks shot dead by them. His case is that even in countries with strict gun controls, like Norway, automatic weapons and assault rifles can still be obtained by someone like Anders Behring Breivik who killed 77 teenagers.
Perhaps.
But the mass killings in the USA, while its ‘good-ole-boy’ gun lobby continues to block any meaningful restrictive legislation, far outnumber the slaughter in other countries with limited public access to guns.
But I digress. Assassination Generation is still an important book to read and consider.
Rene Schmidt
