CS 408 Assignment #7 - Akshay Abraham

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Question 3.33

How are web materials and computer games directly responsible for the numerous shootings that have occurred across the country? What measures should be taken with the web materials and/or computer games to stop this from happening again wihtout breaking the First Ammendment law?

Discussion

First of all we must talk about who did these shootings. They were not people from our time period They were adults who may not have had the same kind of interaction with the internet as people at the moment.Now it is common knowledge that it is when we are children that the influences of the outside world has the most influence on us. This means that if these gunmen had these notions of killing, the ways in which he could have come up with these notions was by viewing strong violent media when they were kids or by having some mental issues.

In their time, the internet was still a bit primitive, and computer games can be viewed in the same manner. Games like GTA in the present day are very realistic, with blood looking real and cars looking real. Also when you shoot at someone in one of those new first person shooter games, the way you shoot lloks real and so does the way someone dies. This means that these games would have an impact on a childs mind, who links killing with fun, as these games are pretty fun. But back in the 90's or even the early 2000's the games just could not have had the same impact. The graphics were a lot less realistic, and the games felt very cartoonish.

Now from our discussion as a group, the only way that these gunment would have had these notions of killing, in our oppinion, was because they were just mentlayy unstable. Killing another human, normally takes quite a toll on your mind. However if it was so easy for a man to put the trigger on unarmed and innocent children, then it can only be because he was mentally ill. The web in his day did not have enough content to influence him, and computer games were just too primative to even have an effect on child's mind in the gunman's day.

Now the solution that can be used to stop this from happening in the future, because now web content and computer games could have an effect on future generations, is quite simply enforcing the age restrictions on these materials. Many shops just don't take the age restricitons seriously enough, so they have to now, knowing that it could make the difference in the future between a gunman, or a normal person. This method also does not break the First Ammendment in any way because, the web authors and computer game companies should agree with this as ut us a moral solution. THey have to think as well, shuld they risk real livesin the future just to make money.