Craig A. Butler
Daily Lobo Columnist
The Washington, D.C.-area sniper struck again on Monday, bringing the death toll of the attacks to nine. Despite the army of police and federal agents searching the area with a fine-tooth comb, there seems to be little progress in cracking the case.
Most likely, the authorities have more evidence than has been released. Apparently, the sniper asked for the infamous Tarot card evidence not to be released to the media, and has possibly left other token clues for the police's eyes only. No one knows what the sniper's motive is, nor do they have the slightest clue to who it might be.
Of course, that doesn't stop people from speculating.
It seems inevitable that once the major news networks run out of information, they resort to wild theories in order to fill airtime. As far back as last Wednesday, the Washington Post ran a story in which D.C. - area residents were asked for their own crackpot theories. Ideas on the sniper's motive ran the gamut from someone upset with the Bush administration to Al Qaida terrorists.
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Among the most popular theories was the good old "video game" theory. This is the same claptrap brought up every time a school-aged shooter commits a highly visible crime. It's the same news sources that usually bring it up who are talking about it now -before the identity or the motive of the shooter is even known.
MSNBC was clever enough to grab screenshots from Counterstrike, a popular online shooter, and discuss how games with "God mode" (which allows the player to become invincible) might have inspired the sniper's "I am God" note. Of course they didn't investigate deeply enough to discover that Counterstrike has no "God mode." Nor is there any clear link between the sniper's style and the content of any video game.
Other video game theories include the sniper arcade game Silent Scope and the old favorite, Doom. The way these games are discussed always demonstrates the reporters' complete lack of experience with them. It's like someone mentioned the names of a few games that featured guns, and suddenly it's news. Nobody even plays Doom anymore, it's an old, old game. It just sounds like something that would warp a child's mind.
Whenever mainstream news sources report on violent video games, there never seems to be any attempt to approach the subject objectively. Even reports that should be only factual tend to describe games as "desensitizing kids to murder" and "honing homicidal skills." Rarely has there been such a clear bias on the part of the mass media.
Something in our culture demands that blame must be assigned for anything that happens. A marauding sniper can no longer simply be crazy - something must have twisted the man (or woman's) mind. In the search for blame, suddenly things like movies and video games acquire sinister brainwashing powers. Games played by millions of people worldwide are cast as training mechanisms for new generations of terrorists and criminals.
Alternate theories of video games' impact on people are rarely, if ever, advanced in the mainstream media. Since there is no real evidence either way, why not theorize that violent video games prevent crime by giving violent youths an outlet for their aggression?
The one-sided assault on video games being advanced even in a case where nothing is known about the murderer demonstrates a willingness on the part of many to assign the blame on something they don't understand. Rather than come to terms with the fact that there have always been murderers and psychopaths and lunatics, it is easier to blame something no "normal" person engages in.
No one knows who the serial sniper is, or what motivates the shootings. Until it is known, be wary of the random speculation being spouted like news from your TV. Any theory you can come up with is as good as the others, and just as likely to be wrong. Don't believe anyone whose theory clearly advances some long-held political agenda of their own.
