Sneaking up behind people, strangling them with piano wire? Or perhaps a game like Mass Effect 2, where you can blast wicked aliens with missile launchers. Then of course there's games like Skyrim, where you can slay dragons, vampires, werewolves, and even people.
The thing is, most of us have minds that can separate the reality from the fiction. These games, perhaps, appeal to some because it allows for doing things in a fictional sense that we would never imagine doing in real life. Perhaps in rare instances, some people lose touch with reality and think that what is fun in a video game, might be fun in real life. I don't think that in this instance we can point the blame at the video games, because, they're simply games. Take a Chess game for instance, you take down pawns, bishops, even a Queen - and having known many chess players, I can say that some of them do this with sadistic glee and wicked grins. This doesn't mean they're going to go out and find a bishop to take down in real life.
My questions would be more... what kind of backgrounds did they have? How were they raised by their parents or guardians? Were they suffering from mental illness? If so, had they had access to treatment?
All of these questions aside, some people are simply cruel, sadistic, cold. Some people truly take delight in the suffering of others - and these individuals ought to be (IMHO) judged as individuals, not as the result of a violent video game or some inane rant on the radio. If we are all simply too impressionable and too stupid to be permitted to play violent games or listen to the hatred of the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Howie Carr, then perhaps we are too stupid to be permitted to drive, or vote, or even feed ourselves.
It's certainly over the top - but this is a sick couple, an "evil" (for want of a better word) couple of individuals, and I don't think we can realistically say their actions had anything to do with video games or hateful radio. Otherwise, we'd have a hell of a lot more murders in the US - think about how many dittoheads are out there listening to Rush every day, or how many play violent video games all day long...
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