Darwin Award. 
I canāt help but believe that the thinking in people like this is so influenced by video games. You arm up, go shooting, get shot, then push āPlay Againā and you get another chance. Like it or not, these messages (I can just hit āPlay Againā) will certainly habituate the brain to believe something I that isnāt necessarily true.
There are plenty of reports where these young gang types were āsurprisedā to learn that it hurt to get shot!
This is something I try to express to these teenagers in my neighborhood. They like to run around playing with these realistic-looking airguns, and they sometimes run from behind peopleās houses at night, when they are pulling into the driveway. Theyāve only done it one time at my house, but they still do it at other peopleās houses.
They are not trying to intentionally scare the homeowners, they are just playing and shooting at each other. They just need to understand that their intentions can be misunderstood late at night, especially with the climate of the country lately.
But is it really different than the arcade (video) games we have had for something like 40 years now?
Itās easy for me to say āDamn, they killed a guy with a toy gun.ā But then again, those guys have seconds to decide whatās next. He comes out of the house with the damn thing shouldered and points it at two cops, I suppose Iād react the same way.
LAPD responded accordingly as to their training, and they did EVERYTHING THEY COULD TO DE-ESCULATE, including commands given. What else could be done at those milli-seconds the LEO had to REACT. But looking at the video, the 911 call from the 19-year-old and action of the 19-year-old doesnāt seem to match what was going on in the household. Doesnāt seem the parents even knew what was going on until they heard gunshots. Strange, but seems that the 19-year-old staged a suicide by cop.
I didnāt play any arcade games where people got shot. Maybe I am from another era. Mostly we racked up points on pinball machines. Almost all of us had guns and had shot animals or birds and knew what real bullets did to living flesh. Worked with a young twenty something guide hunting wild pigs in CA. While dressing a pig and looking at the wound channel he remarked, āI never wanted to get shot but after working this summer and seeing what bullets do I never ever,ever want to get shot.ā Perhaps the answer is for young people to do more hunting or work in a slaughter house.
My favorite arcade games were the ones where people got shot.
Second favorite arcade games were of the __ fighter variety or mortal kombat variety in which you beat people to a bloody pulp or sometimes killed them with the finishing move if you knew the right ācodeā to enter
But Iām maybe only talking about maybe 30 years ago
Yeah, thirty years ago I was already āoldā and past arcade games.
Which is great, but timelines are important to keep in mind when we talk about blaming video games for peopleās behavior. I thin it is good to keep in mind that we have had āitās okay, I had another lifeā violent/fighting/killing video games for a long time, well beyond current youthās ages