BATMAN, GTA & OZZY DIDN’T DO IT

Normally one of my WEEKLY BITCHING entries would be filled with links to articles, pictures, videos, whatever. Today is a little different as this entry is going to be based entirely on simple, basic logic than on the “stated facts” from various media sources. The facts you cna look up for yourself in this entry as that is what you should do anyways, but I digress. Adam Lanza is once again in the news because of a speculated desire to top the actions of Anders Behring Breivik, the man responsible for more than 70 deaths in a mass rampage in Norway back in 2011. Whether based on truth or not, people who dabble in mass-murder are more than likely in some level of competition in order to make a name for themselves based on the number, not the victims.

Part of that speculation included what this article is going to be about; in the CNN article a one-sentence paragraph pops up: “The same officials also linked Lanza's actions to violent video games.”

Here we go again. Placing the blame on something other than the suspect’s own actions and/or mental state is nothing new. It’s the traditional “go-to” and “fall-back” for parents, the media and society when tragic things like this occur. Simply put; the human mind cannot comprehend that someone is capable of such actions so there must be an external reason for it. Suicide and mass-murder just CANNOT come from within, no, it must be someone else’s fault and they are to blame. Conspiracy theorists love this stuff and spread their “findings” like a seagull with explosive diarrhea, coving everything in their watery path.

Let’s look at what the conspiracy theorists blame on both Sandy Hook and James Eagan Holmes’ Aurora movie massacre: THE DARK KNIGHT RISES. One of the stupidest causes I saw was that there was a building in the film with 'AURORA' on it and that was the subliminal trigger for the massacre. Incorrect. The building was actually in SKYFALL, which hadn’t even been remotely released at the time of the theater massacre (SKYFALL was released in America on November 9, 2012). So that one fails just on the reality of a little thing we call a ‘calendar’ alone. Yet people still blame the film for subliminally triggering his actions. How?

LOGIC POINT - RELEASE DATE: THE DARK KNIGHT RISES had its world premiere on July 16, 2013 and then a wide release in America on July 20, 2013 (the day of the shooting). Holmes had been preparing for this long before that, scouting out the theater, stockpiling weapons and body armor. He had also booby-trapped his apartment, which shows that he had been planning the whole affair long in advance. He had done various other actions prior (gun and armor purchases in May through July), contacted a filmmaker about a film with a vigilante, gun-toting Batman…it’s all out there for you to read and educate yourselves on instead of blindly believing the conspiracy nuts out there like Alex Jones.

LOGIC = 1 / NUTS = 0

Then there comes the now infamous Sandy Hook link. For a brief moment during the preparations Jim Gordon and his team are undertaking to stop Bane there is an “attack zone map” that has an area labeled as ‘Sandy Hook’.

LOGIC POINT - SANDY HOOK: Let’s see, apart from ‘Sandy Hook’ being the identifier of a certain landmass formation, it’s also the name of several towns in America and Canada:

• Sandy Hook, Connecticut
• Sandy Hook, Kentucky
• Sandy Hook, Maryland
• Sandy Hook, Mississippi
• Sandy Hook, Virginia
• Sandy Hook, Wisconsin
• Sandy Hook, Missouri
• Sandy Hook, Ontario
• Sandy Hook, District of Sechelt, British Columbia

If the Sandy Hook map reference was going to trigger sleeper agents to start killing people, why weren’t any of these other places attacked?

LOGIC=2 / NUTS=0

Now video games are coming under fire once again. An ever popular attack dummy for the masses, and yet here’s where logic destroys their basis that video games are training our youth to become killing machines.

LOGIC POINT - PHYSICS: 1^st person shooters and series like GRAND THEFT AUTO do use guns as part of their arsenals available to the players, this is something that is fact. These games also implement repercussions on the players’ actions (AI retaliations, police actions, etc) so these types of games do show the player that there is always a moral and legal downside to going on a rampage. These games also don’t do what they are readily accused of: they operate under a vacuum, not real-world physics. A real gun has recoil, something that a controller or a mouse doesn’t come with or emulate in a realistic manner. Things like wind, gravity, the curvature of the earth, also affect the trajectory of a bullet. Bullets in a video game fly straight without any hindrance whatsoever (aside from objects in the player’s path, but even then sometimes the code breaks and bullets fly through walls). Games are not training grounds for killers.

LOGIC=3 / NUTS=0

All of these things are the byproduct of another attack on the entertainment industry that dates back DECADES: the subliminal attack by the artists themselves.

LOGIC POINT-MATH: In 1985 a teenager killed himself and Ozzy Osbourne’s song ‘SUICIDE SOLUTION’ was blamed (a song about alchohol being much more preferable than offing yourself). Also in 1985 two men killed themselves because Judas Priest supposedly told them too in the song ‘BETTER BY YOU, BETTER THAN ME’. Now, I’m no math wizard but if either of these two cases had any basis in reality, then that would make ZERO business sense. Artists rely on the public to buy their stuff. If one person picks up an album for $10, likes it and then tells two of their friends about it, those two go out and by the album ($30 already). Those two tell two people each, that’s $70 sold, and the numbers increase geometrically from there. To kill of any one of those sales leads to massive financial loss down the road.

LOGIC=4 / NUTS=0

To blame anything in the entertainment industry on the incomprehensible actions of the few is, well, inconceivable. One has to look at the person, their actions leading up to it, their home life, their mental health, etc. Numerous factors have to be taken into account, and accountability has to be taken for actions and inactions leading up to the event. Parents no longer care about their child’s activities and take practically no interest in becoming a part of their lives. Parents, when faced with the media notice on their child’s actions, realize how out-of-touch they were with their own and look around to see what they can deflect the attention towards. So, inevitably, they walk into their kids’ rooms and start the finger pointing. The same goes when adults do something stupid, the media points to what they were in to or the conspiracy nuts come out and look at anything, whether the person was into it or not, and point the finger.

Mental health is a serious matter and pointing the finger in the wrong direction doesn’t fix a fucking thing. Gun control isn’t the answer either. If someone wants to do something bad enough, and he or she doesn’t have access to one ‘toy’, you can best believe they’ll find something bigger and far worse to carry out their plans. Does the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma ring a bell?

Quit pointing fingers and blaming movies, games and music and start HELPING people that you see suffering. Logic is dying, yes, but it still wins and you still lose.