From "Virginia Tech" To "Video Games" in 8 Hours

When I hear about a mass shooting, it's like waiting for the other shoe to drop: how long will it take before someone tries to connect it to video games? How long before we learned that the Virginia Tech shooter "trained" for his rampage with a first-person shooter?

Reuters didn't wait long before bringing up video games -- less than eight hours after this morning's events, actually:

Many recent studies have looked at student-on-student violence and its causes and after Columbine intense scrutiny focused on the lives and backgrounds of the two gunmen, who committed suicide.

It also focused on school bullying, social cliques and the potential effects of the music they listened to and the video games they played. Experts also looked for ways to spot warning signs of violence.

Kaslow said that violence in U.S. schools was a bigger problem than was reported because of the high incidence of bullying, hitting and sexual offenses. Shootings were just an extreme form of that violence, she said.

"We are bombarded with violent images in our culture. We have a culture of violence here (in the United States). Kids will go home and watch this on TV," she said.

Hopefully random speculation is where the blame-culture-first movement stops, in this case. Let's hope the police, media, and families of the deceased zero in on the real cause of this tragic incident rather than go looking for scapegoats.

UPDATE: Apparently Jack Thompson was on Fox News already blaming this on video games. Can't find footage -- does anybody have a clip?

Campus killings may restart gun violence debate [Reuters]