VA if you want a professional observation about the level to which our kids are desensitized read these two books. On Killing (by LT.Col. Dave Grossman) and Stop Teaching Our Kids To Kill 9(by Lt.Col. Dave Grossman and Gloria DeGaetano) He does not blame it on the availability of guns. These are two great books that go well with John Lotts books about the effectiveness of gun control. Read these books and let me know what you think.

The look of marvel in a child's eye is one of the true pleasures of life, it's a shame when you can't see it.  My 6 year old girl still has it, but we home school and carefully control her media exposure.  Too much, too soon and too fast make children unamazed.  And amazement is a precious memory we all need.

The world is definitely a different place nowdays......what I see in my kids is that they are "angry".....I thought it was...or at least some of it...due to the way we raised them....but in observing and discussion...it is obvious that it is an attitude brought about by all the "crap" they are exposed to at an early age.....when the young people are nasty...I seem to relate to where they`re coming from....to a point..of course.......all in all....I feel it is a sad state of affair.....and maybe it was better in the "old days"........was`nt it the same for us back then?...........[thinking]

I've seen this grossman character all over tv after the Columbine incident.  The only thing I saw him do was blame the "Doom" style video game for teaching kids how to kill/shoot other kids.  He went so far as to bill them as "firearms simulators" and call for government regulation.  I've played all that shit before and while it may improve your reaction time, a firearm simulator it is not.  How the hell does a keyboard and a mouse equate to a firearm?

Thoughts, opinions?

Hell, Doom? You guys ever play the Tom Clancy Rainbow series? With modification they can be made to allow play with any gun currently in Jane's database, depending on who you get your mod from. Decent realism too, but aimed towards SWAT style operations.

Further than that, the two latest I've been playing are one called Operation Flashpoint- a Cold-War era US-Soviet conflict on a Falklands size/type theater. Not only are the weapons realistic, as per limitations, sighting, breathing, mag changes, ammo you can carry, but you've got full ability to interact with your environment, able to talk to other players and even take weapons from dead guys. My favourite scenerio to play is one where you have a tank crew in a village, the crew is dismounted and in a defensive formation around the tank. You select hunters with shotguns, wipe the crew out, and steal the tank. (Also avaliable are Hinds, Apache, Cobras, Mil-8s, etc etc...).

The kills are pretty close to 'nightly news' kinds of reality. Enemies take, quite often, more than one round to drop, friends and squadmates can get wounded, and are very loud about it. Although I've yet to see guts (computer is too slow to play on high-rez), there is a fair amount of blood in the game.

The other game I'm currently playing is called Ghost Recon, its another Clancy small unit game, but this time not in cities, against Terrs. but out on the battlefield. It too has fairly realistic kill effects.

I've grown up on computers, most of my games until recently have been combat flight simulators or tank games. Destroying a KV-6 on the outskirts of Moscow with a Panzer isnt as desensitizing as one would assume wiping out a whole group of Soviet Spetznas (or GIs... sometimes its so fun to be bad) with a SAW, but even as I've been playing these games since, well, the early 90s (Was what, 14 when doom came out? I think...) I still get a certain lump in my throat when I've had to kill things in the past, and feel a little bit guilty. Even if it was just a rat going throgh my trash, or a rabbit in the back yard with a pellet gun that I later skinned and ate. Blood, others, not my own, makes me nauseous still, and I cant stand to see anyone, even if they were Adolph Hitler, in pain.

The real desensitizing factor isnt video games, I spend on average 35 hrs a week destroying or killing on the computer in some form or another. I think the real desensitizing effect is the lack of a 'sacred childhood'. Even my father played soldier as a kid, and in his early teens they used 'special effects' (a can of baked beans and a kilbasa) to simulate gore. Its just one of those things. Kids these days arnt allowed to be kids, and it isnt the TV, it isnt the computer, its just society in general. I know a lot of kids these days, especially young ones here in this small college town who's parents DONT HAVE a TV! The kids still sneak into R-Rated movies, and all the rest, but they dont have a 'tube. Still, they pick up on the whole problem these days with a lack of being allowed a real childhood. Crap, if someone ever found one of them 'playing doctor' in the woods, there would be some sort of huge sex-crime scandle! Back in the day we were just embarrased as hell if someone walked in on the usual stuff and sternly repermanded us. The same is true with kids 'playing war', you go to a school, and watch as kids get suspend for making a 'gun' out of their fingers and saying 'bang, your dead'. Its considered a death threat now!

No, VA-Gunnut, I hate to tell you, the kids arnt amazed because they arnt being allowed to be kids. They see circus stuff as 'juvanile' or 'kids stuff',and dont realize that they ARE kids, and CAN take wonder in it.

Hey man,

Missed your call yesterday, sorry...

We are going to have to get together next year and take your kids and my kid to Florida.  We'll put some wonder back in their eyes, guaranteed!

GuardTanker I completely agree. A lot of kids today are just overloaded with homework and academic pressure. I think it has to do in part with the obsession with career. Now I don't want to blame feminists for this, but undoubtedly the women's movement and the mass entry of women into the work place has heightened competitive pressure for desirable jobs, and along with the increased educational requirements of jobs today, the acceptance into a prestigious school. So what has happened is a national obession with SAT scores, GPAs, extracurricular activities (not so much for fun as for colleges) and other BS. Even though I'm 18 sometimes I still wish I could be a kid again. Although I think I'm much better off in this respect than many of my peers, since me and my friends still get a kick out of using paintball barrels as blowguns and sniping passing cars or peeing on the neighbor's fence at night.

Also something I noticed, since women didn't want to be defined by their marriage and home life and decided to be defined by their jobs, this has been a trend in American society. People competing for highly selective positions/admission slots/etc are afraid to have blemished records. This has been a trend in both civilian society and the military. In some sense, kids are getting a lot of pressure to be "perfect". Maybe this is part of the soccer mom phenomenon, the new American dream--to have the perfect job, perfect family, perfect house, perfect car, perfect record, perfect life. We could have a social epidemic of escapism coming up.