No, we’re not making this up, and this is sure to stir up a lot of interesting things. The recent school shooting in Parkland, Florida has gotten a lot of people on edge. To some though, it’s pushed them over the edge in some ways. For a 16-year-old in Illinois, he got tired of hearing all the “gun threats” lobbied against his school. His response? “Y’all need to shut up about school shootings or I’ll do one.” Yeah…probably not the best thing to say on social media. And his video games suffered for it.
According to Gameindustry.biz, this was the start of a very interesting few days for that teen. He was brought to court to address the statement, and his parent’s house was actually searched to see if he actually had access to a gun (he did not). The defense for the teen noted that it was just a “joke in poor taste” while the prosecution stated that it was “unacceptable.
Because of it all, the young man was forced to hand over his phone, and was banned from playing violent video games. Yep, for real.
This isn’t the first time that video game violence has been tied to real-world violence, or in this case, potential real-world violence. The problem here is that this could be seen as a step too far. He was using his 1st amendment rights to speak on social media, and you could consider his statement nothing more than a warning, not a direct threat, especially since his parents don’t own a gun.
It’s a very slippery slope, one that the world has gone down before with near disastrous results. There was a time when comic books was associated with gun violence, and when the Senate tried to crack down on it, it nearly crushed the comic book industry. We don’t think video games will be affected in the same scale, but it is something to look out for.
