Police: NorCal man kills mother over video game anger

[TomCADem]

Source: MSN

A man in Ceres (Stanislaus County) allegedly shot and killed his mother after an argument while playing video games.

According to a report from the Ceres Police Department, 28-year-old Matthew Nicholson was playing video games in his room when he got upset and started yelling.

Nicholson's 68-year-old mother, Lydia, went to check on her son but Nicholson started arguing with her and ended up breaking his headset for the video game in an outburst.

Blaming his mother for this, Nicholson threatened to kill both of his parents and retrieved a handgun from inside of the family's home.

Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/police-norcal-man-kills-mother-over-video-game-anger/ar-AAuDIHg?li=BBnbcA1

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For every heavily publicized case about someone defending their home against intruder, how often does someone die due to a gun just happening to be readily available while someone is upset. I would imagine that is not uncommon in domestic violence cases where I doubt that the perpetrator originally bought the gun with the intent of blowing away their spouse.

[Honeycombe8]

1. I wouldn't be surprised if he was no stranger to violent video games. nt

[alp227]

2. are you repeating the same crap from Jack Thompson

The disbarred right wing wacko ambulance chaser who made headlines in the 90s and 00s for blaming video games for violence?

[RhodeIslandOne]

4. Sadly, unstable people probably shouldn't be around a lot of things

Guns, knives, video games, other humans.....

Jack Thompson, Joe Lieberman and that gang are fucking idiots, but I'm sure this dude had triggers and the junk he was filling his head with probably contributed.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

5. Video games overall reduce violence, studies find, & handguns in homes increase homocides.

It is the same effect as how pornography reduces sexual violence.

His mother surely would still be alive if there were no handgun there. Using a knife requires much more decisive action, is not as deadly, and is less likely to discharge lethally by accident. Too easy for him to be pointing the gun and for it to be fired without a fully formed intention by him.

[RhodeIslandOne]

7. If you're a normal person, they reduce.

And yes, we know about guns.

Many years ago when I played video games, I got on a jag of playing GTA Vice City. Being an impatient guy, I would normally drive on the sidewalk to cut time.

One day IRL I was sitting in backed up traffic and for a split second I looked to my right at the sidewalk. And not as a "ha ha I wish" but for a split second I actually considered it. It frightened the hell out of me, and knowing how many idiots and sociopaths there are out there it suddenly dawned on me that if I could could even consider such a thing, what of those growing number of people who seemingly have no self control and a total lack of awareness for anyone else or their surroundings?

[TomCADem]

8. Ted Cruz accidentally explained Americas gun problem in one sentence

This article from Vox pretty much explains the issue with guns in the U.S. with Ted Cruz unintentionally providing the justification.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/11/6/16615218/ted-cruz-gun-control-sutherland-springs-texas-shooting

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) on Monday threw out the typical conservative talking points following the mass shooting at a Sutherland Springs, Texas, church, arguing not to politicize the shooting and making some claims about “a good guy with a gun.” But in the process, he made — accidentally, it seems — a good case for gun control.

“Evil is evil is evil,” Cruz said on CNN, “and will use the weaponry that is available.”

This, it turns out, is exactly the point made by gun control advocates. There are bad people in every society in the world. The US is not unique in this regard, and I don’t think Cruz is saying that America is uniquely evil.

What Americans seem to have, instead, is extra stock of — and way more access to — incredibly deadly weapons in the form of firearms. And this stock and access give bad people an easier way to commit mass atrocities — more so than they’d be able to if they only had access to, say, a baseball bat or a knife.

[lapucelle]

11. Are you talking about non-violent video games?

The American Psychological Association observed in an August 2015 policy statement that research demonstrated a link "between violent video game use and both increases in aggressive behavior ... and decreases in prosocial behavior, empathy, and moral engagement."

http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2015/08/violent-video-games.pdf

Summarizing the results of >400 studies including violent media of all types, researchers found there was a significant association between exposure to media violence and aggressive behavior (effect size: 0.19; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.19–0.20), aggressive thoughts (effect size: 0.18; 95% CI: 0.17–0.19), angry feelings (effect size: 0.27; 95% CI: 0.24–0.30), and physiologic arousal (effect size: 0.26; 95% CI: 0.20–0.31).11 Another study performed a similar analysis focusing only on video games.

The results, based on 140 such studies, found slightly larger negative effect sizes.10 Some contend, rightly, that these correlations are in the small to moderate range, but they are stronger than the associations between passive smoking and lung cancer, and many municipalities have banned smoking because of that risk.

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2016/07/14/peds.2016-1298

http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/25/health/video-games-and-violence/index.html

[Bernardo de La Paz]

13. There is a difference between aggression in lab settings and violent crime

It's actual crime that counts rather than lab measurements.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/video-games/8798927/Violent-video-games-reduce-crime.html

The report , released earlier this year, states: "Psychological studies invariably find a positive relationship between violent video game play and aggression.

"If violent video games can be shown to cause violence, then laws aimed at reducing access (to the games) may benefit society at large.

"Yet to date, though there is evidence that violent video games cause aggression in a laboratory setting, there is no evidence that violent video games cause violence or crime."

It adds: "We argue that since laboratory experiments have not examined the time use effects of video games, which incapacitate violent activity by drawing individual gamers into extended gameplay, laboratory studies may be poor predictors of the net effects of violent video games in society. "Consequently, they overstate the importance of video game induced aggression as a social cost. "

https://www.polygon.com/2014/9/12/6141515/do-violent-video-games-actually-reduce-real-world-crime

Researchers have been searching for a link between playing video games and acts of real world violence for decades, without much success.

But what if games help to actually reduce violent crime?

Researchers at Villanova University and Rutgers University have published a study comparing sales of violent video games with crime statistics in the United States. They found that when shooting game sales are at their highest, crime numbers tend to drop.

"Various measurements of video game use are related to decreases in violent crime such as homicide," said Patrick Markey, co-author of the study Violent Video Games and Real-World Violence: Rhetoric Versus Data which is being published by American Psychological Association's journal Psychology of Popular Media Culture.

The latter article has graphs that show an astoungingly strong correlation in reduction of crime. Even though correlation is not definitively causation it is certainly a very strong indication for this issue.

[lapucelle]

17. Both studies examined the correlation between the sales or release

of video games and the incidence violent crime. Neither of those studies sought to measure the correlation between long-term or frequent playing of violent video games and a likelihood towards engaging in violent crime.

Our study uses a quasi-experimental methodology to identify the short and medium run effects of violent game sales on violent crime using time variation in retail unit sales data of the top 50 selling video games and violent criminal offenses from the National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS) for each week of 2005 to 2008.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1804959

Using a similar methodology employed by researchers to examine predictors of severe violent behaviors (Anderson et al., Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 73: 1213–1223, 1997), 4 time-series analyses investigated the associations among violent crime (homicides and aggravated assaults), video game sales, Internet keyword searches for violent video game guides, and the release dates of popular violent video games (both annually and monthly). Contrary to the claims that violent video games are linked to aggressive assaults and homicides, no evidence was found to suggest that this medium was positively related to real-world violence in the United States

http://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fppm0000030

[Bernardo de La Paz]

19. Those are older studies. 1997 and 2008. Further, they are not the links you gave us first.

[lapucelle]

21. Those "different" links are to the studies that YOU cite

to support YOUR assertion.

MY original links are to The American Psychological Association August 2015 policy statement and American Academy of Pediatrics July 2017 guideline on media violence.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/25/health/video-games-and-violence/index.html

[Hortensis]

24. Perhaps Bernardo would discuss peer reviews of his study?

It seems to be an outlier.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

26. Not my study. Not an outlier. It's like the difference between lab rats & clinical trials.

Sure, I can definitely see video games increasing aggressive feelings in the minutes in the lab after a session.

But it is the real-world effects that count where crime seems to be reduced in weeks and months after.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

25. As they say, "no evidence found to suggest ... positively related to real-world violence in US"

As they say,

no evidence was found to suggest that this medium was positively related to real-world violence in the United States

"Positive" relationship would be video games increasing real-world violence.

The evidence indicates (not definitively, but indicates) the other way: video games provide an outlet for feelings, which helps reduce violence.

[lapucelle]

27. "The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."

"Argument from ignorance (from Latin: argumentum ad ignorantiam), also known as appeal to ignorance (in which ignorance represents "a lack of contrary evidence" ), is a fallacy in informal logic. It asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false or a proposition is false because it has not yet been proven true."

[Bernardo de La Paz]

28. While your title is true, there is evidence, & nobody arguing from ignorance or appealing to it. .nt

[lapucelle]

29. There is data indicating a correlation between sales of new video games

and a drop in reported incidents of criminal violence. There is also speculation as to why that correlation exists. That's as far as I would be willing to take the two studies.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

15. The passive smoking measurements are real-world; thus don't compare to lab aggression measures. nt

[lapucelle]

18. For the full text of the statement of The American Academy of Pediatrics

you can follow this link.
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/138/2/e20161298

[Bernardo de La Paz]

23. The recommendations are generally reasonable. . . . nt

[George II]

12. Can you direct us to any of those studies, please? Thanks.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

14. Please see my post #13 above. . . . nt

[rainin]

3. Sad. No video games where he's going. n/t

[Cold War Spook]

30. My son has an iPad

in FLDOC. Calls home twice a week, not on iPad, and now will be doing email and video visits. The company handling all this is Securus and they are in over 2,000 prisons. If you have a relative in prison check to see if they are using Securus.

[brush]

6. Sorry SOB. Parents, if you allow your disfunctional, grown son to live with you...

make sure he doesn't have gun.

[iluvtennis]

9. So, sad. Killed his mom over a video game. Let that sink in. What is this world coming to.

[Midnight Writer]

10. Honestly, folks? I think killing his mother is about a lot more than a video game.

[Skittles]

20. of course it is

I hate these kinds of trite reasoning.

[milestogo]

16. How old is too old to play video games in a room at your parents home?

[Beakybird]

31. Where's the GoFundMe link?

This poor man has lost his mother.