Before the smoke had cleared at Columbine High, the mainstream media had entered a feeding frenzy that it usually reserves for presidential and celebrity scandals. Perhaps even more predictable than the immediate passing of the blame from the shooters to the video games they played, the movies they watched and the clothes they wore, was the knee-jerk reaction by our side of the industry immediately following. Over the past few days I've watched story after story go up on various game sites proclaiming that the bandwagon charges being made by the press, the parents, and worse still, the government, just aren't true - no one becomes more violent by playing video games. While I certainly understand this argument and the passions behind it, I'm not sure it really matters. The real question is - is it the government's responsibility to protect everyone from influences that may disturb a certain percentage of our population.

      Let's take a quick look at what's being said and done in the wake of the tragedy. In his regular weekly address, President Clinton said, "video games like Mortal Kombat, Killer Instinct and Doom, the very game played obsessively by the two young men who ended so many lives in Littleton, make our children more active participants in simulated violence." The day after the address, this quote appeared in a story in the Los Angeles Times titled, 'Clinton Points to Culture's Influence' and subsequently run in papers all over the country. The same day, the Portsmouth school district in New Hampshire enacted a ban on black trench coats and dark clothing. The Superintendent of the district Suzanne Schrader, was quoted in an AP story that also ran all over the nation as saying, "'when kids come back from vacation, they better not even think about wearing Marilyn Manson' or anything else related to the gothic movement." In the latest issue of Newsweek, the two killers were described as "obsessed" with Doom, because they played it every afternoon. On the latest episode of Sixty Minutes, Ret. Lt. Col. Grossman referred to video games as "murder simulations" and expressed his belief that the reason that Michael Carneal, who shot and killed three high-school students in 1997, was able to fire a gun so accurately was his previous experiences with video gaming. These are just a handful of individual examples of what has quickly become a frantic search by a anguished press and nation for some sort of dark cause for this recent onslaught of violence.

      Part of the problem is one of age. Every generation has had its own new pastime or influence that older lawmakers weren't exposed to. In the fifties, a frightened comic book industry responded to a concerned government and established the comic code to keep violence in comic books from contributing to juvenile delinquency. Some of the tenants of the code included, "No comics magazine shall use the word horror or terror in its title." In the sixties, rock and roll music and drugs came under fire, a battle that reached a fevered pitch when Charles Manson and his so-called 'family' killed Sharon Tate and six others in August of 1969 in a set of ritualistic murders. In 1976, Taxi Driver was released, a gritty film that had so much impact on John W. Hinkley that he later claimed it played a part in his decision to try and kill then-President Ronald Reagan in March of 1981. In June of 1982, Irving Lee Pulling shot himself in the chest with a handgun after playing a game of Dungeons and Dragons at his high school. His mother went on to form a group called Bothered About Dungeons and Dragons (BADD) and testified at several trials on the satanic influences of the game. In the early nineties, gangster rap and specifically the artist Ice-T came under fire for including lyrics in their songs that were supposed to have led to the murder of at least one police officer. In each case, murders and other crimes were committed by people of a young generation and their lives, likes, dislikes and hobbies were subsequently pulled apart by an older generation looking for some sort of clue as to what could have possibly caused such violent behavior. The targets were always some sort of activity or behavior pattern that existed in the younger but not the older generation. In some cases legislation was passed to try and stop whatever was decided to be the cause of the killings. In other cases, the media fervor died down and the hobby eventually became part of accepted pop-culture. Unfortunately the violence is still kicking around.

      Which brings us to today. A nation horrified by the evil they have seen in the hearts of two young men has started the search for some sort of explanation that will help them to understand why the shootings took place. They want to be able to reach out and put their hands on something and say, "this is bad. This is why our children died. Let's get rid of this thing and everything will be okay again." Unfortunately, the answer is very rarely this simple. Generation after generation has proven that kids will always have both trends that are specific only to their age group and violence among their ranks. The important thing for us as fans of the current 'trend' to remember is that these legislators aren't out to get us. Most of the group writing these articles and setting these bans in motion are concerned parents and officials trying to do anything they can to protect both children and adults. While there is certainly an argument to be made that the mainstream press has gone a little crazy with over promotion of the possible causes like video games, trenchcoats and Marilyn Manson and not enough on the actual causes like easily available bullets being fired from easily available weapons, I would argue that these are examples of hasty journalism and a significant generation gap rather than any sort of malicious intent. It's easy to make mistakes when you don't have any experience with the subject you're writing about. It's not so easy to make yourself understand how two teenage boys could go out and kill their own peers.

      Unfortunately, even though we know these people don't mean us any harm, as legislators and voters, they do have the power to harm the pastime that we love so much. If we stand idly by and don't speak up, we run the risk of falling under well-meaning but liberty-revoking laws such as the aforementioned ban on dark clothing at a public school. And as we've seen above, much more than just our video games are at risk. If the decision is made that, because these two killers played Doom every day, Doom should be taken off the shelves then we run into the very real threat that the same well-wishers will continue their attempts at protection by outlawing Dungeons and Dragons, Jodie Foster, rock music and comic books. In fact, if the argument is successfully made that we as a nation shouldn't have access to anything that might set a sociopath in motion, things could get much worse than that. David Berkowitz told police that his black Labrador retriever told him to commit his heinous crimes. Should we get rid of dogs? Ted Kaczynski dropped bombs in the mail to try and stop the forward progression of technology. Is it really our government's responsibility to throw all of the computers into the trash because they led a man to kill? Obviously the answer here is no, but the answer to whether or not we should get rid of video games may not be so obvious to those who have never played them. The reason for this discrepancy is that most adults view dogs and technology as everyday things that they are relatively used to.

      So what do we do from here? We educate those around us on what video games are really about and help them to understand that the seed of evil is within the person, not in the games that they play. If you're a young gamer, you can help your situation a great deal by approaching your parents and showing them exactly what it is you're doing when you sit in front of a computer for hours at a stretch. Let them know that while the games may seem violent and graphic, that you treat them as just what they are - a game. If you're a parent, you need to approach your kids and take a long look at the way they react to the games that they've been playing. If you feel that they may be confusing fantasy and reality, you need to make sure that they not only get away from what seems to be the immediate problem, but that you also make sure that they get the professional help that they need to understand the difference between what is real and what is not. Those parents who stop at just separating troubled kids from video games are almost certain to find that they will soon fixate on something else with the same dark intensity. Furthermore, video gamers as a whole need to start taking a bit more responsibility for the culture that we have created. Those who egg on kids in on-line chat rooms and in games who seem extremely violent or who use racist and profane language may be egging on the next classroom killer. It's up to us to at least make the attempt to tell them that their behavior isn't appropriate. While there's only so much we can do in situations like this, if we can give kids brought up in racist and violent households or communities the idea that there is another way, we may be able to take them a step in the right direction. What we must not do is react violently and angrily towards parents and legislators who are trying to make peace with what is ultimately the unspeakable action of two twisted minds. This path will only lead those outside of the gaming community to further classify gamers as anti-social and potentially violent.

      In the end everyone has to realize that the seed of evil, that creates scenes like the one in Littleton, rests deep within the minds of certain individuals just waiting for something to bring it out. We are being naïve and untruthful to ourselves if we state across the board that video games aren't one of the things capable of doing it. But with that knowledge must also come the understanding that such minds are warped from the inside out and will fixate on anything that enables them to finally act out the dark thoughts that rest inside. Taking away video games won't stop the violence nor will the elimination of dark cloth, long coats or heavy metal music. The only thing that will make the killing stop is the early detection and treatment of mental instability. Let's just hope that our lawmakers realize that before they choose to make a nation hostage to the actions of a disturbed few.