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The Courts Government News Entertainment Games

Australian Counter Strike Shooters 508

Posted by samzenpus from the the-game-made-me-do-it dept.
jaronc writes "News.com.au are reporting an Australian court has been told that two men dressed as characters from 'Counter Strike' shot and killed a man during a Sydney home invasion in 2002. Let the blaming begin......"
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Australian Counter Strike Shooters More

Australian Counter Strike Shooters

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  • Whew.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by LilGuy ( 150110 ) on Thursday November 04, 2004 @04:11AM (#10721162)
    At least it wasn't a GTA re-enactment, that woulda been much uglier... unless of course the CTs didn't difuse the bomb.

  • 'Dressed' as Counterstrike shooters (Score:5, Insightful)

    by chesapeake ( 264414 ) <robert@@@fearthecow...net> on Thursday November 04, 2004 @04:13AM (#10721174) Homepage
    So this means they were wearing either army fatigues or a shirt with glasses. I fail to see how that's related specifically to CS, unless they went around screaming out "fire in the hole" and "it's gonna blow!".

    Even assuming that they became unhinged from playing too much CS, doesn't mean that we should ban it. People did go crazy and kill people before computer games existed...

    (This is still tragic, however, and I don't intend to lessen the tragedy.)
    • So this means they were wearing either army fatigues or a shirt with glasses.

      If they'd been running around naked, the claim would have simply been changed to "dressed in the manner of a Counter Strike mod".

      This looks like the kind of situation in which it would be ridiculous to allow common sense to prevail over sensationalism.

    • Re:'Dressed' as Counterstrike shooters (Score:5, Interesting)

      by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Thursday November 04, 2004 @04:40AM (#10721325)
      People did go crazy and kill people before computer games existed...
      Yes, but they did it in a fun, Gov't sanctioned manner (wars). One of the downsides to a civilized society is a lack of good outlets for sick, chemically imblanced people to kill and maim. But hey, it's cool, the current administration is taking care of that :D.

      Jokes aside, any society is going to have a miniscule percentage of really, really sick people. In the past they got jobs as torturers and executioners. Now that we're civil, we've still got those people, and they're still sick bastards. We need better systems in place to catch them before they do any harm. But damned if I know how to do it.

      • Re:'Dressed' as Counterstrike shooters (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 04, 2004 @04:57AM (#10721403)
        Call me crazy but I don't believe you can really be born a murder. Granted their are neuro-chemical imbalances and all that would increase the likely hood. But I have to say pointing a finger at even an implied reason is just as silly as blaming CS. Ridiculous.
        I believe there always is a slow degradation of mental balance that accures that everyone just writes off as them having a a bad day or moods. Slowly the mind folds on yourself and you become retrospective with your mind focused on one thing. Logic goes, if you ever had it, then ethics and finally morals and you've draw in on yourself with a focus like work or t.v. or games.
        Nope, it always comes down to his enviroment forcing stressors on them they make small innocent bad decisions, like withdrawing from conflicts, which build until they overwelm the person. It's very sad cause it's not that hard to spot if you just take time to look at someone else. A little help at the beginning can save lives.
        Life is exponential... one factor multiplies and multiplies and multiplies......

      • Re:'Dressed' as Counterstrike shooters (Score:5, Interesting)

        by oakbox ( 414095 ) on Thursday November 04, 2004 @05:13AM (#10721458) Homepage
        There IS a test for this, it's called the Hartman Value Profile [google.com]. It's basically a test to see if you are evil. The Nixon administration was planning on implementing it to test kids to see who would end up going to jail later in life.

        The test was accurate, and unchangeable. If you were a sick person at 8, you were going to be just as screwy at 18 or 28. It looked at your world view.

        Anyway, telling someone, "You're values are screwy, you'll end up in jail or as a burden to society and there's nothing you can do about it" lacks a certain . . . niceness. So the idea was killed off.

        Now the test is used to see if you would be a good salesperson :)

        • Psycho(o) Tests (Score:3, Insightful)

          by SeanDuggan ( 732224 )
          The problem with almost all of these tests is that they generally only catch sociopaths, not psychopaths owing to that most of them can be gamed fairly readily and the nature of psychopathology is such that they're well suited to fooling evaluators. But nevertheless, we always want to feel that there's some foolproof way to detect menaces to our life and health, so we'll always want to believe in such tests. Just witness the recent email forward [snopes.com] that contained a quick psycho test.

        • Online version (Score:4, Informative)

          by TheOrquithVagrant ( 582340 ) on Thursday November 04, 2004 @11:08AM (#10723294)
          There's an online Hartman Value Profile test/calculator at:
          http://www.qis.net/~jschmitz/hvp/test1.html

          • Re:Online version (Score:3, Interesting)

            by Morosoph ( 693565 )
            Extremely interesting. But in section two: I love what I do, and I love nature, but I don't see the two being especially well interrelated. It's a bit like trying to rank libertarians against greens.

            I feel that it's really asking me "do I believe in god?".

            I seem to have scored okay [qis.net], though, but I feel that many with still more developed traits will do worse. For example, a physicist might score worse than a cultist who saw design in the universe.

      • Nonsense. People killed prior to 'civilized society' much like they do today: with knives, poison, their bare hands, guns. Nothing much has changed.

        I will say, however, that there was more convention made in society for the pathologically deranged. I imagine that's what we've got politics for now.
    • So this means they were wearing either army fatigues or a shirt with glasses

      OR they were dressed up like those little brain eating jumpy thingies. In that case, I would indeed blame the game.

    • Legal Shortcuts (Score:5, Insightful)

      by LighthouseJ ( 453757 ) on Thursday November 04, 2004 @09:09AM (#10722288)
      This crap happens because it's easier to blame video games than kids.

      Take the legal drinking age for your locality, that's set in place because it's easy to test and find out if someone is of a certain age, just math. In an ideal world, a persons habits and character would determine if they should drink. If someone will drink responsibly at age 16, why make them wait till 18 or 21? Likewise, there are people that are over the legal drinking age that are still too immature and let alcohol run their lives but by law, they can still buy alcohol. All anyone can do is give them an AA flyer and ask them to take time out of their schedule to remember the next meeting, physically drive to the meeting and suffer through the awkwardness of admitting you're an alcoholic.

      The legal system blames the video games because it's easy to convince parents video games are bad because parents aren't going to blame their own kids for violence they may create, they'd rather blame something or someone that cannot defend themselves. To make headway in hedging violent video games to kids, it's easy to slap a violence rating on a game and make every retailer ask for ID to anyone buying the game than it is to perform intense psychological tests to see if that person understands the difference between reality and fantasy, and if they will or will not take cues from videogames.

      When I'm a parent, I know my kid is going to be exposed to things I wouldn't, but I'm going to make sure they can put the things into the right perspective and let them make good decisions for themselves.
  • they think that violence can be blamed on videogames

    as if before videogames, there were no violence

    the concept also undermines personal accountability: "the devil made me do it"

    if you pick up a gun and shoot someone in real life, you are 100% to blame, it doesn't matter if you have been playing fps games for 10 months straight, it just plain doesn't matter

    if you believe in the concept of personal accountability, you can not blame the media for anything

    • Re:people are historically myopic (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 04, 2004 @04:28AM (#10721262)
      Furthermore, maybe people are confusing cause and effect. Person A has violent tendencies to begin with, and so likes playing FPS games....

      • Re:people are historically myopic (Score:5, Informative)

        by fwitness ( 195565 ) on Thursday November 04, 2004 @09:16AM (#10722329)
        Yes, it's the problem of correlation [wikipedia.org] verses causation [wikipedia.org]. If you found in a survey that 90% of all serial killers chew gum, you may have found a correlation. However, this does not necessarily mean you can use causation to say that gum-chewers are more likely to become serial killers.

        For the statistically inclined, the relationship is exellently explained by the wikipedia entry [wikipedia.org]. Basically the theory goes that there may be some hidden or lurking variable that was not tested.

        So in this case it could be that some violent criminals play CS, and many who play CS are violent. There may be some other factor involved though. I could even conjecture that perhaps crazy people do violent things a lot [detnews.com], and sometimes this includes video games.

        Hmm. Nah, maybe it's the gum thing.

    • Re:people are historically myopic (Score:5, Informative)

      by nathanh ( 1214 ) on Thursday November 04, 2004 @04:38AM (#10721312) Homepage
      if you believe in the concept of personal accountability, you can not blame the media for anything

      Too black and white. I do believe in the concept of personal accountability, but I also believe that the media is partially responsible for shaping our behaviour. They contribute to our personal knowledge (through both information and misinformation) and that affects how we react to events and other people.

      • does the violent movie turn a normal guy into a killer?

        or does the violent movie placate the violent tendencies in us all?

        does the pornography turn the normal guy into a rapist?

        or does pornography take antisocial urges and empty them in a magazine instead of a real woman?

        so i take your "media influences" and throw it right back at you: if media does influence, then it takes our violent and antisocial sexual urges and provides a harmless outlet for them

        even if, even if you somehow show me some normal gu

        • Re:completely wrong (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Mycroft_VIII ( 572950 ) on Thursday November 04, 2004 @04:55AM (#10721396) Journal
          I'm digging up some old reading here so please be nice with the corrections, clarifications. But I believe you just outlined the 'contagion vs catharsis' philosophical debate from back when the ancient greek/roman philosphers had the same argument. The simple question is do fantasies/stories of unacceptable behaviours incourage them, or give safe outlet to them. I think the fact we've been arguing this since antiquity shows it's neighther clear cut nor easy to answer. Personally I think it can do eigther/both depending on the person and circumstance. Mycroft
        • You missed what he said.

          He said that you were being too black and white about it, not that you were wrong.

          Of course the media affects what we do and who we are TO SOME EXTENT, to say otherwise would be pretty naive, but the question is, what is the effect and how large is it?

          It's something more than 0, but almost certainly a lot less than the amount required to turn a well adjusted person into a killer.
          And likewise, the effect will vary from person to person, some people might be affected in a positive m

        • Re:completely wrong (Score:5, Insightful)

          by nathanh ( 1214 ) on Thursday November 04, 2004 @05:25AM (#10721497) Homepage
          does the violent movie turn a normal guy into a killer?

          Once again you're being black and white. I don't believe a single violent movie will turn any normal guy into a killer, but I do believe that violent movies can be one of many factors that leads to violent actions.

          so i take your "media influences" and throw it right back at you: if media does influence, then it takes our violent and antisocial sexual urges and provides a harmless outlet for them

          I believe that both are true. Media can provide an outlet for some people. It can also encourage antisocial behaviour in others. I think for most people that both are true at the same time. Cogitate on that one!

          got it?

          I think I "got it" several decades before you even started thinking about it. This isn't a new argument. It predates my birth by at least a few 1000 years.

          if you honestly believe [media] plays ANY hands in making people violent or sexually depraved,

          Yes.

          then you are trying to tell me that before media: before videogames, movies, records, books... that we were somehow peaceful and loving

          That does not follow from what I believe. You are not thinking clearly.

      • Re:people are historically myopic (Score:5, Insightful)

        by DarkZero ( 516460 ) on Thursday November 04, 2004 @05:16AM (#10721467)
        Too black and white. I do believe in the concept of personal accountability, but I also believe that the media is partially responsible for shaping our behaviour. They contribute to our personal knowledge (through both information and misinformation) and that affects how we react to events and other people.

        If that were true, wouldn't there be many, many more crimes in developed nations than there currently are? Millions of people have seen the thousands of violent movies that have been available in the United States over the last fifty years, and violent video games regularly sell millions of copies there, and that's just in one country alone. If Counter-Strike made people crazy, wouldn't, at the very least, HUNDREDS (if not thousands or millions) of people be dressing up in military fatigues and "killing the hostages" in their neighborhoods all across the world, rather than just a couple of nutjobs in Australia?

        There are a lot of crazy whackjobs out there who will kill people, regardless of whether you give them a Grand Theft Auto game, a copy of Mein Kampf, or just Curious George Goes To The Hospital. This is as true now as it was before the discovery of electricity and its subsequent gifts of TV, movies, and video games.

    • But before video games... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by lxt ( 724570 ) on Thursday November 04, 2004 @05:39AM (#10721555) Journal
      "as if before videogames, there were no violence"

      Certainly in the UK, before videogames it was "Video Nasties" that was corrupting the youth into violent deeds. Today, nobody seems to care that kids watch "Zombie Blood Massacre III". I'd imagine in a decade there will be some other piece of technology being blamed by some for the downfall of society.

  • Next up (Score:5, Funny)

    by eclectro ( 227083 ) on Thursday November 04, 2004 @04:13AM (#10721178)

    Some guys dressed as the Mario Brothers come to fix the pipes.

    Let the blaming begin.

  • I'm sorry but... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Omniscientist ( 806841 ) <matt@nOspAm.badecho.com> on Thursday November 04, 2004 @04:13AM (#10721179) Homepage
    How can you assume that they were dressed up as counterstrike terrorists/counter-terrorists? Dressing up as Goblez from Final Fantasy IV is one thing, but a terrorist/counter-terrorist is a common real-life/movies/video games thing, and it can't be narrowed down to just Counterstrike.

  • Here's a question for you... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Undefined Parameter ( 726857 ) <fuel4freedomNO@SPAMyahoo.com> on Thursday November 04, 2004 @04:14AM (#10721184)
    If the accused had dressed up as characters from the Clue(TM) boardgame, would boardgames be blamed, and why or why not?

    ~UP
    • It's always been blaming somebody or something for the problems in the society.

      During the middle ages, certain literature was deemed inappropriate and were censored/banned for being the cause of several problems of that time.

      Later on, it was the radio and how it was spreading bad cultural values. Television followed, and people find the need to censor Internet now.

      Games are just another target, I remember that in some Asian country, a board game was banned because there was an element where you would end

    • Re:Here's a question for you... (Score:5, Funny)

      by prockcore ( 543967 ) on Thursday November 04, 2004 @05:06AM (#10721428)
      If the accused had dressed up as characters from the Clue(TM) boardgame, would boardgames be blamed, and why or why not?

      An unidentified man in his mid to late 50's was charged Tuesday with the bludgeoning death of another man. The man possessed no identification, and gave his name as only "Professor Plum."

      After several hours of investigation, the police determined that Plum brutally attacked Mr. Body with a candlestick. They haven't determined whether the attack took place in the Billiard room, or the Dining room.

      Mrs. Scarlet was present during the attack, but as she was armed with a revolver, police have ruled her out as a suspect.

      In other news, a thimble has just purchased an upscale stretch of real estate along Boardwalk Ave.

  • Definitive proof! (Score:5, Funny)

    by jacksonj04 ( 800021 ) <nick@nickjackson.me> on Thursday November 04, 2004 @04:15AM (#10721190) Homepage
    Video games really are responsible for making the tiny majority of people without sufficient grip on reality to not go out and shoot people, go out and shoot people!

    How the hell did they get weapons though? It's not like you can walk into a shop and press 'b', and i'm sure that l33t h4x0rz1ng the shopkeeper is gonna get you funny looks and nothing more.
  • Except that the killers were dressed as Mario and Luigi.

  • Erm... which character? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tod_miller ( 792541 ) on Thursday November 04, 2004 @04:17AM (#10721201) Journal
    Art imitating life imitating art...

    Counterstrike 'characters' are just people dressed in common attire that you would most likely see someone on a killing spree wearing...

    Now did these guys play counterstrike?

    As for let the blaming begin It amazes me how quick people are to strike down something they have no comprehension of.

    For one thing, you strike down all media blame of computer games prompting violent behaviour (and films etc) and you simply pass it off as 1+1=3 in thier minds because you play violent games and you don't murder people.

    That doesn't mean to say there is or isn't a connection, and there are no conclusive studies that some people who are a little socially eclipsed that are affected by continuous and sporting presentation of killing.

    Now I am not saying either way, but I am not sarcastically throwing down the gauntlet for possible ridicule either.

    These people must have been capable of this murder prior, and the fact that somehow (I do not know how, unless they jumped aorund whilst firing saying "I pwn you b1tch3s!" like most server players - or used an aim bot) the relationship between clothing attire and a computer game (shakey to me) just muddies the fact that someone got shot, and what was the motive for these people.

    One day people might start trying to use computer games as a defence... or worse, it may be the cause, we do not know yet, but the portrayal of real violence and death in italy (see Gladitor flick) is sickening, and we are on the verge of that popularisation of gore and death (see Bad Boys 2, which was a shit aweful film for gratuitous violence, to an almost comedic extent)

    I actually had flinching urges to try car jacking after playing GTA2 for 48 hours solid (better than studying at the time). Maybe I am weak.
    • but the portrayal of real violence and death in italy (see Gladitor flick) is sickening

      The gladiatoral matches that were common entertainment were attrocious, and the glamourisation of all fighting sports, and by my reckoning the over violent nature of Hollywood (I mean, punisher is a marvel comic, yes comics are violent... but I found the violence in that film too graphic for an audience that would comprise of people who think, oh another comic>screen movie, like spiderman I bet..) I am not saying we
    • The vast majority of people that play violent video games don't commite violent crimes. That's the truth. It's proof positive that these people do this things for a number of reasons. Odds are they had a fucked up childhood, and bad parenting made these guys think that reality is just as ficticious as a video game. Maybe they had a mental disorder of somekind due to some screwed up genetics.

      The fact that just about everybody on /. says that violent video games isn't peposterous at all, because less tha
    • As a quick addition. Nowhere in this article does it say that these two men had ever even seen the computer game in question.

  • Dressed like what? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by October_30th ( 531777 ) on Thursday November 04, 2004 @04:18AM (#10721204) Homepage Journal
    dressed as characters from the computer game Counter Strike.

    Ah, so you see guys like this [iggy.co.kr] only in computer games like CS?

    I don't see where the game comes in. If one wants to play the blamegame, why not blame a movie [sonypictures.com] or a book [amazon.co.uk], for instance?

  • ...Outfit that was inspired by the violent computer game, Counter-Strike," he said...

    Oh my good, they were wearing pants, boots and a shirt!

    (Counter-Strike outfits have nothing-particular except that they look pretty similar to what you can find in reality.)

  • Blame? (Score:5, Funny)

    by BortQ ( 468164 ) on Thursday November 04, 2004 @04:19AM (#10721216) Homepage Journal
    I blame Satan. Granted I do blame him for most things. That guy's an asshat.
    • I blame Satan.

      You can't keep on blaming everything on Bill Gates!
      Although I do tend to get more violent after Windows on the server freaks out and doesn't do what I tell it to do than after playing Unreal.

  • uniforms (Score:4, Funny)

    by stimpleton ( 732392 ) on Thursday November 04, 2004 @04:20AM (#10721222)

    ...two men dressed as characters from 'Counter Strike'

    I didn't realise Counter Strike uniforms had those wide bimmed hats with the corks on strings.

  • Who overplayed CS? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SolitaryMan ( 538416 ) on Thursday November 04, 2004 @04:20AM (#10721228) Homepage Journal
    I wonder, who overplayed CS: two guys, dressed like freaks and shooting at people, or those who identified them as CS characters?

  • You might want to read this:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Lepine
  • The next time a roller coaster breaks, they'll want to blame Roller Coaster Tycon. The next time city hall goes bankrupt, they'll blame SimCity. The next time a street race occurs, they'll blame Need for Speed 2.

    Hmmm, hasn't this kind of behavior happened pre-video games? It's convenient for the media to blame a scapegoat (video games, France, crack babies, etc) than to actually have an informed factual discussion of the underlying issues.

    I know the next time an orange hopping creature with a horn nose

  • is from Papua New Guinea.

    News from down under...

  • camper (Score:5, Funny)

    by Maskirovka ( 255712 ) on Thursday November 04, 2004 @04:28AM (#10721261)
    news.com.au are reporting an Australian court has been told that two men dressed as characters from 'Counter Strike' shot and killed a man during a Sydney home invasion

    Rumor has it he was camping.

  • What's with his name? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Shambhu ( 198415 ) on Thursday November 04, 2004 @04:30AM (#10721271)
    Some posters are doubting whether the alleged perps were really dressed specifically as CS characters, and not as generic swat team members or terrorists. I'd give them the benefit of a doubt for the time being, but keep in mind that just because the linked article didn't say what the supporting evidence is doesn't mean there isn't any.

    There is one small clue, however. Look at his name. Is Sophear Em really his birth name?

  • That's Nothing (Score:4, Funny)

    by johnnywheeze ( 792148 ) on Thursday November 04, 2004 @04:30AM (#10721275)
    I heard that there's a bunch of people who after playing too much "America's Army", stormed through this country in the middle east, killing thousands of people for nothing more than oil!

    Forget Video Games. The american military causes violence, let's ban that instead.

  • Looks like a plain case of open murder.

    Too bad about the wife. Her husband was murdered and she became a widow.

    The 'Counterstrike' angle was just used by the killer(s) as a disguise.

    Some people cannot or will not separate reality from virtual reality in video games.

    Yeah, such games can be (great) stress relievers but when you start feeling compulsion to do deadly stuff from the games in 'real life', you should think about stopping playing that particular game and play something more abstract like the (

  • Wait a second (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Lord Kano ( 13027 )
    I thought Australia was supposed to be some kind of gunless utopia.

    Where'd they get the guns to do this?

    LK

    • Re:Wait a second (Score:5, Insightful)

      by forkboy ( 8644 ) on Thursday November 04, 2004 @04:41AM (#10721330) Homepage
      I just had an argument with an Australian over gun control, on another discussion site. [thenakedscientists.com] (plug: it's a decent science discussion forum, based out of the UK, but people all over the world read it. check it out)

      Just goes to prove my point that people who want guns will find them on the black market anyway, so restricting law-abiding citizens from owning them only serves to strengthen the positions of gun-wielding criminals.
      • ...restricting law-abiding citizens from owning...

        So you rather have some junkie break into your house, grab your gun and then use it to kill other people?
        Restricting guns means less guns that can be used to kill. The real criminals will find a way to get one anyhow, but it will prevent the average Joe Blow freaking out and using one.
        Only in a society with levelheaded people that wouldn't be a big problem, and frankly, the US for instance isn't one of them. I don't even want everyone here in The Netherlan
        • As a good owner, you should put your gun in a gun-safe where it belongs and no junkie can get it.

          The problem is that pro- and anti-gun groups are very extreme.. the pro group wants everyone to own a gun and be able to walk around with it, while the anti-group wants no gun to exist on this world.

          Guess what.. they're both wrong and the best way is somewhere in the middle. I'm in Belgium myself and like the Netherlands, I think there aren't many problems with gun ownership. Although here in Belgium there's n

      • Re:Wait a second (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        No you are wrong, that is an very very dangerous justification of lax gun laws. It's NOT about availability, it's ALL about economics.

        If you want a black market handgun in Australia, you are looking at a price tag of several thousands of dollars. The same gun in the US would be, $50 perhaps. That price tag is the key - what down and out crim can afford that? It's unrealistic to think that we'll ever remove all illegal guns from circulation, but free market economics mean we don't have to.

        Yes there are sti

        • Re:Wait a second (Score:5, Interesting)

          by cryptor3 ( 572787 ) on Thursday November 04, 2004 @05:42AM (#10721566) Journal
          If you want a black market handgun in Australia, you are looking at a price tag of several thousands of dollars. The same gun in the US would be, $50 perhaps. That price tag is the key - what down and out crim can afford that? ... Don't wait for a massacre like out Port Arthur tragedy.

          $50 my ass. If you ever buy a gun for $50, you'd better have a good emergency room nearby, because that gun is going to explode in your hand.

          Incidentally, in the aforementioned Port Arthur tragedy [crimelibrary.com], the individual possessed an AR-15, and an FN FAL, guns that easily command a price tag over $1000 dollars each (even in the post-ban United States). So much for a thousands-of-dollars price tag deterring crime.

          • Re:Wait a second (Score:4, Informative)

            by caveat ( 26803 ) on Thursday November 04, 2004 @08:05AM (#10722029)
            Buh, the sporting goods store in town has a used AR-15 for $389.99, comes with a trigger lock, case, and two 30-round mags. Pretty good deal. Course, I decided I'd spend $349.99 on the HK G3 clone; 7.62 is much manlier than a wussy lil 5.56 :D

        • Re:Wait a second (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Canberra Bob ( 763479 ) on Thursday November 04, 2004 @05:49AM (#10721592) Journal
          Lets not let facts get in the way of feeling good about ourselves.

          There is a slight problem - gun related crime has INCREASED in Australia since the "tough new gun laws" were introduced. Registered firearms have very rarely been used in crime in Australia - as far as I recall only ONE registered handgun has ever been used in a murder in Australia. Generally crime is committed using unregistered (illegal) firearms, fancy that.

          • Re:Wait a second (Score:3, Insightful)

            by Mant ( 578427 )

            gun related crime has INCREASED in Australia since the "tough new gun laws" were introduced.

            So? Do you think the gun laws are the only factor in gun crime? Of course not. Crime and gun crime is a complex issue, depending on all sorts of social and economic issues.

            So the issue is, if there were not any strict gun laws, would the rate be rising faster or slower?

          • Re:Wait a second (Score:3, Informative)

            by Profound ( 50789 )
            Lets not let facts get in the way of feeling good about ourselves.
            There is a slight problem - gun related crime has INCREASED in Australia since the "tough new gun laws" were introduced.

            I think you are ignoring some facts [nsw.gov.au] yourself.

      • Re:Wait a second (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Mant ( 578427 )

        Just goes to prove my point that people who want guns will find them on the black market anyway,

        That strikes we as something of an oversimplification. You are saying that no matter how difficult or expensive it is to get a gun illegaly, criminals will end up with as many guns?

        Gun control laws aren't going to stop every crinimal getting a gun, but aim to stop some getting guns.

        so restricting law-abiding citizens from owning them only serves to strengthen the positions of gun-wielding criminals.

        And

    • Re:Wait a second (Score:3, Informative)

      by ttys00 ( 235472 )
      For the most part it is. Shootings don't happen very often outside of the realm of organized crime. The average citizen goes their whole life without seeing a gun.

      It is very, very hard to keep things out of Australia - just like keeping drugs out of America, there is just too much unmonitored coastline to watch. A friend of my former Sydney employer is retired and sails around the world for fun - in January this year he sailed from Fiji directly into Circular Quay (past the Opera House) without being stopp
  • Wow, perfect article. Everybody can righteously rant about how there is absolutely no evidence that violent games affect people or kids. Mod points for everyone!
  • This will always bother me. Society looks for scapegoats responsible for the violence such as TV, Movies, and how video games. Perhaps it's time we look the perpetrators in the eye, in this case, a couple of people one of who is said to be an adult dressed up as elite commands from Counter Strike, and say, "Dude, you're fucked up". Someone who attempts to fly off a building because they got too caught up in a
    Dungeon and Dragons [slashdot.org] style adventure is fucked up. Someone who drives around in a swamp and tr

  • zaa (Score:2, Insightful)

    by MrCawfee ( 13910 )
    Well because

    tv makes people kill people.
    video games make people kill people.
    rap music makes people kill people.

    the only thing that is safe for our children is books... on something completely unreleated: has anyone read that book by Tom Clancy were that one guy crashed that plane into the whitehouse? that so cool and impossible to emulate.

  • premeditated. (Score:2, Informative)

    by hkht ( 828161 )
    it was good luck that they dressed as counter-strikers, it will be much easier to prove they were "extremely" premeditated in their crime. counter-strike should get credit for help nailing these kooks not blamed for corrupting an already crazed couple of human beings.
  • They must have been dressed as 'terorists' :P

  • In other news ... (Score:3, Funny)

    by maxwell demon ( 590494 ) on Thursday November 04, 2004 @04:42AM (#10721334) Journal
    A man who was dressed like Kerry killed someone. Now the government examines if the Democrats should be forbidden.

  • culture of violence (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I think what many people fail to see here, is that what violent games create and feed is a culture of violence. You say its sport? Entertainment? Perhaps... But ultimatly, how does a game where you imitate the actions of a commando going for the "kill" help our society be a healthy, happier place? Do games like CS/DoomIII/Unreal etc, contribute?

    Yes, this is an anon post. So flame/mod down at will because I am sure a great deal of /. readers are gamers. But surely there must be something true in the above t

    • Healthy, happier place? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Lifewish ( 724999 ) on Thursday November 04, 2004 @05:51AM (#10721600) Homepage Journal

      Well, if you assume that a world in which I don't beat my sister round the head with heavy objects is healthier...

      Computer games have saved me on two occasions when I was literally seeing red. It doesn't happen much but, when it does, shooting the proverbial out of a terrorist bot is about the best therapy I've come across. For comparison, the time I didn't manage to get to a computer resulted in a big hole in the plasterboard, which was certainly not healthy for my fist.

      I have a very irritating sister. Thanks to computer games, this state of affairs continues.

  • Damn lawyers (Score:2, Interesting)

    by affa ( 60460 )
    Its more likely a tactical move by the defence in setting things up.... later on when it goes to trial they'll can the game as an excuse..... In years gone by people just used to claim insanity.....

    I mean.... they didn't even tag the ground!!!
  • If they hadn't spray tagged the walls "Pwn3d by Sophear" :-)
  • This is sure to draw a lot of personal responsibility nuts out of the woodwork. Political and ideological dogma compels them to ridicule even the most reasonable doubts or concerns about the glorification of excessive violence in entertainment. Because to them, principle is everything, regardless of where it leads.

    Even if we are disgusted with, or just plain tired of, games that idealize wanton violence and nihilistic solipsism, at the end of the day we should just put those feelings aside and join the cro
    • This is sure to draw a lot of moral responsibility nuts out of the woodwork. Political and ideological dogma compels them to ridicule even the most reasonable doubts or concerns about the restriction of freedoms of expression. Because to them, principle is everything, regardless of whether it actually affects them personally or not.

      Even if we are disgusted with, or just plain tired of, people who leap to blame violent criminal behaviour on computer games containing violence with no evidence to back up thei

  • 2002 ?!?!? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by thygrrr ( 765730 )
    Errrm, why does the article stat that this happened in 2002? A murder trial that takes so long is suspicious, isn't it?

  • News is starting to irritate me... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by stor ( 146442 ) on Thursday November 04, 2004 @05:56AM (#10721630)
    ...I better go play a mindless game of CS. Cya!

    Cheers
    Stor

  • Some Guys Dressed Up Like... (Score:3, Funny)

    by marktaw.com ( 816752 ) on Thursday November 04, 2004 @06:13AM (#10721674) Homepage
    Some guys dressed up like characters from America's Army flew halfway around the world and killed several thousand Iraqi's.

    Oh wait...

  • Shooter was a member of a Lebanese gang (Score:5, Informative)

    by edo-01 ( 241933 ) on Thursday November 04, 2004 @06:20AM (#10721694)
    These guys have been causing problems in Sydney for years. I am referring to the Lebanese gangs here, not the Lebanese community at large who are probably as concerned about this as the rest of the population.

    The Flemington Markets (where the victim worked) have always attracted a criminal element, as silly as it sounds more than a few of the produce stall vendors there have a connection to organised crime (note that in this city "organised" crime is way down the ladder in severity from the American Mob.)

    I live in out in the midst of all this, and have seen first hand the way these guys operate. Make eye contact and they will literally go berserker on you. I watched three carloads of these guys stomp the living shit out of a scrawny 19 or 20 year old guy because he told them to "fuck off" after they threw fireworks at his girlfriend. I've seen brawls outside my apartment that could be called small riots and I've been attacked myself after one of these macho dickheads sexually assaulted my girlfriend in front of me. One new years eve I was in a crowd at Darling Harbor counting down at midnight, right on the stroke of midnight a gang of these guys linked arms, charged the crowd and just started wailing on anyone they could catch. Minutes later they'd fled. It's not politically correct to identify a gang by it's ethnicity but a large degree of their behavior arises out of environmental factors, especially their treatment of women and their gang-culture of machismo-on-steroids violence. Drive by shootings are a new phenomenon in this country and nearly all of them in this city are internecine warfare between rival groups of Lebanese and Arab young men, typically over the drug trade. In 1998 a police station was shot up with a fully automatic weapon. [ci-ce-ct.com]

    Which brings me to my point that if they were dressed in paramilitary gear it was probably more to do with that than any exposure to Counterstrike. This wasn't some random assault by kids "corrupted" by some computer game, it was more than likely a gang reprisal where the assailants were known to the victim.

    The rise of Lebanese gangs in Sydney [tinyurl.com]

    Sydney police besieged in their own station by Lebanese gang [tinyurl.com]

    Serial gang rapes in Sydney [free-definition.com]

    Bilal Skaf, the leader of the rapists converted to radical Islam in jail and has openly avowed his support of Al Qaeda and sent death threats to the judge and witnesses at his trial.

  • We need the next new medium (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Nice2Cats ( 557310 ) on Thursday November 04, 2004 @06:23AM (#10721702)
    The latest medium is alway the evil one: Before computers and the Internet, television was blamed for everything, and before that, radio. You just don't see "it's television's fault" anymore, now it's always something somebody saw in a compter game or read on the Internet. Remember when they caught Saddam's sons and had all the articles pointing out how one of them had picked up torture tips on the Internet? If he had been reading them in books, nobody would have even bothered mentioning it.

    So what we obviously need is the next medium so we have something new to blame all violence on. I suggest iPods: All that music all the time, the glare of the white headphones, and now the thousands and thousands of pornographic images that teenagers carry around with them everywhere just have to have a bad influence. When will Australia finally live up to its moral responsibilty and ban them? And now that Bush has been reelected, shouldn't Ashcroft finally do something to save American's children from Apple's murderous grip?

    I always thought Steve Jobs is smiling just a little to brightly when he holds up those things...

  • Details (Score:3, Funny)

    by presearch ( 214913 ) on Thursday November 04, 2004 @08:30AM (#10722127)
    In a strange twist, it was reported that the man killed was dressed like Gordon Freeman.

  • Dressed as what? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Komarosu ( 538875 ) <nik_doof@ni3.14159kdoof.net minus pi> on Thursday November 04, 2004 @09:08AM (#10722286) Homepage
    two men dressed as characters from 'Counter Strike'

    They're called Special Forces in some countries and Terrorists in others, unless they're talking about the Chickens, then thats just bizzar.

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