'Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill' Author Takes Aim at Video Games

By David Marsh, MetroValley News Service

Armed only with a felt pen and a microphone, Lt. Col. Dave Grossman laid siege to the entertainment industry Saturday at a BC crime-prevention conference.

Grossman, now an author and sought-after speaker after retiring from a 24-year career with the U.S. military, gave a passionate performance of his theory of "killology" - that violence in TV, movies and video games is teaching our kids to kill.

"We need to stop an industry that's selling death and horror and destruction to children as entertainment," Grossman, 43, told a BC Crime Prevention Association training conference held last weekend in Surrey.

Mixing humor into his intense arguments and dressed casually in denim, the wiry Grossman won a standing ovation from the several hundred police officers and others in attendance with a ruthless attack on violence in the media.

He said young children are being desensitized and brutalized by watching gory TV shows and movies in much the same way new recruits are desensitized by the army to prepare them for battle. He said violent video games, especially the "first-person shooter" genre, are training youngsters in the skill of killing.

He said studies throughout the world have shown increases in violent crime as the first generation of children with easy access to media violence grew up. He said young shooters in school massacres in Colorado and Kentucky, among others, were avid video game players.

The net effect, Grossman argues, is that media violence is an addictive and destructive product comparable to tobacco and drugs.

And he has prepared a three-pronged counter attack: educating the consumers and parents, regulating the products and suing the corporations responsible.

"We're going to sue them down to their socks," he said, likening the proposed case which is gaining political support in the US, to big-dollar cases against major tobacco manufacturers. "It's just another industry we have to reel in."

Grossman's visit came as momentum builds in BC toward controlling media violence, especially video games. The provincial government is developing its own classification system for violent video games and the provincially owned BC Ferries recently banned arcade games featuring hand-held guns from its vessels.