Four dead at the hands of a kid who likes horrorcore music.

The debate since Columbine has been whether music, video games, movies and even the news reports encourage actions, beliefs or tendencies within a population. I think they do. I don’t think the majority of people who consume such forms of entertainment end up killing people, but those on the edge of the bell curve might. The rebuttal is that these people would act violently anyway. I don’t buy that. Actions are not foregone conclusions and it’s foolhardy to set policy in expectation of such a scenario, instead of setting policy which will do everything possible to avoid that scenario. It’s like saying ‘I’m going to die eventually, so I may as well cross the street when cars are coming’. It’s one thing to put out messages to citizenry that murder is bad, and it’s quite plainly another to tell them on one hand that it’s bad while on the other allow them to play out games as the worst kinds of sadistic criminals and terrorists out there. There’s a difference between playing as a Taliban gunman and as a US soldier. Even with violence such as headshots and blood and guts and realism. If you gun down an innocent as the soldier, you should get booted from the game and lose all points. Teach with media, even as you entertain. 

Judaism teaches that to save one life is to save the entire universe. Why wouldn’t we take every reasonable step to encourage good actions in the real world?