Lured over to Time magazine online by a story talking about mental health for Mets fans (I'm not a Mets fan, but I find the offer high-larry-ess) I saw another story entitled "A Surge in Cop Killings".

Another coincidence: While reading a gaming magazine this weekend, I read an interview with David Grossman, who has worked on games such as Day of the Tentacle and Sam & Max. There was a line in there about how he has the same name as an anti-video game crusader known as Lt. Col. Dave Grossman.

I hadn't heard of him (or, if I had, I'd forgotten about him, probably thanks to Jack Thompson overload). Then I read that article.

And whaddya know - he's quoted in there.

And that's where the article gets stupid:

Criminologists point to a wide range of contributing factors to the sudden spike in cop killings. The continuing proliferation of military-grade firearms often leaves police outgunned, while some gang initiations now include the express targeting of police — such as in April of 2004, when California Highway Patrol Officer Thomas Steiner was randomly shot outside a Pomona courthouse by a teen trying to prove himself to a local gang. Other experts and activists cite the desensitizing effect of popular culture, most notably violent video games, as a key reason that more young people have no compunction about opening fire on a man or woman in uniform.

Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, author of On Combat and On Violence, who trains the FBI and other law enforcement agencies, subscribes to that controversial notion. Grossman relates how officers raiding methamphetamine labs and gang hangouts often find violent video games left behind. "Every time they take down a gang house, there's always one thing that will always be there," Grossman says. "It's a video game. The video games are their newspaper, their television, their all-consuming narrative. And their video games are all cop-killer, criminal simulators."

Now, the magazine I was reading also had a good article about how previously movies, comics, and music have been blamed for the same things. But let's look at a couple of things in just those two paragraphs:

1. Gangs are using attacks on police officers as initiation rituals. The kids aren't going out there saying "Hey, I saw this in Grand Theft Auto" any more than they'd say that 'cause they saw it in a movie or whatever. In fact, think of what happens if you attack a cop in GTA - you get all of them on you. Anyone who thinks that they can act like a character in GTA is already deluded enough.

2. We're not just desensitized by video games. Look at the fact that we've been in a violent, often brutal state of war for the past, oh, 6 years. Look at the fact that gangs are using the military as a training ground. Not to mention that sometimes the soldiers smuggle weapons back home from Iraq.

3. Of course you're going to find video games there. You probably also find DVDs and other things. The fact is that the prevalence of video games in society is unprecedented; it would probably be more of a statistical point if they DIDN'T have video games in there. Every one of my coworkers below the age of 35 has a video game console of some sort - from Xboxes to Xbox 360s to PS3s - not to mention PCs capable of playing video games. None of us have killed anyone thanks to them...

Let's look at another data point or two:

In the past six weeks, two officers have been killed, and one recently got off life support after a gunman on a motorcycle shot him in the head...On August 6, a motorcyclist shot Broward Sheriff's Det. Maury Hernandez in the head when pulled over during a routine traffic stop.

OH NOES WE SHOULD BANZ0RZ TEH MOTORCYCLES!

(Note: I own a Harley. It does not make me want to shoot cops. In fact, I think I'm more polite to cops now since I got it.)

4. No video game teaches you how to kill a cop. You do not learn how to handle a weapon from a video game. Practicing on video games might help your reflexes, but you still have to learn how to handle a weapon. How to load, maintain, fire it. A gun is a precision engineered piece of equipment. And while the article focuses on gun violence, has there really been a surge in wrench related violence after Bioshock, or crowbar related violence after Half Life, or even alien plasma weapon related violence after Halo?

It's old news, I know. Reactionary one-issue firebrand attention-mongers like Jack Thompson and Lt. Col. Dave Grossman know that by pointing their fingers at a "hot topic" - nowadays it's video games, just like, as Games for Windows magazine points out, it was rap music, comic books, and movies before - they can get the media coverage they so dearly feel they deserve.

I mean, after all, won't someone PLEASE think of the children?!