A must-read article for everybody who has read the (typical) hysteria from the media that the Oslo gunman Anders Breivik played violent video games.

This article goes into a lot of detail, including the complete set of quotations relating to video games in the entire 700,000+ word manifesto published by Breivik. The facts are, he cursorily mentions a handful of video games (primarily Modern Warfare 2 and World of Warcraft) as some of how he spends his day, in what is essentially a journal of his life over the past few years. The closest thing to “influence” is that he mentions that MW2 could be used as a poor-man’s target practice simulator (but also suggests training with real assault rifles overseas). There is no suggestion that he was influenced by video games. His influence isn’t exactly a mystery: the text (which I obviously haven’t read much of) is quite consistently clear on the political and religious motivation.

What astounds me is that Christian groups are using this to take pot-shots in their ongoing campaign against violent video games. According to The Age, the Australian Christian Lobby director Jim Wallace said this:

[If even a few deranged minds could be] taken over the edge by an obsession with violent games [then the game should be banned].

The studied indifference of this killer to the suffering he was inflicting, his obvious dehumanising of his victims and the evil methodical nature of the killings have all the marks of games scenarios.

How can we allow the profits of the games industry and selfishness of games libertarians to place our increasingly dysfunctional society at further risk? Even if this prohibition were to save only one tragedy like this each twenty years it would be worth it.

I am stunned. From my main link, “at one point there is a 10-page section [of Breivik’s manifesto] citing Christian and bible references to justify the atrocities.” This guy is a bible nut. To be sure, there are other political motivations here, but he actually believes he is a Christian knight, on a crusade against Islam. This isn’t a Columbine-esque killer who may have been excited about guns because he played Doom (or MW2). This is a deeply religious man who felt so strongly about his faith that he spent ten years plotting a terrorist attack using real guns, and who played video games in his spare time.

Now I’m not saying that all Christians think like this — far from it, but to paraphrase Jim Wallace, if even a few deranged minds could be taken over the edge by an obsession with religious scripture, then the scripture should be banned. How can we allow the profits of the Church and selfishness of Christian lobby groups to place our increasingly dysfunctional society at further risk? Even if this prohibition were to save only one tragedy like this each twenty years it would be worth it.

Note: I am not actually suggesting a ban on the Bible or religious activities — as a free speech advocate, I would be strongly against that. My point is, these people need to use their brains before they denounce one form of media as harmful, when their sacred text is clearly a much stronger influence. Or, as the ABC article put it, “Throwing stones in glass houses? Please don’t.”