As some of you may have heard, a pair of horrific church shootings that killed four and wounded several others took place last weekend in the city of Denver, Colorado.
The teenage shooter, Mathew Murray, was depressed, very disturbed, and had easy access to guns according to the Denver Post. But what he didn’t have was a library of video games.
Matthew Murray was raised in a very religious home where "growing up, TV, Internet/computers, video games, music, Christian contemporary music, movies and books were all extremely restricted" according to a collection of online postings by Murray.
Despite being in a very religious family, police have found out that he was verbally and mentally abused for most of his life and had a health problem that kicked him out of religious school.
Abusers of such tradegies no doubt grab hold of the situation and try to pin the needle at "pop culture" or "christianity", but the fact remains that what happened when he was raised inside his home had a huge toll on Murray.
"Yeah Diamond girl, when I was a teenager my mother would do a pat down to check for music, DVDs and video games whenever I came out of an electronics store like Best Buy or Circuit City. I’d still obtain things anyways, it was like getting drugs from a drug dealer, EVERYTHING had to be done in secret. lol
"I remember getting thrown around the room and hit while getting interrogated about whether or not I had video games and DVDs… I remember having to listen to everything in secret, at very low volume levels or with headphones, whether it was video games, TV, DVDs, or music/radio" says one of Murray’s online posts.
He is definitely responsible for the actions he did, there is no doubt about that. But you cannot blame video games or Hollywood in this situation. Perhaps it was the restrictiveness of everything in his life that had to do with the "outside influences" that his parents so deeply were against that drove a part of him maniacal.
I think this is a case of bad child upbringing by his parents and shutting him out from any type of "entertainment medium" that every other kid is exposed to. Do you think the restraints the parents put on Murray added to the additional problems of abuse he was already facing as a teenager?
[via gamepolitics]
