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Old 04-16-2007, 03:11 PM   #25
Kevin Leavitt
 
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Location: Olympia, Washington
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Re: A History of Violence

Benjamin wrote:

Quote:
Kevin, I may have been unclear in my post about video games. I know that the US military uses video games for training purposes (flight training is an obvious example). I was just not sure that they used video games for the purpose of breaking down a "socialized" recruit's resistance to use his weapon on the battlefield. If you know that games are used for this purpose, I would really like to hear about it, since this is an area of great interest to me. I want to believe that video games by themselves do not break down this resistance. Video games appear to me to be the latest in a long list of things to blame other than parents when a kid does something terrible.
I have never been told that we target explicitly this area in the military with a direct intent to do this. Obviously when you join the military we really want you to pull the trigger and shoot the "bad guys". So we have a myriad of was to do this.

In my training, certainly I have been conditioned to instinctively shoot at that which needs to be shot at without thinking much about it. Prior to "locking and loading" I know the parameters in which I will pull the trigger. It is a endstate of training and more training, mental conditioning, and preparation.

We shoot "Ivan's"on the 300 meter pop up range. We have video games that have people come at you, both friend and foe.

We spend a great deal of time these days discussing laws of war, ethics, military law, escalation of force, and rules of engagement.

I think Ellis Amdur covered the topic pretty well, and actually I think he is spot on concerning his dilineation of Grossman's philosophy. There is a difference between the response of shooting just anyone, and shooting a "bad guy", "skinny", "Ivan", or whatever name we use to de-personalize and objectify our enemies.

On another note, I am sad to hear of the shooting that happened today at Virginia Tech...I just found out about it in the last hour. My thoughts and prayers go out to everyone.

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