While some are offering "hats off" to LTC Grossman, I can only wonder what people will believe next in order to cover up the REAL problem behind today's ever increasing violence in our children

Although the majority of my readers (all 8 or 10 of you) consider gun control to be the “eight steady hold factors,” and at one time or another have based a fun day on something involving large caliber handguns, cold beer, and hot women, most probably feel the same way when it comes to children and violence. So I thought this might be a good topic for the first really serious sandwich article.

On Wednesday, March 22, ABC aired a 20/20 segment about video games and its direct correlation to teenage violence. Yes, send up another rallying flag for the anti-gun, anti-fun, burn a book a day crowd whose narrow-minded perspective would have us believe that all people are incapable of free thought and that we only do what the books, TV, movies, and games tell us to do. I replied online to a few of these allegations on ABC’s message board web site and then decided to take it to the Sandwich.

20/20’s “expert” in all this (although even the reporter obviously doubted this guy) was a retired army lieutenant colonel named Grossman. Although 20/20 presented him as an Army psychologist, Grossman later stated in an ABC live chat session online that he was not but had taught psychology at the US Military Academy at West Point. He does claim, however, that part of his job is teaching people how to kill. He claims that video games such as Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem, etc, are sophisticated “murder simulators” and are so realistic that the military uses them to “desensitize” recruits to killing to make them more willing to pull the trigger on the battlefield. I never once had to play Doom to "desensitize" myself to prepare to kill on the field of battle. NO amount of video game playing could do that.

While some are offering "hats off" to LTC Grossman, I can only wonder what people will believe next in order to cover up the REAL problem behind today's ever-increasing violence in our children.

I watched in utter horror as scenes unfolded on TV of the tragedies in Columbine, Paducah, and all the other terrible incidents involving children with guns. These events touched me deeply, as they should any rational, normal, civilized human being. Is that because I advocate stronger gun control measures and banning of video games? Or is it because I had parents that raised me with the values one should have to be a concerned and productive member of society?

I don't know who LTC Grossman is but in over twenty years of service to my country, I never once saw a psychologist teaching people how to kill. I certainly do not mean to imply that psychology does not play any part in training military and law enforcement. On the contrary, I am acutely aware of the role it plays. I was commenting on the scene where Grossman was standing in front of a group of cadets or recruits or actors or whatever with an M-16 with a fixed bayonet purportedly teaching them how to kill.

I love playing Doom, Quake, and a few other games. The key word here is "GAMES." I still have no desire to go into work and gun down my co-workers. Can I speak with the same amount of authority as LTC Grossman? I don't know. My degree is in sociology not psychology. I spent my time in the military as an infantryman, paratrooper, and as a weapons specialist/operations and intelligence specialist in the army’s Special Forces (Green Berets). We actually did this kind of stuff for real and spent a great deal of time away from our families, loved ones and friends teaching people all over the world how to kill. As for the human-shaped silhouette targets that I and many others for generations have practiced marksmanship on, well, I'll concede that. But we were also using REAL guns with REAL bullets and the specific intent of the training was to kill a human being, not entertainment. I don’t recall ever using Doom as a training vehicle, though.

Yes, bayonet training involved human-shaped dummies...as do tackling drills for the local high school football team. Yes, our attack aircraft and helicopter pilots spend many hours in flight simulators. So do commercial airline pilots. Remember, though, they are sharpening hand and eye coordination required to maneuver multi-million dollar aircraft around safely. There is quite a difference in those simulators compared to Microsoft's PC version. There is also quite a difference in Quake's pushbutton simulated weapons causing the cartoon aliens on the screen to explode compared to the calculation, determination, and training required to apply four pounds of pressure on the trigger of an M-24 sniper system and actually take another human being's life at a distance of several hundred yards or to pump two quick rounds into a blur of a figure just feet from you in a dark, smoke-filled and confined space after taking a couple of nanoseconds to determine that the blur is not a hostage or your partner.

Wake up, America! We have met the enemy and he is us! Time to dispose of all the Dr. Spock and the "political correctness" garbage that has so eroded the core values in our society. Bring back the teacher's right to discipline in the classroom, the right to believe in God (read the money, it says, "In God We Trust"), and the right for a parent to raise a well-behaved child even if, heaven forbid, it means whacking the child across the bottom on occasion. The State does NOT have the responsibility to raise your children, YOU do.

Sorry, we really can't attribute any of this to simulators or video games. Violence and violent young people have always, throughout history, been a part of our society. Or ANY society for that matter. The only thing that makes it worse today is the ability to transmit live images across the planet as it is happening. We also get the benefit of the liberal press, spin doctors, book writers, and politicians’ slanted views live in our living rooms telling us how badly these nasty old guns, games, and rock music have eroded our society and are the direct cause of the tragedy you are witnessing right now and all the rest of society’s problems as well. Personally, I think HERE is where psychology is playing its biggest role. Perhaps this is why the military refers to the art of propaganda as “Psychological Operations?”

If I could impart just one thing to today's kids it would be this: When I was a kid and had a beef with another kid we would fight. I would beat the crap out of him or he would beat the crap out of me. Yes we were mad at each other when we did it. Some of those guys are still my best friends today. If you get in a beef with someone and cap him, he's dead. Game Over. Dead is forever. There is no reset button. Remember, the person you’re pissed off at today could end up being your best man tomorrow.

Unless he’s dead.

By the way, tonight’s beverage is Oberdorfer Weissbier and Bela Fleck and the Flecktones’ “Greatest Hits of the 20th Century” is providing entertainment.

That’s this edition of the Sandwich. Chew on it a while.

Mike