Maybe the factors of parents, violent video games, and/or girl problems helped influence this person's decision to do that. After all, they can provide quite a lot of stress. But now that I think about it, he's not the only person who's ever had to do with less than supportive parents, and who partakes in violent video games, or has had a girl break his heart. Hell, I've been through all three of those... in fact, I've been playing GTA3 a lot lately. And I have to say that I find it quite a stress reliever for my polygon character to kill a bunch of other polygon people in all manner of gruesome ways. I've had more than my fair share of unpleasant encounters with my parents. I became emotionally distraught in my teen years over girls who hurt me. I've had plenty of fights with my girlfriend. Yet I haven't, nor do I ever see myself, taking the life of any human being because of my own personal problems or my choice of hobbies. If my playing violent video games caused me to kill people in real life, maybe it would stem from my wiring being already screwed up, and I was a messed-up sociopath, a person devoid of any sympathetic connection with other human beings who had no respect for life, and not because I saw it on a video game. The point is, I'm sure lots of people including many people at this boards, can also use the descriptions I said at the beginning of my post to describe themselves as well, yet none of us will likely commit the heinous acts people like Jack Thompson think we will. And that's because we possess the ability to make choices, to weigh the difference between right and wrong, and to come to a decision based on that, not because our choices are determined for us by works of fiction or personal circumstances. As everyone else has said, a person makes a choice to do something. A gun doesn't force someone to kill people. Grand Theft Auto doesn't force someone to kill people. A girlfriend doesn't force someone to kill people. Hell, what most people consider the most innocuous thing could be someone's supposed impetus for killing someone else. Do we ban every object, every thought out of fear that maybe someone will use it as an excuse to commit acts of violence? Or do we accept that maybe the person who fires the gun is responsible, and not pass the buck because it's easier?