Thompson Blames Gates For Virginia Tech

Thompson can't quit his crazyfest:

Mr. Gates, your company is potentially legally liable the harm done at Virginia Tech. Your game, a killing simulator, according to the news that used to be in the Post, trained him to enjoy killing and how to kill. You knew five years ago that your on-line game, Counterstrike, so clearly figured in the massacre by a student in Erfurt that the event and the game impacted the race for Chancellor in Germany at the time!

 Yet, here you are, five years after "Erfurt," still marketing Counterstrike. having done nothing to disable the server(s) for this mass murder simulator, and it looks like "Virginia Tech" is a consequence. There’s more going on in the world than Vista. Just ask the bereaved Virginia Tech families.

 Mr. Gates, pull the plug on Counterstrike today, or do we need more dead to convince you? "Virginia Tech" was the 9-11 of school shootings, and it appears Microsoft is in the middle of it, in more ways than one.

-- Thompson Targets Microsoft In Latest Crusade [GameAlmighty] via [Guardian Gamesblog]

The logical flaws in Thompson's, um, argument:

The Erfut shooter didn't need Counterstrike for training
He was avid gun enthusiast. He mom called him a "weapons freak". He belonged to not one, but two shooting clubs [wsws.org]. I used to play Counterstrike quite extensively, along with some guys who were ex-military and police. None of them thought the game was realisitic enough for actual arms training ... but I'm guessing a shooting range might be.

Valve develops Counterstrike, not Microsoft
Microsoft is only responsible for publishing one port of the game. The vast majority of players are PC gamers (probably including Steinhäuser of Erfut) and these days go through Valve's Steam.

Washington Post rescinded their Counterstrike references
Thompson actually acknowledges this fact, but somehow thinks that because he found an archived version that it's still a viable piece of news. That there might be an actual reason why the Washington post pulled the information, i.e. that it was not based in fact or irrelevant to the story at hand, is of course ignored by Thompson like he ignores anything which might detract from his lunatic ramblings. Schizophrenics, I believe, work in a similar manner.

No video games have been reported as found
In Cho's dormitory. No word from officials on even owning so much as a Game Boy.

So in short - Thompson's premise, his hypothesis and his conclusion are all flawed.

Apparently that's good enough for Fox News. Not for the rest of us.