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Originally Posted by FireFly

Well, it's a FPS game. If you can't see the coorelation, I can't help you. If he just made a map of the school in, say, and architecture program, I'm sure there would be fewer questions. But the guy made a map so he could simulate going in and shooting people.

Have you ever made a map for a FPS? Do you know what the software is like? It IS an architecture program!

You are reading intent with no reason to. More likely his intent was to learn how to make maps in whatever game it is (it's not an easy process!), and used a familiar location. As has been pointed out here, it is EXTREMELY common for new map makers to use familiar locations.

Plus you don't even know he was shooting people, the game isn't named, so he could have just as likely been shooting deer, or aliens, or some other thing.

If there was more cause, like maybe he'd populated the world enemies that looked like teachers or students then there'd be more of a case. But even then, when someone puts a photo of someone they don't like on a dartboard and throws darts at them, isn't that the same thing? It's a GAME.

Someone can walk into a store and BUY a gun and it's fine. Someone draws a map of a school in a program and it's reason to ruin his high school year, deny him graduation with his friends, scare him, and increase public paranoia. Right.

This is overreaction to the highest degree, and just indicates that so many people are stupid sheep that rather than looking for something to blame for something they don't understand rather than taking the effort to try to understand it.

The VT Tech shootings are a perfect example. How long did it take the media to bring games into the situation? 10 seconds? Completely unfounded, but again stupid sheep need something easy to blame so they don't have to think about it.

Sorry, I'm not ranting at you directly, just at the whole system in general.

Well then, that's makes it all okay. Do I think every kid who has made a map of their school should be suspended and/or arrested? No. Do I look at previous high school massacres and notice this is one thing that most of the shooters did? Yes. Do I worry that people making maps of schools specifically for the purpose of using them in FPS games might be plotting? Yes.

Most of the previous high school shootings involved people making a map of their school in a game to run around in and practice killing? Source please!

And even if it did, it STILL doesn't mean anything because there are millions of kids out there doing it innocently.

You know, in the thread on Virginia Tech, people were complaining that the guy obviously showed signs of trouble and needed help yet the signs were ignored, or we didn't do enough about them. Yet here in this thread, this kid has done something that can be considered a serious sign, and you all think we should lay off him. Which do you want? Do we, or do we not take the signs that someone might be plotting to kill kids in a school seriously?

Signs are things that have been shown through evidence to indicate future behaviour. Studies, research, things based on fact. Not things put forward in the popular media to placate the masses.