Jogger Shot By ‘Bored’ Kids in Oklahoma – Did Video Games Have Anything to Do With It?

By now you have heard of the Australian college baseball player, Christopher Lane, who was out jogging in an Duncan, Oklahoma neighborhood and was shot and killed by three "bored" teenagers who decided to kill someone "for fun" according to the police.

The 22-year-old Lane, a student from Melbourne who was attending college on a baseball scholarship,was in Duncan, the hometown of his girlfriend. Apparently, Lane had jogged past the three boys ages 15,16 and 17 when the boys got in a car and came up behind him and shot him in the back and sped off.  The 17-year-old in the group has given a detailed confession to police.

According to police reports, the three boys saw Christopher go by, and one of them said "There's our target". "The 17 year told police "We were bored and didn't have anything to do, so we decided to kill somebody."  The police report indicated that one of the teens said they shot Lane for "the fun of it."

The information is still being complied by the police department and while I have no way of knowing if this is true or not, I am willing to bet the farm that these three juveniles have had a lifetime of viewing video game killings of people.  Probably so much so, that at the ages of 15,16 and 17 they are totally desensitized to murder.

For years I have said that these video games are going to be the ruination of our society. As kids, television never showed a dead body and now you can't watch a show or the news on TV without seeing dead bodies strewn all over the place. The same holds true for certain violent video games which now are more realistic than ever.

So we now have a generation of people who have grown up with these videos and death means nothing to them. What do we do?  Well, the first finger to point is towards the parents. Unfortunately, it seems they just don't care what their kids watch.  So now what? Do we sit back and wait for another "jogger" to get gunned down?

As much as I do not like the government getting into my life, we just might need for Congress to step in a regulate the video industry. God knows, I hate even saying that but the parents just aren't cutting it anymore and they haven't for a while. The other alternative is to do nothing and wait for the next innocent person to get gunned down in what is quickly turning into a third world country.

What happened in Oklahoma is another wakeup call. We can either wake up or bury our head in the pillow.  God help us all if we choose the pillow.