Trigger Happy
358
Mortal Kombat. Grand Theft Auto (1997), a game
in which the player steals cars, runs over lines of Hare
Krishnas and shoots cops, was described by the British
Police Federation as “sick, deluded and beneath
contempt,” and in the summer of 1999 a member of
Parliament wrote to the prime minister asking if
anything could be done to limit sales of the
horrorthemed game Silent Hill, whose story centers on
the disappearance and torture of a young girl.
In the United States, the increasing number of
school massacres is leading many to blame
videogames directly for childhood violence. In spring
1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, two Columbine
High School teenagers in Littleton, Colorado, shot
twelve students and a teacher before committing
suicide. The media quickly reported that they were
avid players of videogames Doom and Duke Nukem.
The previous year, fourteen-year-old Michael Carneal
had killed three students and injured five others at his
school in West Paducah, Kentucky. After the Littleton
incident, the parents of those three murdered children
filed a $130 million lawsuit against twenty-four
videogame and Internet companies. The plaintiffs
claimed that Doom, apparently one of Carneal’s
favorite games, “trained Carneal to point and shoot a
