Witness tells Senate panel: Video games taught teen killer how to shoot

The Associated Press

03.22.00

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WASHINGTON — A Kentucky woman wants Congress to know that the boy who killed her daughter learned to shoot accurately by playing violent video games.

"I am here today to ask you not to be an obstruction that makes it harder for parents to protect their children," Sabrina Steger of Paducah said during a Senate Commerce Committee hearing yesterday on the impact of video game violence on children.

"As a nurse, I'm in the business of recognizing signs of illness, and I see Americans addicted to violence and in denial of it."

Steger asked lawmakers to ban sales to minors of mature-rated video games and to finance a public awareness campaign aimed at parents.

Her teen-age daughter Kayce and two others died in 1997 and five students were wounded when 14-year-old Michael Carneal opened fire on students who had been praying.

Carneal pleaded guilty but mentally ill and was sentenced to life in prison last Dec. 16.

Witnesses at a congressional hearing testified last year that Carneal rarely fired a rifle and never shot a pistol but had plenty of practice with arcade-quality point-and-shoot games at home.

Steger and the parents of the two other slain children are suing entertainment companies, saying the creators of popular films, violent video games and sex-oriented World Wide Web sites influenced Carneal.

Craig Anderson, a psychology professor at Iowa State University, told the senators that research shows video games can trigger aggressive and violent behavior.

"There is good reason to think the effects of exposure to violent video games will be even greater" than to television and movies, he told the committee.

The hearing room audience watched a video game and heard descriptions of several others from committee Chairman Sam Brownback, R-Kan. In one popular game, "Duke Nukem," nude female prostitutes, some bound to posts, beg to be killed, Brownback said.

Brownback said video companies deliberately market mature-rated games to children and expressed frustration that nine industry executives rejected invitations for their companies to be represented at the hearing.

David Walsh, president of the National Institute on Media and the Family, said his group has forwarded to the Federal Communications Commission documents that he said show video companies target children.

The Federal Trade Commission is investigating Hollywood's marketing practices for violent shows and games.