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A hot potato: A game that recreates a school shooting has been released by the parents of a boy who lost his life in one of these incidents. The Final Exam tasks players with surviving an attack as they collect five gun-control bills.

The Final Exam is not designed for entertainment or to scare people, but is an educational game, said Patricia Oliver, whose 17-year-old son Joaquin Oliver was killed during the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

Following the murder of their son in what was the deadliest high school shooting in US history, Manuel and Patricia Oliver founded Change the Ref (CTR), an organization that raises awareness of mass shootings and works to reduce the influence of the NRA and gun manufacturers.

In September, Patricia and Manuel Oliver launched The Final Exam (download it free here). Players are caught in the middle of a mass shooting at a fictional high school, where they have to hide from the shooter as they make their way through different areas of the school. It also features quicktime events where players have to control their breathing while they hide behind bleachers as the shooter walks past.

There is no blood or violence in the game. Instead, it uses audio of gunfire, screams, crying, alarms, and the protagonist's heartbeat to represent the real-life horrors of these incidents.

Winning the game not only requires escaping the building within 10 minutes – the average length of a school shooting – but players must also collect five hidden legislative bill proposals: an assault weapons ban, secure storage of firearms (Ethan's Law), a ban on high-capacity magazines, universal background checks, and a higher minimum age to purchase firearms.

"These halls represent the real-life horrors of hundreds of schools that have suffered mass shootings--places that were promised to be safe for children but were failed by our government," reads a portion of the game's official website. "In this game and in real life, gun-control bills are the key to survival. By surviving the game and collecting all the bills, you can demand change and help save thousands of lives in the real world."

In addition to pushing for gun reform, the game also aims to challenge the still-popular view that violent media, especially video games, is a big factor behind why people carry out mass shootings. Numerous studies have shown this isn't true, yet there are still calls for a ban on violent games.

As reported by the Palm Beach Post, Canadian criminologist Thomas Gabor states that residents in Japan, South Korea and the United Kingdom spend more per capita on violent video games than Americans do, but have a fraction of America's gun violence deaths.

"The clock starts now," the game's site adds. "Let's pressure politicians to do the right thing: Stop blaming games and start taking meaningful action against gun violence."

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School shooting game created by parents of victim looks to promote gun reform

 
Imagine being able to collect guns to defend yourself and save your life, rather than even more laws to make murder illegal after you are dead.

Gun free schools and similar laws have only disarmed the good people. Murdering criminals don’t care about breaking one more law on top of all their other evil.
 
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ScottSoapbox said:
Imagine being able to collect guns to defend yourself and save your life, rather than even more laws to make murder illegal after you are dead.

Gun free schools and similar laws have only disarmed the good people. Murdering criminals don’t care about breaking one more law on top of all their other evil.
Click to expand...
So the solution is more guns and vigilante style shooting the shooter(s) before they rake up the kill count as opposed to try and preventing it?

And who are these good people you speak of that bring firearms into schools?

Definitely a very uniquely American way of thinking to combat a very uniquely American problem.

I would guess that the rest of the world doesn't have this problem due to stricter gunlaws*. At least the British just stab eachother, greatly limits the amount of damage that can be done.
Looking at what works elsewhere seems like the smart thing to do.

*There is countries with high rates of gun ownership and without school shootings. This being due to most of the ownership being for hunting rather than self-defence and stricter regulations.
Countries where students don't hide under their table when a car exhaust backfires and shooting drills aren't part of the curriculum. It's not even something anyone thinks about.
 
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Axeia said:
So the solution is more guns and vigilante style shooting the shooter(s) before they rake up the kill count as opposed to try and preventing it?

And who are these good people you speak of that bring firearms into schools?

Definitely a very uniquely American way of thinking to combat a very uniquely American problem.

I would guess that the rest of the world doesn't have this problem due to stricter gunlaws*. At least the British just stab eachother, greatly limits the amount of damage that can be done.
Looking at what works elsewhere seems like the smart thing to do.

*There is countries with high rates of gun ownership and without school shootings. This being due to most of the ownership being for hunting rather than self-defence and stricter regulations.
Countries where students don't hide under their table when a car exhaust backfires and shooting drills aren't part of the curriculum. It's not even something anyone thinks about.
Click to expand...
This may be a foreign concept to the rest of the world, but Americans are really not keen on stripping legal rights to fix a problem. We generally drown upon that. Sure, everywhere else is OK with having to carry a license to have a butter knife, but here people are not OK with it, that's how you end up like Canada where your "rights" are nothing more than suggestions that can be freely suspended whenever the government demands.

There are solutions to this issue. Significant improvements to mental health care for one. The authorities actually acting when people post manifestos instead of meekly mewing " he was on our radar" every time one of these things happens is another. Schools actually attempting to help kids instead of hammering them I to pre existing molds, doctors recommending actual help instead of throwing medication and moving on, the liat goes on.

Legal gun owners are not the issue. Strip the gun deaths of illegal firearms and gang violence, the US gun death rate looks like Nordic countries or Israel . So stripping legal rights for feelings isn't the answer.
 
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Theinsanegamer said:
This may be a foreign concept to the rest of the world, but Americans are really not keen on stripping legal rights to fix a problem. We generally drown upon that. Sure, everywhere else is OK with having to carry a license to have a butter knife, but here people are not OK with it, that's how you end up like Canada where your "rights" are nothing more than suggestions that can be freely suspended whenever the government demands.

There are solutions to this issue. Significant improvements to mental health care for one. The authorities actually acting when people post manifestos instead of meekly mewing " he was on our radar" every time one of these things happens is another. Schools actually attempting to help kids instead of hammering them I to pre existing molds, doctors recommending actual help instead of throwing medication and moving on, the liat goes on.

Legal gun owners are not the issue. Strip the gun deaths of illegal firearms and gang violence, the US gun death rate looks like Nordic countries or Israel . So stripping legal rights for feelings isn't the answer.
Click to expand...
One might question WHY you have the legal right to bear arms in the first place... I highly doubt the King of England is coming to invade... not to mention that if a foreign country ever DID invade the US, your collection of handguns wouldn't stand up to a tank very well...
 
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ScottSoapbox said:
Imagine being able to collect guns to defend yourself and save your life, rather than even more laws to make murder illegal after you are dead.

Gun free schools and similar laws have only disarmed the good people. Murdering criminals don’t care about breaking one more law on top of all their other evil.
Click to expand...
Bad people are more often than not very cowardly. The fear of being shot on sight would deter a good half of those crazy kids.

 
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toooooot said:
Bad people are more often than not very cowardly. The fear of being shot on sight would deter a good half of those crazy kids.
Click to expand...
Say what you will about school shooters, but "cowardly" is NOT one of their characteristics... They tend to go in knowing they will be killed by the cops - and go in anyways... "dumb" might be a better characteristic to use...
 
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The thing about trying to ban guns is that it's "easy", safe. There is no risk of political pressure from eliminating threats (except from people who understand the concept of "relative harm"), because A) most people value safety more than freedom nowadays and B) guns are, in the eyes of most people, dangerous in an absolute sense--just the fact that they exist, is proof of impending harm. The average person does not look at scissors or even a fork in the same manner. Yet, if people started getting stabbed to death with forks, suddenly we'd be calling for a ban on those things as well. The more things you associate with "absolute danger", the more hazardous the world becomes. People would suddenly become cognizant of the fact that everything in their environment can end them, where before it "couldn't". Obviously, however, we cannot run a society where people are afraid of their own hands, or we'd go mad and everything would collapse into pandemonium.

Putting that aside, why do people keep calling for a ban on guns, after a school shooting? Well, probably because of the recency bias, because children were killed in horrific fashion and "think of the children" is an effective tool of emotional manipulation (because who doesn't want to keep children safe?) and most importantly, because society does not want to do the work of asking difficult questions, such as "what leads to these young people wanting to do this? What are we not providing them? What are they lacking, in their lives?" My guess is, they have no sense of community--there is no sense of hope on the horizon and despair has crept in, slowly, steadily--and no one was around to assure them that "it will get better".

I think this quote [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbine_High_School_massacre#Legacy], from sociologist Ralph Larkin following the events of the 1999 Columbine High School massacre, has some good insights, "[A]s an overtly political act in the name of oppressed students victimized by their peers. [...] The [school] shootings redefined such acts not merely as revenge but as a means of protest of bullying, intimidation, social isolation, and public rituals of humiliation." There are inevitably going to be some kids, who go on gun rampages, because they really do just enjoy carnage and violence, but they are the minority. If they don't commit a school shooting, it would have been a convenience store robbery or an armed home invasion. Those kids, due to their sociopathic or psychopathic tendencies AND/OR their environment, are basically doomed to oblivion, the only pertinent question being "how will they commit violence?", not "if". No, the majority of school shooters, were simply ignored; all of the signs of their impending demise could have been mitigated or prevented, if anyone gave a sh*t, but clearly nobody did, until they could not be ignored any longer. In the eyes of these students, we ALL failed them, and they are probably correct. Nobody wants to acknowledge this, of course, because doing so would be to admit that our current sociopolitical systems are collapsing under the weight of their incompetence and, just like the Aesop of the "Emperor's New Clothes", no one wants to be the final straw that breaks the camels back. Better to simply let students continue to fail than to accept that the system is fundamentally broken and needs a reboot.
 
acrossthestars said:
The thing about trying to ban guns is that it's "easy", safe. There is no risk of political pressure from eliminating threats (except from people who understand the concept of "relative harm"), because A) most people value safety more than freedom nowadays and B) guns are, in the eyes of most people, dangerous in an absolute sense--just the fact that they exist, is proof of impending harm. The average person does not look at scissors or even a fork in the same manner. Yet, if people started getting stabbed to death with forks, suddenly we'd be calling for a ban on those things as well. The more things you associate with "absolute danger", the more hazardous the world becomes. People would suddenly become cognizant of the fact that everything in their environment can end them, where before it "couldn't". Obviously, however, we cannot run a society where people are afraid of their own hands, or we'd go mad and everything would collapse into pandemonium.

Putting that aside, why do people keep calling for a ban on guns, after a school shooting? Well, probably because of the recency bias, because children were killed in horrific fashion and "think of the children" is an effective tool of emotional manipulation (because who doesn't want to keep children safe?) and most importantly, because society does not want to do the work of asking difficult questions, such as "what leads to these young people wanting to do this? What are we not providing them? What are they lacking, in their lives?" My guess is, they have no sense of community--there is no sense of hope on the horizon and despair has crept in, slowly, steadily--and no one was around to assure them that "it will get better".

I think this quote [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbine_High_School_massacre#Legacy], from sociologist Ralph Larkin following the events of the 1999 Columbine High School massacre, has some good insights, "[A]s an overtly political act in the name of oppressed students victimized by their peers. [...] The [school] shootings redefined such acts not merely as revenge but as a means of protest of bullying, intimidation, social isolation, and public rituals of humiliation." There are inevitably going to be some kids, who go on gun rampages, because they really do just enjoy carnage and violence, but they are the minority. If they don't commit a school shooting, it would have been a convenience store robbery or an armed home invasion. Those kids, due to their sociopathic or psychopathic tendencies AND/OR their environment, are basically doomed to oblivion, the only pertinent question being "how will they commit violence?", not "if". No, the majority of school shooters, were simply ignored; all of the signs of their impending demise could have been mitigated or prevented, if anyone gave a sh*t, but clearly nobody did, until they could not be ignored any longer. In the eyes of these students, we ALL failed them, and they are probably correct. Nobody wants to acknowledge this, of course, because doing so would be to admit that our current sociopolitical systems are collapsing under the weight of their incompetence and, just like the Aesop of the "Emperor's New Clothes", no one wants to be the final straw that breaks the camels back. Better to simply let students continue to fail than to accept that the system is fundamentally broken and needs a reboot.
Click to expand...
The answer is certainly to reform society as a whole - but that’s both expensive and would take a generation.
If it was done, however, an end result would still hopefully leave guns banned unless used for hunting.
The flaw with your first point (comparing guns to forks) is that other harmful items have other uses.
A gun has only one purpose - to kill something. Hunting rifles can be argued to be for killing animals… but handguns and assault weapons exist solely for killing humans. In an ideal society, they wouldn’t be necessary.
So… while we wait for that ideal society - why not make step one the elimination of guns?
 
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This is definitely something to be applauded. A practical approach in promoting reformation rather than making blanket statements and trying to promote it as a mental health crisis as if this is the only country with people. Y'all only have 300 million people.
 
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Starscream07 said:
This is definitely something to be applauded. A practical approach in promoting reformation rather than making blanket statements and trying to promote it as a mental health crisis as if this is the only country with people. Y'all only have 300 million people.
Click to expand...


If it's not a mental health crisis, then when did the guns suddenly turn evil?
 
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I do not believe that the creators of the game are aware of existing American gun laws already on the books given the closing statement of the article. There is Supreme Court precedent that all modern weapons in common use are protected as an inalienable individual right, there is quite frankly zero chance of a so called "assault weapons" ban when the highest court in the country set the test to use for all future legislation.
 
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Squid Surprise said:
The answer is certainly to reform society as a whole - but that’s both expensive and would take a generation.
If it was done, however, an end result would still hopefully leave guns banned unless used for hunting.
The flaw with your first point (comparing guns to forks) is that other harmful items have other uses.
A gun has only one purpose - to kill something. Hunting rifles can be argued to be for killing animals… but handguns and assault weapons exist solely for killing humans. In an ideal society, they wouldn’t be necessary.
So… while we wait for that ideal society - why not make step one the elimination of guns?
Click to expand...
The only reason it would take a generation, is because retooling the social contract requires a collective re calibration, and there's enough dogmatically-inflexible people in our communities, that that isn't workable.

Maybe we should ban guns, but before we do that, we must first invoke Chesterton's fence and ask, "what is the collective understanding of firearms and what purpose are they serving?" To bans guns completely presumes that they are not needed or that their only utility is malicious destruction. Is it? Is killing absolutely evil or contextually necessary? I'm not asking if you like it, I'm asking if there are no situations, where the power to end another's life, is not relevant. No one has use for a gun, of any type, for any reason? As much as an increasing population of people do not like them and say their very existence is a problem, I disagree. I'm not a fan of guns either, but I understand their purpose. While firearms are not a force for good, they ARE a necessary evil--a force multiplier, against uneven odds.

Guns are like government regulations: they should not exist, because we should not need them, but they are needed and there is no getting around that.

Don't blame the tool, for the mishandling of the user.
 
Squid Surprise said:
Say what you will about school shooters, but "cowardly" is NOT one of their characteristics... They tend to go in knowing they will be killed by the cops - and go in anyways... "dumb" might be a better characteristic to use...
Click to expand...
Maybe I did not express myself precisely. They DO NOT get killed in the school, they go to do it. The chances of that are extremely low. They would be very afraid they cannot do it before they could be stopped.
Also, many of them dream of the attention this gives them, as many sick people do.
If they know, they most likely stop existing before they can empty their guns, well then the schools would be much safer.
 
acrossthestars said:
The only reason it would take a generation, is because retooling the social contract requires a collective re calibration, and there's enough dogmatically-inflexible people in our communities, that that isn't workable.

Maybe we should ban guns, but before we do that, we must first invoke Chesterton's fence and ask, "what is the collective understanding of firearms and what purpose are they serving?" To bans guns completely presumes that they are not needed or that their only utility is malicious destruction. Is it? Is killing absolutely evil or contextually necessary? I'm not asking if you like it, I'm asking if there are no situations, where the power to end another's life, is not relevant. No one has use for a gun, of any type, for any reason? As much as an increasing population of people do not like them and say their very existence is a problem, I disagree. I'm not a fan of guns either, but I understand their purpose. While firearms are not a force for good, they ARE a necessary evil--a force multiplier, against uneven odds.

Guns are like government regulations: they should not exist, because we should not need them, but they are needed and there is no getting around that.

Don't blame the tool, for the mishandling of the user.
Click to expand...
I like your argument - but I still maintain that the “necessity” of firearms is no longer relevant. The purpose, as you stated yourself, of firearms is to provide force to equate uneven odds… that was necessary when the US was still in its infancy and was threatened by the British Empire - who far outnumbered them.

No external force exists that necessitates American citizens holding firearms in order to maintain a militia for defense. That’s what their army is for!

Any force that could potentially invade in the future - I can only see China as a country that might in any reasonable length of time and that would still be highly unlikely - would not be deterred by citizens with assault rifles! Modern armies contain aircraft and heavy armor that can only be defeated by military strength - which the US has in spades!

Pretty much every study has repeatedly shown that the vast majority of gun deaths are either accidents or murders, or suicides…self defense is VERY rare!

The purpose of a gun is to kill someone - let’s leave that to trained military professionals, not private citizens.
 
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Theinsanegamer said:
This may be a foreign concept to the rest of the world, but Americans are really not keen on stripping legal rights to fix a problem. We generally drown upon that. Sure, everywhere else is OK with having to carry a license to have a butter knife, but here people are not OK with it, that's how you end up like Canada where your "rights" are nothing more than suggestions that can be freely suspended whenever the government demands.

There are solutions to this issue. Significant improvements to mental health care for one. The authorities actually acting when people post manifestos instead of meekly mewing " he was on our radar" every time one of these things happens is another. Schools actually attempting to help kids instead of hammering them I to pre existing molds, doctors recommending actual help instead of throwing medication and moving on, the liat goes on.

Legal gun owners are not the issue. Strip the gun deaths of illegal firearms and gang violence, the US gun death rate looks like Nordic countries or Israel . So stripping legal rights for feelings isn't the answer.
Click to expand...

Oh look mommy, it’s blatant misinformation! No, the US would look nothing like the nordics if not for those two things. First of all, most gun violence in America is suicide, outstripping homicide by around two to one.

Second, your gun murder rate is not 10% higher than say… Denmarks. It’s not 20% higher. It’s not 30%. We have 12.6 people killed with guns a year (here, have a source, something you clearly haven’t heard of https://videnskab.dk/kultur-samfund/25-aars-danske-skuddrab-er-kortlagt-ned-til-mindste-detalje/). That’s 0.21 people per 100k per year. The US charts around 40k gun homicides per year, for 11.8 gun murders per 100.000 people per year. Also known as 50 times as many. We have 2 percent. 2 percent as many gun homicides as you.

TL;DR, yes, guns are part of the problem. Guns, in the hands of regular old Joe, kill people. Most likely Joe himself. Second most likely his wife. Some random third party? Quite a bit less frequently.
 
acrossthestars said:
The only reason it would take a generation, is because retooling the social contract requires a collective re calibration, and there's enough dogmatically-inflexible people in our communities, that that isn't workable.

Maybe we should ban guns, but before we do that, we must first invoke Chesterton's fence and ask, "what is the collective understanding of firearms and what purpose are they serving?" To bans guns completely presumes that they are not needed or that their only utility is malicious destruction. Is it? Is killing absolutely evil or contextually necessary? I'm not asking if you like it, I'm asking if there are no situations, where the power to end another's life, is not relevant. No one has use for a gun, of any type, for any reason? As much as an increasing population of people do not like them and say their very existence is a problem, I disagree. I'm not a fan of guns either, but I understand their purpose. While firearms are not a force for good, they ARE a necessary evil--a force multiplier, against uneven odds.

Guns are like government regulations: they should not exist, because we should not need them, but they are needed and there is no getting around that.

Don't blame the tool, for the mishandling of the user.
Click to expand...
The test I give to the person who wants to ban guns is this. How and when will you take the guns from criminals. I know they don't know because they prefer to speak about specific types of gun usage, such as school shootings. They press on the feelings, "don't you want the kids to be safe?" I do,but I also do not want to live where guns are banned for lawful people and where every criminal has one. The latter is a taboo for a woke, gun hating, person as well. If I asked them to draw an imagine of a typical criminal who would use an illegal gun in their mind, they know they can't, because it is a taboo topic.
If I were an honest anti gun activist, I would not start with fighting school shootings. I would start where the biggest numbers are. But then, I think I would be the only anti-gun activist of this type. When you only see a major problem through a tiny hole in the fence, you might not know how to fix it. School shootings, "when they end, all others will disappear at the same time." You have to be a believer with that thinking. A faith alone is not enough to fix a problem this big, especially if it is quite mislead.
 
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toooooot said:
The test I give to the person who wants to ban guns is this. How and when will you take the guns from criminals. I know they don't know because they prefer to speak about specific types of gun usage, such as school shootings. They press on the feelings, "don't you want the kids to be safe?" I do,but I also do not want to live where guns are banned for lawful people and where every criminal has one. The latter is a taboo for a woke, gun hating, person as well. If I asked them to draw an imagine of a typical criminal who would use an illegal gun in their mind, they know they can't, because it is a taboo topic.
If I were an honest anti gun activist, I would not start with fighting school shootings. I would start where the biggest numbers are. But then, I think I would be the only anti-gun activist of this type. When you only see a major problem through a tiny hole in the fence, you might not know how to fix it. School shootings, "when they end, all others will disappear at the same time." You have to be a believer with that thinking. A faith alone is not enough to fix a problem this big, especially if it is quite mislead.
Click to expand...
The availability of guns makes it easier for criminals to get them. If you banned the legal ones, and banned the gun makers from making them in the first place, far less would get in criminal hands…
 
Squid Surprise said:
The flaw with your first point (comparing guns to forks) is that other harmful items have other uses.
Click to expand...
What do you mean? I can very well stick a marshmallow on to my gun, and point it to my mouth and eat the marshmallow just fine, either by pulling the trigger or not.
 
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toooooot said:
If I were an honest anti gun activist, I would not start with fighting school shootings. I would start where the biggest numbers are. But then, I think I would be the only anti-gun activist of this type...
Click to expand...
You wouldn't be the first to try. Every time I try to talk to people about the harms handguns cause, particularly with suicide, no one wants to listen. "It's not the guns, it's mental health"... yeah, sure, "guns don't kill people" either. But they're way more effective at it than harsh words. That's why they give them to soldiers.

It's all irrelevant though, there's too much dissonance. I've pretty much accepted Americans love for violence, at home and abroad. Nothing will change it. The deaths and excuses will continue always.
 
Gun control like all other left wing agendas is based on emotion, there is no point debating logic and reason with these people as they are fundamentally illogical and unreasonable.
 
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