Last week's mass shootings at Montreal's Dawson College by 25 year old Kimveer Gill have quickly been linked to video games by certain members of the media in Canada, thanks to mentions of his favorite games on his web blog at VampireFreaks.com. Various Canadian newspapers have been reporting on the tragedy this past week and some of them have been trying (almost desperately it seems) to link the shootings by Gill to his playing of certain games. The National Post web site chatted with Running With Scissors head Vince Desi (grossly misspelled as Vince Desiderio in the article) about Gill's proclamations of his love of Postal 2. Desi is quoted as saying:

People need to learn that there's a difference between entertainment and acting out in reality. I know that people will say that, 'Violent games caused this,' but millions of people play these games around the world and the good news is that only rarely do one or two people go berserk like this.

The article also quotes Danny Ledonne, the creator of the free Internet game Super Columbine Massacre RPG, another favorite of Gill's. Ledonne is quoted as saying:

"People often become obsessive and lose touch with their moral compass either through music, books, movies or video games," Mr. Ledonne said. "School shootings have happened before Columbine and will continue to happen in the future. I don't think raking my game over the coals every time there's a school shooting will stop any of that from happening."

Editorials in various Canadian newspaper web site have been split down the middle on blaming Gill's shootings on video games with the Toronto Sun and the Calgary Sun squarely in the "blame video games" corner, while another Calgary Sun editoral as well as one at the Waterloo Record taking a more rational perspective on the issue. Even actress Sharon Stone has commenting on the shootings, saying Gill was "not loved" by others. Thanks to Game Politics for a number of these links.

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