Pain Preserved; Pain Projected?

We’ve learned this week’s shooting rampage at Dawson College in Montreal may have been motivated by Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. Their influence on gunman Kimveer Gill though came not only in the wrath of destruction they wreaked on Columbine, but from a flickering computer screen and first-person shooting game. Created by Colorado native Danny Ledonne, “Super Columbine Massacre” takes players on a virtual tour of the Littleton, Colorado, high school. The game allows those who play, to maim, shoot and kill students and teachers. Unlike many violent video games, it goes one step further with dead students’ and teachers’ corpses remaining in the game. Their bodies bloodied, unlike other games, they do not disappear and instead remain lifeless in a pool of blood. Ladonne, who works as a youth counselor, doesn’t think his game had any role in the killings. Three parallels may suggest differently. Like Harris and Klebold, Gill stormed his school cafeteria. He was armed to the teeth and had cloaked his weapons -- like the Columbine killers -- under a trench coat.

Whatever the case, the mayhem in Montreal renews the question we asked throughout Columbine and years after: does violence in the media have an impact on real crime?