Adam Lanza Shooting: Video Gamers Call For An Online Ceasefire On Friday

Impact

Some gamers are calling for an online cease-fire following the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings, reported The Wrap on Wednesday. 

In a video posted to YouTube, GamerFitNation CEO Antwand Pearman asked gamers to agree to not play shooter games on Friday as a tribute to the 26 people killed by shooter Adam Lanza. An emotional Pearman told gamers, “What am I asking for? I’m asking for a demonstration – a demonstration of peace… I’m asking for a day, just one day, from 12-12, when you just don’t play online shooters.”

 

Pearman’s objective is apparently to defend video games and gamers in the wake of the shootings, which some commentators have been quick to blame on violent video games. “It’s not to say video games are to blame … it’s more to show people that we gamers give a damn.”

The “Day of Cease Fire For Online Shooters” also has a Facebook page listing nearly 2,600 attendees.

The video is still somewhat obscure, but as The Wrap notes, this might change. #osceasefire is trending on Twitter, while the infamous hacktivist group Anonymous has lent its support. It has also inspired some online debate

 

The Guardian’s Mary Hamilton warns that the event could “[divert] attention away from the debate about real gun control in the U.S.,” but adds that the media has been blaming shootings on violent video games ever since Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the shooters who killed 10 students at Columbine High School in 1999, were known to have played the original violent video game, DOOM.

The Daily Express posted an incendiary headline Monday titled "Killer Adam Lanza ‘Obsessed’ With Violent Video Games," while The Sun published an article detailing his love of Call of Duty. (The Sun article claims that Lanza surrounded himself with “posters of weapons,” but apparently it was actually an informative diagram titled “Armored Vehicles Past to Present.”)

Lanza was apparently an avid player of video games, but not the ones you might think – instead, he was partial to Starcraft, a real-time strategy game pitting humans and two alien races against each other.