Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill : A Call to Action Against TV, Movie and Video Game Violence

I purchased the following book from Amazon,"Stop Teaching Our Children To Kill", by authors Dave Grossman and Gloria DeGaetano. This book is the best analysis of one the most serious problems facing our society today,the problems of violence by youth and adults in mass shootings and violence in our in our schools and public places. I have previously read many theories regarding these horrible acts, most have proven ineffective and misinformed or just poor public and political policy. The authors have however,provided a considerable research and insight on the effect that violent movies, televison shows and video games have on on the violent behavior of our children, as well as these acts of terrorism and horroric violence such as Littleton Colorado, Virginia Tec and most recently Boulder Colorado. I defy anyone who reads this book not to be outraged by the compelling data provided and the solutions presented regarding these horrible effects and take action. This is a human call to action to eliminate and quell the violence that has permiated our society.We should be outraged by their findings and the lack of political will to immediately correct the causal effects of violence from motion pictures, television and video games and demand immediate actions from our law makers in congress, state legislatures and municipal governments and for parents to take a more active role in what their children watch and to better monitor their children's appetite for violence in the media. It is clear that we must take immediate action to stop the continued violence that our children and adults that are exposed to in the media as well as the direct effects that that exposure has on their violent behavior. The book is well written and clearly makes their case. This book is a must read for all of us who are outraged by the contiued violence of our youth and our society. I purchased a used hardback edition, it was received in excellent condition, it appears as new. I received the book promptly and will definately purchase others from Amazon, I highly recommend this and other books by Colonel Grossman as well. Dave Daughtry, Tucson, AZ

If decisions maker would read this and address the real problem it would be a better world. Excellent book.

Lt Col Grossman spent a lifetime studying what made soldiers more efficient killers in combat and able to survive. His work extended in to the world of police officers. With a worldwide reputation Grossman is the goto guy.And then Grossman turned his focus on the army of deadly young killers. Killers who achieve far better performance than police officers in combat. Somewhere in their "training" was a mechanism that turned off the moral control system and honed their responses. As one young killer explained why he first killed his enemies and then his friends, he was on a roll.Bound to be opposed by Hollywood, the electronic games folks and others, Grossman has the credentials that demand attention from balanced readers.Grossman documents the effectiveness of "games" which give potential killers the motor skills, training and discipline to be cold blooded mass killers, without any training whatsoever on real firearms. Games, TV and the movies have sanitized shooting and death. The first bullet ever fired by the youngster is a head shot and just like he has done in thousands of games he quickly turns to make the next shot , the next and the next , just as he has been so well trained to do.In contrast the young person familiar with firearms is far more likely to stop after one shot, devastated by what they have done.One of the truly worrisome details highlighted by the book is that the only reason murders and murder rates have declined is the higher quality of emergency medicine available in most areas of the country. Without these improvements in emergency medicine the murder rate would have increased significantly.Today April 16, 2006 his message is more relevant than ever before. Give knowledge a chance. The pattern of the Virginia school shootings follows the warning pattern described by Grossman. If we fail to heed the message we condemn hundreds to their deaths at the hands of these killers we have raised in our communities.Highly recommended.

This book presents a very interesting hypothesis. That exposure to simulated violence in media and games causes our children to be more aggressive and willing to act it out. The concept is well developed through the book. Many anecdotal stories are offered as evidence as well as several studies in the book. The writing style is easy to follow and held my attention. Rigorous testing of this will be as interesting to follow.The one negative note I had was the footnoting used. There is no specific footnoting per se but rather a generalized system for each chapter at the back of the book. In the chapters you won't find alphanumeric footnote marks to correlate the passages to the references. I did search the internet for the references and found many of the ones available online but it was a lot of work to make the correlations myself.

The authors put forth a convincing argument that we are teaching our children to be violent by exposing them to violent television and by allowing them to "play" violent video games. They support their ideas with solid, scientific evidence. Why, then, are we surprised when there is another school shooting? We all need to wakeup! There are big bucks in the video game industry and violence in television, and it will remain this way as long until we learn how to suppress it. These industries, and our denial, are changing the way some children perceive the world.

I like the way where everything is real, and builted on fact. Not only they open a vision on the reader, but also give some example of solution and ressource to fight the problem.It's a good book to read as a parent or people working with childrens.