"Jack, welcome on this tragic day." "Yeah, I wish I weren't here." "You know? Us too."

It's like he doesn't even hear the question the guy is asking. The question merely served to pull the string on JT's back to ready the anti-gaming rhetoric. It's classic Thompson every step of the way. "You can rehearse these type of massacres on simulators which are called video games and you can...therefor made more proficient in doing this." He explains that "Counter-Strike Half-Life" was that Cho, the perpetrator of the Virginia Tech Massacre trained on in High School, suggesting that the behavoir of the NIU shooter had the same sort of training. He also cites the shooter's attire...all black...was also similiar to what the hero in Counter-Strike wears. He certainly couldn't have gotten the idea to wear all black from anywhere else, could he? What kind of bad guy wears all black, other than a good 50% of them throughout the history of fiction?

Then Jack loses his train of thought for a moment, the gnomes inside his head desperately trying to recover any for of cohesive thought tossing a plug for one of his books out and...did he just suggest that he predicted exactly how the shooting occurred? Why yes - yes he did.

To his credit, the Fox News anchor seems to realize how full of shit JT is and ended the interview with a dismissive, "Well clearly you connect this to games, and we'll find out more about the suspect Steven Kazmierczak.." only to have Jack speak over him with a smug, "Well we'll see...we'll see."

So far what we know of Kazmierczak counteracts the profile of previous school shooters. He was a well-adjusted, well liked student who received honors in classes and was in the chess club while growing up. He owned a gun permit, purchased his handguns legally, and only really began to show any signs of trouble a few weeks before the shootings when he stopped taking medication for an undisclosed condition.

Will Jack wind up with mud on his face once more? Is there any more room for mud? Why the hell do major news agencies still contact him when this sort of thing happens? The world is full of crazy people. Some shoot up schools. Others blame that on violent games without proof.

Thanks to Andy for pointing us towards the clip.

We'd like to extend our condolences to the families, friends and classmates of those who were affected in the school shooting at Northern Illinois University. Separately, we are disgusted, but no longer shocked, to find that anti-game activists are again rushing to conclusions about what drove Stephen Kazmierczak, the clearly disturbed 27 year old who police say was responsible for this tragedy, to commit such an act.

Blaming video games for the behavior of the mentally-challenged is vile on many levels. And, as Generations X and Y mature, it is extremely likely that just about all of us have played at least one video game at some point in our lives. Drawing a parallel between games and violence without any substantive proof is sensationalism for its own sake. This is a sad event, made worse by the irresponsible actions of attention-seekers and the media that has given them a platform for their reckless venom.

UPDATE: Here is the video of Jack's appearance, in which he comlpetely ignores the interviewer's question and goes on an anti-gaming tirade.

Photo Courtesy of Jack Thompson