Who lets their 8 year old child play GTA? That is the problem here not the video game itself.  Take responsibility for your children.

Nonsense, we all know video games caused the wars that ended all ancient civilizations.

It's worth noting. Violent Crime is down.

Violent crime among youths... is down.

The only thing that seems to be up is mass shootings in schools and colleges.

Something is increasing sociopathic spree killings.

Games like grand theft auto will get the blame because that's where spree killings are fun. Zombie media i'm surprised isn't catching more flack.

What is actually causing it? Who knows. It's such a small sample size it's hard to draw conclusions.

My best guess would be a rise in suicidal sociopaths.  People who want to die but don't care about others... why not make it a "game".

Edit:  I should note the above is in regards to the USA.  Other places violent crime is up.

Games with violence are part of a cycle of evil.

1) They are born from a broken society.
2) They feed the breakdown of society.

The fact that people are hungry for games like these is a very bad sign, and saying it's good for people to help channel their evil is like saying that putting a bandaid on a blister will make everything better. No, it doesn't make everything better if something is infected under it.

There's a way to fight evil, and it's with good. Fighting evil with evil will only cause to bottle up or excentuate.

My 2 cents, for what they are worth on a gaming forum.

Violent games aren't really the problem

The problem is people getting games that aren't appropriate for them and then for 8 year olds to have easy access to guns

That just makes things worse. But it doesn't solve the first problem. It is very similar to the guns debate.

You can blame a moron for misuing a gun, but it doesn't change the fact that guns are prone to being misused.

Right, some people shouldn't have guns, some people shouldn't play violent games. But violent games in themselves don't cause direct issues, guns on the other hand do

But the first things to ask where why was an 8 year old playing GTA unsupervised and how did he get a gun. Our first thought should not be to ban GTA

It's true what you're saying. I think the games problem goes a step further in that it is imho the product of a broken society where people enjoy simulated evil, whereby hurting people or stealing things is rewarded.

Most things doable in those games are morally wrong, so it's an issue when they can be performed in a virtual world, let alone rewarded.

People can say it puts a damper on real violence, but really like I mentioned earlier all it does is hide a much greater problem, and that's sociopathy in our times.

His caretaker was an 80 year old woman. 

Chances are it was his parents gun, or some gun she or her husband owned and was just put away somewhere she hadn't thought about forever and the kid snooped and found it.

Or he just got it from a student or another person.  Gun's are pretty easy to get your hands on just about anywhere in the world.

Isn't that kind of a bad thing? I live in the UK, where there are barely any guns, but I still think that it should be difficult for an 8 year old to get guns