Teen Arrested for School Shooting Threat During Modern Warfare 2

You’ll hear some ridiculously vile stuff spewed over headsets by teens while playing Modern Warfare 2 on Xbox Live, but it’s not usually something you’ll actually feel obligated to call the police about. Usually.

On Feb. 4, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police contacted San Antonio Police and told them they had a report of a teen here who talked with other players online about “shooting up a school in Texas,” while the group played the game on an Xbox 360 system that allowed for verbal communication, the police report said.

I get death threats every day over Xbox Live, which usually occur when I end someone’s killstreak prematurely or steal someone’s care package, but in this case, the threat seemed pretty real, as the teen was giving out some very specific details as to just who he was thinking about shooting IRL.

During the game, the teen, 16, said he planned on getting guns from a friend in the Marines and would “shoot a pregnant girl at school and shoot his best friend in the face,” the report said. The boy also mentioned that because SWAT may be on the scene within 10 minutes, they would have to aim for the head.

A specific plan and a specific hit list is most definitely cause for alarm in a situation like this, though the arrested teen immediately repented for his outburst and is reported to have not taken any steps forward to execute such a plan.  What I’m wondering about is how exactly this was reported. Was he playing with friends who knew who he was who decided to report him, or was it random online players who overheard and gave the police his gamertag which they then used to track him down? I would imagine it’s the former, as I’m not even positive the latter is possible.

Of course, the obvious question being raised here is the correlation between the M-rated violent shooter, Modern Warfare 2, and the kid claiming he wanted to do similar things to his classmates in real life. I do NOT believe in cause and effect here, as demonstrated by the 4 million people currently playing Modern Warfare 2 who AREN’T threatening to shoot up their school, though I will say, it’s clearly not a good idea for a kid this disturbed to be anywhere near a game like this, and to me this is a combination of parenting and psychological issues that have nothing to do with whatever video game the kid was playing at the time he made the threat. Xbox Live is now a major form of communication among teens, and it’s similar to if he had said the same thing over IM or text.

Will violent kids seek out violent games to play? Of course, but the one in a million case of the kid who goes out and kills someone (or in this case, merely TALKS about killing someone) is in no way a scientific indicator of a correlation between video games and youth violent crime, a stat which has been dropping like a rock since the early 90s.

This is an individual case with surely a very specific set of issues that led this kid to this point, let’s just be thankful Xbox Live facilitated the arrest of this kid before any threats could be made real.

[MySanAntonio]