Jack Thompson, idiot at large, has deduced that the Maryland police should be focusing their attention on violent video games in order to catch the Maryland sniper. He appeared this morning on the Today Show (which is always willing to give morons a soapbox) discussing all the "obvious" connections between these murders and video games. Is Jack Thompson a detective? An expert on shooting and marksmanship? An expert on video games? No, he's the moron lawyer who tried to sue game makers after the Paducah shootings in Kentucky.

Thompson's basis for blaming video games? Here are his "reasonings":

1) "One-shot one-kill" is the basis for numerous video games. Actually, I play a lot of games and I've found this to be completely untrue. In most of them, the goal is simply to eliminate targets, and it doesn't matter how many shots you use. And of course, those video games that do have this aspect borrow it from real life sniper training. In other words, this is a case of art imitating life, not the other way around. But like most fools, Jack Thompson is flabbergasted by the concept of cause and effect. "One-shot one-kill" was not invented by video games.

2) Games have "God mode", which reflects the message found on the discovered tarot card. Tompson explained that while playing games in god mode, your targets never shoot back. This is, of course, a completely inaccurate statement. In games with god mode, this setting merely makes you invulnerable to enemy fire. That little inaccuracy aside, delusions of divinity have been around for centuries before video games, and they have often have been linked to mass murder. Did Son of Sam ever play a video game in which he took orders from a talking dog? Did Jim Jones play a video game where he poisoned Kool-Aid? Did David Koresh play Quake in "Jesus mode"? And of course none of this explains the tarot card, something not exactly common in FPS games.

3) Video games teach you how to shoot. This is the argument he used in his attempt to pin Michael Carneal's school shooting to games like Quake and Doom. It's also his most assinine and ridiculous position. "Even though he'd never fired a handgun" Thompson says in defense of his assertion. What he doesn't mention is that Michael Carneal had received firearms training on shooting a rifle, and had also practiced with his murder weapon before the shooting spree. He also doesn't explain how a video game is going to teach shooting fundamentals when it's all about moving a mouse and crosshairs on a screen. Do you know any video games that teach trigger squeeze, the single most important aspect of accurate shooting? I don't. Do you know any that encourage proper hold, the use of a rest or skeletal bracing? I sure don't. Even the arcade games with rifles have them mounted so that weight and other things aren't a factor. How many games do you know that teach proper breathing control? I've only ever seen a few that even try to simulate it, one of them being the Army's "America's Army." Even that, though, can't compare to the real thing, and doesn't take into account synchronizing with your hearbeat in order to achieve maximum accuracy. And you know how many games I've played that include accurate bullet drop or wind deflection? Zero. I have never played a game with either of these, even though they are two of the most basic aspects of long-range target shooting. Accurate shooting can NOT be taught by video games. As both a gamer and a shooter, I can attest to this simple fact, as can anyone else who has any experience in both subjects. To assert anything to the contrary merely demonstrates a person's total ignorance.

Jack Thompson is a pathetic hack who is simply trying to drum up some exposure by cashing in on a series of horrific crimes. In his Today Show interview, he explained that he'd been trying to contact the Maryland police on the sniper case, but hadn't yet received any reply. Good. That means that they have some intelligence up there. What does Thompson expect them to do? Go to Counter-Strike message boards and post "d1d ne1 h3r3 sh00t p33ps in m4ryl4nd???" Maybe they should be focusing their attention on trying to find a mass murderer. You think?