Mass shooting at a Jacksonville video game event

Police respond to the scene of the attack. CBS News/AP.

A mass shooting at a Jacksonville Florida video game event has left two people dead and 11 people wounded. CBS News. The attacker has been identified as David Katz of Baltimore Maryland and he was reported to have killed himself after the shooting. The attack occurred at the GLHF game bar where a tournament for the video game, Madden 19, an NFL football game, was being held. The tournament was a qualifier for a main event in Las Vegas, Nevada. It is unclear what the motive for the shooting was but Katz was a participant in the tournament. Video of the shooting that recorded the audio of the event is widely available on the internet. 

Multiple people have been killed after a shooting at a video game tournament Sunday in Jacksonville, Florida. Here is what we know so far https://t.co/Y63aZrlbOY pic.twitter.com/QbBB4ORwfL

— CBS News (@CBSNews) August 26, 2018

My Comment:
Very strange story out of Florida as this does not seem like a typical mass shooting at all. Generally speaking mass shootings are pre-planned events done for either a political cause or because someone has become so disgruntled in life that they want to go out in infamy.

This does not seem to be that case at all. It seems that David Katz had no intention to shoot anyone today and only did so because he lost in the video game tournament. This was a spur of the moment kind of thing, as far as I can tell, which is extremely unusual for mass shootings. It happens sometimes but those cases usually aren't considered mass shootings as they almost never happen in public.

Though I have never bought into the idea that video games cause violence I do have to say that games and guns do not mix. People get really pissed off when the lose at video games and when money is on the line, like in this tournament, there is a small chance of violence. I have seen and heard people go completely nuts when they lose in video games. My gaming days are mostly behind me but it was always amazing to me to hear people yelling and screaming at me just because I won in an imaginary video game that I was playing for fun. It's a big reason I don't play much anymore and when I do it's single player for the most part.

I do have to say that I don't think this attack is a reflection of all gamers. Indeed, I don't think it is even a reflection of the Madden NFL fandom. I do think that there is a distinction to be made as Madden has a very different demographic for their fandom than most games but even for them this is a black swan event. Though if you were to tell me that a mass shooting was going to happen at a video game tournament and it was because someone got pissed at the outcome of a match, it would be a Madden tournament that I would have in mind. People do, very rarely, get killed because of a dispute over video games but I would say it would be much less common than disputes over money or relationships. 

I held off on writing about this event as it was very clear that there was some fake news floating around about the suspect. A different person, who I won't identify here, was falsely accused of committing this horrible crime. For the past few hours both that person, and the actual suspect, were being accused of the shooting when only Katz was responsible. I made sure to wait until more mainstream sources were reporting his name for before I mentioned him.

Inevitably the discussion will turn to gun control. And, as always, those discussions will be wrong. Since Katz lived in Maryland, which has some of the strictest gun laws in the country, there was little any new laws in Florida could do. It appears he was carrying illegally and was also in a gun free zone so new gun laws wouldn't have done a thing to stop him.

What could have stopped him was a good guy with a gun. It is amazing to me that there was no armed security for this kind of event. Though I doubt there were that many people at this event you would have seen either armed security or a police presence if this had been a traditional sporting event. But because it was e-sports there wasn't? Tempers run high at these kinds of thing and there really should be some kind of response ready for when something like this happens. Even if Katz didn't have a gun he could have injured or killed people before anyone could have stopped him even if he was completely unarmed, though he looks fairly weedy. And, of course, this was a gun free zone so nobody with good intentions was armed there.

There are rumors going around that Katz was well known in the Madden community and was disliked. I can't be sure those rumors are true or not but there are quite a bit of social media postings that indicate that he was at the very least an active participant in the community. My guess is that if the rumor is true than he should have been barred from these kinds of events a long time ago.

I am somewhat concerned about the cultural implications of someone getting so pissed off at a video game that he decides to shoot a bunch of people. I do understand that this tournament had a cash prize for the winner but even then it's not worth killing people over.

I think more than anything else people need to learn how to lose. Right now though there is very little acknowledgement that sometimes you just lose because your opponent is more skilled or worked harder. The 2016 election is a great example of that since half the country has been trying to overthrow an elected official just because he decided to campaign in the Midwest and his opponent didn't. To these people, it's impossible that Trump just did a better job than Clinton, so someone must have cheated and it's ok to throw a temper tantrum. That's just one example as the problem is throughout the culture but right now there is almost no push back to that narrative and as long as that is the case and we don't teach people how to lose gracefully, things like this will probably continue.