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Disbarred Florida Lawyer Gets People To Pay Attention To Him Again
Guess who's back? Unsurprisingly, anti-game crusader Jack Thompson is not one to miss the opportunity to capitalize on a tragedy.
Thompson, a former lawyer who was disbarred by the Florida Supreme Court in 2008, has been relatively silent in recent years. This was perhaps due to the U.S. Supreme Court's 2011 ruling on Brown vs. EMA, which essentially categorized video games as constitutionally protected free speech.
Now, in the wake of the appalling events in Newtown, Connecticut, Thompson is back, and left a message for the Entertainment Consumers Association's president Hal Halpin, who has been one of the most high-profile opponents of Thompson's efforts to censor explicit and violent video games.
In the message, Thompson -- not surprisingly -- is rushing to finger video games as one of the underlying causes to a tragedy that even the police investigating the case have not come to many conclusions about. Thompson says, "Hey Hal, Jack Thompson in Miami. I think it's tragic, and maybe it brings the tragedy of others to home... to your home, that this is happened now in Connecticut. Uh, you know, I did what I could to try and prevent these things... I was called a 'massacre chaser' by you and your friends... when I all I wanted to do was prevent these things from happening. So maybe now you'll get it, Hal. Maybe now you'll get it… though somehow I doubt it."
While many in the media are already trying to tie the shootings with violent games, so far the only confirmed connection was the fact that the shooter, Adam Lanza, was a fan of the game Dance Dance Revolution -- perhaps one of the least violent popular game franchises ever.
Our hearts go out the families affected by the senseless violence that occurred in Newtown. Let's hope they can find some measure of peace in the days and weeks to come. As for Thompson, his track record speaks for itself.
You can read the full story and listen to an MP3 of Thompson's message at GamePolitics.
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