Amy Bishop, courtesy Huntsville Police Dept.
Dungeons & Dragons is once again being blamed for murder. Amy Bishop, a professor of biology at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, opened fire at a faculty meeting, killing three of her colleagues. She was angry because she had been denied tenure.
The Boston Globe reported that Bishop fatally shot her younger brother at their home in Braintree, Mass., in 1986. She and her mother told the police at the time that the shooting was accidental. Federal law-enforcement officials also considered Bishop a suspect in a still-unsolved case involving a mail bomb sent to an assistant professor at Harvard University. Although she and her husband were investigated, they were not charged with the crime.
According to Boston Herald reporter Laurel J. Sweet:
Accused campus killer Amy Bishop was a devotee of Dungeons & Dragons - just like Michael “Mucko” McDermott, the lone gunman behind the devastating workplace killings at Edgewater Technology in Wakefield in 2000.
According to Sweet, Bishop and her husband James Anderson met in a Dungeons & Dragons club while biology students at Northeastern University in the early 1980s and were "heavily into the fantasy role-playing board game," according to the Boston Herald's anonymous source. “They even acted this crap out."
Sweet seems to be trying to connect Bishop's motivation for murder to Dungeons & Dragons by using the McDermott case as a precedent. Both attended Northeastern University, but Sweet is unwilling to claim attendance at a university is the common factor in the killings. Instead, she drags up the tired trope that Dungeons & Dragons is the cause.
The popular fantasy role-playing game has a long history of controversy, with objections raised to its demonic and violent elements. Some experts have cited the D&D backgrounds of people who were later involved in violent crimes, while others say it just a game.
The McDermott case has little connection to Dungeons & Dragons. Yes, McDermott did have Dungeons & Dragons books in his possession. He also had computer equipment, a will, gun cases and ammunition, a passport, blasting caps, bomb-making literature and three gallons of liquid nitric acid. McDermott never blamed Dungeons & Dragons for the killings. According to DailyNewsTranscript.com, McDermott believed:
"...he was gunning down Hitler and six Nazis - not his terrified co-workers. Emotionless and matter-of-fact, he told the shocked courtroom he believed St. Michael the Archangel ordered him to go back in time to kill Nazis and stop the Holocaust to save his own soul."
Sweet even references the recent "D&D prison case" as evidence, "where prison officials reportedly testified they were afraid the game could promote 'hostility, violence and escape behavior.'" Sweet's uninformed opinion is exactly why the prison case was so harmful to role-playing game advocacy. It's being quoted as if it was a testament to the harm inflicted by Dungeons & Dragons when in reality the judgment was only about the rights of a prison to revoke prisoners' access to hobbies.
Blaming Dungeons & Dragons is surely an attempt to make sense of a senseless murder, but the truth is much more pedestrian. As James Alan Fox, a professor in criminology at Northeastern University, put it:
With reports of Bishop's quirky demeanor and social awkwardness, it would be all too easy to dismiss this violent episode as just some "nut" who couldn't handle the pressure of publish or perish. Indeed, that seems to be the prevailing view of the hundreds who have posted online comments in the days since the shooting. But to define this tragedy as just a case of psychopathology would discourage a closer look at contributing forces.
Comments
It's attention baiting. Every news organization is looking for something to drive readership/viewership. They'd love nothing better than to have people freak out about D&D again because it'd give their pundits something new to talk about.
Instead of blaming mentally unstable people wielding weapons, which isn't anything new and won't drive the ratings.
It's just an easy way for writers to differentiate the criminal from the readership.
The average criminal probably watches tv and has a car. But if you write that people who do that are criminals, then most of your readers will think you're dumb because they do that too and are definitely not criminals.
If you say the criminal has mental issues, it does not actually characterize him/her, the reason for the mental issue is needed.
Then all you have to do is find an association common enough so that your reader will know about it, but that you think they will not be a part of. Thus is born criticism of groups of people instead of individuals (be it on the basis of race, sex, or religion).
Excellent summaries gentlemen. I agree wholeheartedly. It's really an interesting and sad case on muckracking journalism. Sweet's whole article probably took under 15 minutes to write.
What's really interesting is that if you take time to delve into the referenced cases (both the prison case and McDermott) there is no evidence that D&D is harmful. The entire structure is built on an aura of menace that each legal case tries to build -- and then, because we live in such a fast-paced media world, hopes you won't bother to investigate further.
Whats interesting is there are likely MORE potential cases/instances one could use to link University Attendance to such violent crimes than D&D, yet the media goes after our particular niche simply because Universities have deeper/more popular pockets willing to protect their reputation.
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