Prepared by Burrelle’s Information Services, which takes sole responsibility for accuracy of transcription.

JACK FORD, ABCNEWS Violence committed by children, teen-agers and even younger, shooting people, killing each other, so how do we explain it? John Stossel found a man who has plenty of experience with violence. He’s even taught people how to kill. And he has Congress now quoting his ideas, and he says, he knows one place where this kind of violence begins. Take a closer look now at the games children play.

JOHN STOSSEL, ABCNEWS (VO) Been to a video arcade lately? Like most things these days, the games are better, more varied, more interesting, more violent. In this one, you win by blowing your opponents’ heads off, literally. What does this do to kids? Does this make them more violent in real life? Some politicians say, yes, that the games are...

SENATOR JOSEPH LIEBERMAN, DEMOCRAT, CONNECTICUT Luring our children into this culture of carnage.

1ST WOMAN Our children can torture victims, rip out their hearts and then wave the bloody debris above their heads.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) ‘So what,’ say the kids.
This doesn’t get you into real violence?

1ST MAN It’s not real looking. It’s fake.

2ND WOMAN It’s just fun. It’s not like—I mean, yes, it’s disgusting. But people can deal with it.

2ND MAN When you see Superman fly from a building in a movie, are you going to try and fly off a building too?

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) When I asked kids about this, including mine, they laugh about the idea that games would make kids do violent things. But how much do kids know.

DAVE GROSSMAN We are teaching children to associate pleasure with human death and suffering. We are rewarding them for killing people. And we are teaching them to like it.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) Dave Grossman says he knows, knows, that these games teach violence.

DAVE GROSSMAN Every single one of our warriors are entrusted with the instruments of death!

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) Grossman’s a former Army psychologist and lieutenant colonel, who specialized in training solders to kill without hesitating.

DAVE GROSSMAN It’s death and destruction!

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) Grossman says today’s video games require so much bloody killing that the military uses them to desensitize recruits, make them less squeamish about real killing.

DAVE GROSSMAN To give them the skill and will to kill.

JOHN STOSSEL The will to kill?

DAVE GROSSMAN It is very difficult to get a human being to kill. We have to rehearse the act.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) And that, he says, is what video games do.

DAVE GROSSMAN These things are murder simulators.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) Grossman is all over the place, talking to Congress...

DAVE GROSSMAN We are keeping a lid on a pressure cooker.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) ...to the media.

DAVE GROSSMAN Practicing and practicing on murder simulators.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) Sounding the alarm about violent games. Two are especially bad he says. Doom and Quake. With their three dimensional graphics and a special design that allows you to create your own battleground and your own players. Here I am. Doom and Quake were a instant hit. Fifteen million copies have been downloaded worldwide. The terrible part of this, says Grossman, is that many of those players are kids.

DAVID GROSSMAN And the result is we are programming many of our children to kill.

JOHN STOSSEL He is trained to do it?
Mr. GROSSMAN: Bingo. How did he learn it? Through observation.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) After the recent school shootings, Grossman volunteered to be an expert witness in a lawsuit filed by families of victims demanding money from video gamemakers.

JACK THOMPSON Every school shooting we find that kids who pull the trigger are video gamers.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) Lawyer Jack Thompson filed the suits against Doom and Quake claiming they are partly responsible for the Paduka, Kentucky shooting where 14-year-old Michael Carneal shot eight of his classmates.

JACK THOMPSON By virtual of the video game, Michael Carneal was turned into a mass murderer.

DAVID GROSSMAN This boy fires eight shots. He get’s eight hits on eight different kids. Five of them are head shots. The other three are upper torso. Where did he get that from? The video games.

JOHN STOSSEL They should pay?

DAVID GROSSMAN They were an accessory to the crime.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) And the two teens who killed 12 students in Littleton, Colorado, also used Doom to practice shooting their classmates. Just as we superimpose my face, the teen gunman, says Thompson, superimposed yearbook pictures of their classmates.

JACK THOMPSON So that they could literally for weeks in advance, not just practice shooting but practice shooting a particular student. That’s corporate irresponsibility in our opinion. We don’t understand what that has to do with a free society.

JOHN STOSSEL Free society. What’s that have to do with this? Well some would argue that if America is a free society, then gamemakers and game players and anyone who’s not violent ought to be able to entertain themselves any way they want. That violent people are responsible for violent actions, not gamemakers.

GAME VOICE Action.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) You know, games don’t kill people, people kill people.

TODD HALLINGSHEAD It’s just a game.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) Todd Hallingshead, CEO of the company that made Doom and Quake says they were trying to make something fun and entertaining.
Fun and entertainment doesn’t require blood.
Mr. HALLINGSHEAD: No. But lots of things have violence. Our games are like modern day computer versions of cowboys and Indians.

JOHN STOSSEL But it’s gorier than cowboys and Indians. It’s more intense. Vivid.

TODD HALLINGSHEAD But it’s in a context like Wile E. Coyote in Road Runner.
STOSSEL: (VO) Oh yeah. There’s lots of violence in cartoons. Do they inspire violence? Movies have been sued. “Natural Born Killers” was blamed for a homicide in Louisiana. That lawyer Jack Thompson wants to sue “South Park” claiming the character Kenny led two boys to hang themselves.

SOUTH PARK CHARACTER Oh, my god. They killed Kenny.

JACK THOMPSON One child left a suicide note explaining that he was doing it because Kenny did it.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) He is also suing the producer of “Basketball Diaries” claiming this scene led Michael Carneal to shoot up his school in Paduka.

JACK THOMPSON Leonardo DiCaprio comes in and starts shotgunning his classmates to the applause of his friends and then he blasts away the authority figure, his teacher, was foreseeable that someone somewhere would copycat that scene and would kill other people. And indeed, that has happened.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) Grossman will testify at the trial.
The boy who watched “The Basketball Diaries” doesn’t say the movie made me do it.

DAVID GROSSMAN He said no, I wasn’t inspired by any movie, but then they ask him, what movie was it like? And he said, oh yeah, it was like “The Basketball Diaries.”

JOHN STOSSEL Where do you draw the line? What about wrestling on TV?

DAVID GROSSMAN Wrestling is something that adults can have. But kids shouldn’t.

JOHN STOSSEL It’s mostly kids who watch wrestling.

DAVID GROSSMAN Kids are killing each other. As they imitate what happened on wrestling.

JOHN STOSSEL It shouldn’t be on television?

DAVID GROSSMAN Should pornography be on television?

MAN Well, I will tell you, Mr. Chairman, if the entertainment industry continues to move in the direction it’s moving, one way or other, the government will act.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) Act how? Congress is still debating it.
Some people hold you responsible for real murders.

TODD HALLINGSHEAD When you play one of our games, you are playing with a keyboard and a mouse and you know that those images aren’t real.

JOHN STOSSEL But people who played your game did pull real triggers and killed people.

TODD HALLINGSHEAD But tens of millions of people have played Doom. Doom is probably the most played PC game of all time.

DAVID GROSSMAN Now what are the kids in the video games shooting at? Bulls eye targets? Deer? No, human beings.

TODD HALLINGSHEAD He’s a guy who’s got a book to sell.

JOHN STOSSEL Hallingshead questions claims in Grossman’s book titled, “Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill” like the claim that in arcades across America, kids are laughing and mocking.
Unidentified Child #1: They dissolve into pools of blood.

JOHN STOSSEL Deriving pleasure from human suffering.

TODD HALLINGSHEAD That’s not human suffering. That is a game.

JOHN STOSSEL What about the idea that playing these games desensitizes people to violence?

TODD HALLINGSHEAD The FBI crime statistics show that violence has gone down every year since 1992 and this has happened while the video game business has grown to a seven billion dollar a year business today. It’s bigger than movies.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) He has a point. Crime has been dropping as computer and video game use increases. So maybe he and the kids are right.

2ND CHILD They are fun. You don’t want to do it in real life, so can you do it here.

JOHN STOSSEL They say, it’s just a game.

DAVID GROSSMAN If you ask the kids who are drinking alcohol or smoking tobacco or carrying guns whether or not that’s a bad thing, they’ll tell you, no.

JOHN STOSSEL The kids are ignorant?

DAVID GROSSMAN Yes. Now, who are you going to believe? The kid or the surgeon general?

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) Grossman is a very compelling speaker. After listening to him, I want someone to take action, to ban the games. But the evidence is not so clear. The US Surgeon General did say some susceptible children are influenced by TV violence but that was 28 years ago. Since then, a few studies have linked violent games to violent kids. But just as many others don’t. And it turns out that many people who cite a link site Grossman as a source. Even the surgeon general’s office when we asked for a more current opinion, told us the Marines use the game Doom to desensitize recruits. Where did they learn that? From Grossman. We also called the Marines. They say the games are not used to desensitize Marines. They say they used a version of the software to teach eye/hand coordination and team work.
The Marines deny your claim that it’s about desensitizing people.

DAVID GROSSMAN As soon as we talk desensitizing, the military gets real sensitive.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) And how do members of congress know the games cause violence? They listen to witnesses.

SENATOR KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON, REPUBLICAN, TEXAS One of our witnesses today says that video games deliberately use the psychological techniques of desensitization used to teach soldiers how to kill in battle.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) And who was that? Lieutenant Colonel Grossman again. So who will get to say, no, you may not watch, you may not play? Do we, individual parents, get to decide for ourselves and our children or to protect us will the government appoint some expert, maybe David Grossman, to decide for us.

DAVID GROSSMAN Because in this game, if you lose, you die!

2ND CHILD Die!

CYNTHIA MCFADDEN, ABCNEWS John Stossel joins me now. John, there are some people who would argue that violent video games are in fact a form of free speech.

JOHN STOSSEL And I think they probably are.

CYNTHIA MCFADDEN You, in fact, have a program on free speech tomorrow night on our special. Controversial?

JOHN STOSSEL I do keep offending people and we’re going to cover a whole bunch of these issues from burning flags to censoring movies to those books that teach people how to build bombs. Should they be legal? And sexual harassment. For example, I could get in trouble by saying, nice eyes, Cynthia. Is that right?

CYNTHIA MCFADDEN We’re going to be watching tomorrow night. John Stossel’s special, “You Can’t Say That, What’s Happening to Free Speech?” Tomorrow night at 10, 9 Central. We’ll be right back.

In This Series 20/20: Breeding Better Citizens (Transcript) 20/20: His Daughter's Footsteps (Transcript) Related Links 20/20: Debate Over Video Game Violence

Content and programming copyright 1999 ABC News. Transcript by Federal Document Clearing House, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to ABC News. This transcript may not be copied, resold or redistributed in any media.