End The Killstreak: Gamers Show Support

Monday, 07 October 2024

End The Killstreak: Gamers Show Support

Added: 17.12.2013 21:35 | 9 views | 0 comments

It's a picture all-too-familiar: shots fired at Arapahoe High School in Colorado, as 18-year-old Karl Pierson went on a manhunt for a teacher, leaving two students wounded, with the shooter turning the gun on himself. Compounding the familiarity of the scene: it happened almost to the same day as the carnage at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut one year prior, and Arapahoe High sits only eight miles away from Columbine High School, and a short drive away from the Century 16 movie theaters at Town Center in the city of Aurora.

Frequently, political lobbying groups, for whatever reason, use these opportunities to shift the blame off of whatever they represent, and cast it on to the gamers. Most recently, Aaron Alexis, the perpetrator of the Washington Navy Yard shootings, was cast by certain news outlets as a nice guy but "obsessed with violent video games."

Antwand Pearman wants to change that misconception while honoring the memories of those lost to gun violence.

On Saturday, December 21, the website GamerFitNation will have its second annual Online Shooter Ceasefire, in which gamers have pledged to put down their virtual guns in a symbolic gesture of remembrance for the victims of gun violence. Antwand Pearman, doing nothing was simply not an option.

"I wanted to do something to show our support for the victims in Sandy Hook but I didn't know how," said Pearman, who also is the OS Ceasefire's event organizer. "Then I had this idea of the OS Ceasefire, like, 'Let's show gamers putting down their virtual guns in solidarity.' I never did this to start controversy or be popular, I did it to show support."