The family of three people murdered by a 14 year old boy named Cody Posey in New Mexico (on a ranch owned by Sam Donaldson of all people, just to make the incident more bizarre) have filed suit against Take Two to the tune of $600 million. They claim the killer played GTA "excessively" and that it taught him to kill.

The games and others in the "Grand Theft Auto" series depict police killings and other acts of violence. The lawsuit calls various editions of the game "virtual reality murder simulators."

"But for Posey's use of these products ... he would not have killed," the lawsuit claims.

But wait, here's the best part:

The game trained him "how to point and shoot a gun in a fashion making him an extraordinarily effective killer without teaching him any of the constraints or responsibilities needed to inhibit such a killing capacity," according to the suit.

Sounds like someone's never actually tried to use GTA's aiming system. If the real world operated like that, we'd actually have fewer murders every year.

I don't think I need to mention that toolbag Jack Thompson is at the bottom of this. Jack has a clearcut case here, there's really nothing else that could possibly have served as motive for this child to become a cold blooded murderer in any way--

“My brother was trying to raise a man out of a boy that was admittedly skipping school and smoking dope and being a juvenile delinquent at times… I’m sure at times he probably crossed the line… Not only did he get spankings with a board or a belt… at times, he had to do push-ups because the spankings weren’t working. When I saw him cross the line, instead of getting five swats he may gave given him seven or eight. When we get to the fine line of corporal punishment and abuse, it’s all about opinion.”

Other witnessed testified that Delbert Posey crushed Cody’s fingers with a pair of pliers and held a hay hook to his groin. Cody told the court that on the night before the murders his father tried to make him have sex with his stepmother and burned him with a heated metal rod when he refused.

Oh. Even the kid's defense lawyer doesn't buy the GTA connection, despite Thompson having contacted him repeatedly before the trial began, urging him to use the GTA defense. Game Politics makes a very good point regarding the issue in relation to the boy's abuse:

According to the newspaper report, Thompson was encouraged to pursue a lawsuit against the video game industry by prosecutor Sandra Grisham.

That seems a bit odd on a couple of scores. First, during the trial, Grisham downplayed any mitigation of the crime based on the horrible physical and sexual abuse that Cody Posey suffered at the hands of his father and stepmother. In fact, Grisham’s tough-as-nails approach sparked a fair amount of outrage in certain quarters. If she wouldn’t agree that such egregious child abuse might be a causal factor, why would she think that video games might be? The newspaper does not specify what level of involvement Grisham might have had, nor does Grisham confirm urging a lawsuit in the story. However, the Albuquerque Tribune reports that Cody’s uncle, Verlin Posey asked the prosecutor about filing suit and Grisham contacted Thompson at that point.

Clearly the father's mind had been tainted by playing too much Welding Rod 3: The Armageddon and the boy was just striking a blow for justice against the demons of the video game industry. Honestly, I know there's no such thing as an open and shut case, but the kid killed somebody who crushed his fingers with pliers. If anything, he had been using video games to escape the hell of his real life.