Toy guns

I SHOULD BE working on the novel, or at least put the beer bottles in the recycling bin before they take over the whole apartment. But I'm too busy trying to prevent a team of Terrorists from planting a bomb to deal with anything else. I'm a Counter-Terrorist.

Right now I need to buy a Colt M4A1 carbine assault rifle, but if I'm a little short on cash, I'll settle for a MP5 submachine gun. It's not gun collecting that I'm addicted to. My preferred form of junk is the greatest PC game, like, ever, called Counter-Strike. Since 1998 it has offered millions of players around the world a chance to get together and happily indulge in the guiltiest pleasure of all: the joy of blowing each other away in a bloodless, never-ending battle.

Aside from allowing me to get a handle on various firearms, my Counter-Strike affair has made me realize that all games of the point-and-kill variety offer not only cheap thrills but also complicated moral quagmires. Which is why Bowling for Columbine's side-stepping of the video game issue might be considered a minor disappointment. Michael Moore lays out America's media-fed culture of fear and how it creates scapegoats while ignoring where real social problems stem from – i.e., the corporate and political sectors. Doing so, Moore is savvy enough to quote from the comic book racism of The Omega Man, to expose Dick Clark as a dickhead, and to rescue the scary-hilarious "Sound-O-Power" toy gun commercial from the detritus of history.

After all, violent video games took the fall for Columbine as much as Marilyn Manson did. Moore allows the latter to defend himself in Bowling for Columbine. Can't someone stand up for America's proud tradition of gun-crazy video games?

It's too bad Ronald Reagan is out of the loop. Back in the '80s, even as the surgeon general proclaimed Pac Man and Defender to be among America's top health risks, the Star Wars-minded president could barely restrain his enthusiasm. In a speech he gave to a group of teens at Epcot during the twinned heights of both his presidency and the cold war, Reagan said, "Watch a 12-year-old take evasive action while playing Space Invaders and you will appreciate the skills of tomorrow's pilot." In some ways, the laser-guided missiles of the Gulf War proved him right. But what about Columbine?

Teen killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were said to be fans of Doom, a cartoonish 3-D first-person shooter that was blamed by countless Columbine pundits as the point of origin for the dehumanized mentality of the Trenchcoat Mafia. When Bowling for Columbine does bring up video games, the ancient 2-D fighter Mortal Kombat is trotted out. While the rest of Moore's film – its breadth of vision ranging from Columbine to post-Sept. 11 – feels up-to-the-second fresh, no one's played Kombat for years. (That it is brought in during a segment about Japan is a double goof. Mortal Kombat is as American as General Motors.)

But perhaps trying actively to defend video games makes you look as silly as someone who actively condemns them, like Joe Lieberman. Perhaps Moore's neglect shows us where our priorities should be. Why waste time obsessing about virtual warfare when Charlton Heston is coming to town and they're still selling bullets (the real kind) at Kmart? Still, it would have been fascinating to see what Bowling for Columbine would have made of Counter-Strike and other superrealistic first-person shooters, the sort that allow kids and adults alike to play with an impressive arsenal of firearms and even form virtual militialike clans.

The U.S. Army has certainly taken an interest. They've recently introduced their own first-person shooter game: a Counter-Strike rip-off called America's Army. While nobody wants another Columbine, it seems that sponsoring a generation of killing machines will be encouraged – as long as it serves the interests of the state.

Meanwhile, over in China, the authorities are cracking down on Internet cafés, not because they're afraid of what access to unlimited information will lead to, but because it looks like an entire generation is about to go to seed playing Counter-Strike.

Maybe they'll all take up bowling.

Patrick Macias