Jack Thompson is at it again, and this time he has his eye on the recent shoot out that occurred at North Illinois University earlier today. In an interview with Fox News, he presented the same arguments as with previous campus massacres and other violent incidents, pinning the blame once again on violent video games. You can read more about what Jack Thompson had to say, as well as the video interview in the full article after the jump.

Jack Thompson's "secret shopper" ploy along with his credit card-toting 15-year-old son continues. Thompson has recently given out a statement that he will file a lawsuit against Best Buy today for charges of selling M-rated games indiscriminately to minors in their online store.

Thompson will use Florida's Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act as his trump card to use against the retail sales mogul Best Buy. The controversial lawyer drafted a letter addressed to Best Buy's corporate counsel, part of which reads as:

Best Buy, despite promises made to the American people and to me personally, has continued to sell Mature-rated video games to children under seventeen years of age. Best Buy has been doing this at its cash registers here in Miami, Florida, and it is presently doing so, this very moment, at www.bestbuy.com, as it sells Mature-rated games to anyone of any age with no real age verification whatsoever.

At this point it should be noted that according to the Federal Trade Commission, the mere use of a credit card is already an acceptable proof that the buyer is of 18 years of age, since most teenagers under 17 years cannot be issued credit cards.

How will ole' Jack Thompson fare this time? It looks like he is indeed on a roll, what with his recent plea to ban Manhunt 2 through Fox News. Do stay tuned for more updates!

 Due to the recent tragic event at the campus of Virginia Tech, Jack Thompson has been increasing his efforts to get media exposure. Gaming news site, GameAlmighty has posted a report on his latest open letter. This time it is addressed to Bill Gates:

April 18, 2007

Bill Gates

Microsoft

1 Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 98052 Via Fax and e-mail

Dear Mr. Gates:

On Monday, April 16, at 3:10 pm, I was a guest, as I often have been in the past, on the Fox News Channel. News anchor Bill Hemmer asked me to profile the Virginia Tech rampage killer. I did so, noting that until that day the worst school massacre in world history was at the hands of Robert Steinhaeuser, who literally trained on the Microsoft on-line, hyper-violent shooter game, Counterstrike. I mentioned your company’s game by name. I explained that the rehearsal for such a massacre is key to being able to pull it off, as efficiently as Cho, whose name we didn’t even know at the time. Cho and Steinhaeuser were able to do what they did the first time because it was not the first time. This is why the military uses this same virtual reality simulation to train soldiers to want to kill and how to kill calmly, as the witnesses of Cho said he did...

Get the rest of the letter to Bill after the jump.

First and foremost, we would like to give our sincerest condolences to the family and friends of those 32 people (33 including the gunman) involved in today's shootout at the Virginia Tech campus. While everyone is still reeling in shock from the events at Norris Hall this morning, we share everyone's sentiment that it is indeed a horrible tragedy. Already, CNN is even calling it the deadliest shooting in U.S. history.

But why post something that's not gaming related? Well, we would have wanted to avoid this whole issue altogether, however, someone had apparently brought videogames (something oh so close to all of our hearts) into the picture. Hence, the relevancy to these blogs.

As Kotaku reports, Jack Thompson spoke on FOXNews about the Virgina Tech shooting, saying that the massacre is linked to videogames. Now, we do not know to what extent Jack Thompson said this and we do not know the exact context in which the attorney said this. While it's pretty hard to form any substantial and unbiased judgment from such a lack of details, CobaltBlue, as a comment to Kotaku's post, sheds some light on what happened in FOXNews for us:

@possiblymalignant: Fox News Live was calling him a "School Shooting Specialist", or that's what he's calling himself now. All he talked about though was linking video games and "murder simulators" to school shootings. I guess we can look forward to a new Jack Thompson crusade now.

Maybe there is more to Thompson's statement than just "the Virgina Tech shooting was due to videogames" after all? And we have yet to find an actual video, transcript, or news clipping from FOXNews or any other news source. For now, this is what we have.

Pic courtesy of FOXNews.

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Update: We've managed to grab the Fox News interview with Jack Thompson over at YouTube which was uploaded by rgbyhkr. Here's the clip.