A video game is being blamed for a real-life murder.  No, really.

A teen in Thailand is accused of robbing and murdering a cab driver — and apparently he confessed to having done so — to imitate scenes from the game “Grand Theft Auto.”

Police said the youth, an obsessive player of the video game, showed no sign of mental problems during questioning and had confessed to committing the crime explicitly because of the game.

“He said he wanted to find out if it was as easy in real life to rob a taxi as it was in the game,” chief investigator Veeravit Pipattanasak told Reuters.

He wanted to find out if robbing someone was really as easy as the game depicted?  So why did he not stop at robbing him?  Why kill the person?

In cases like this, a lot of people immediately start blaming the video games.  This suspect, apparently, was a frequent player of the game.  I’ve watched a lot of television in my time, and I’ve seen lots of robberies, killings, and all other types of delinquency being committed by various characters in various shows.  You can spend about a week watching a soap opera and pretty much see a little of everything when it comes to bad behavior.

I’ve never once planned to have an affair with someone, rob someone, or kill someone, just to see if it’s really as easy in real life as it is depicted in something that’s fictional.

The next time someone says video games should be banned because they spawn such bad behavior, I want to ask that specific person if they think that they’d seriously go kill someone if they sat down and played “Grand Theft Auto.”  Really.  Would that be all it took for them?

That’s not to say that there isn’t a line that gets crossed a little too often.  But anyone who would seriously go emulate such extreme behavior has a lot more going on than just being a little too hooked on a video game; and if just being exposed to violent storylines is enough to send such people over the proverbial edge, where do the bans stop?

Do we just lock everyone into sound-proof rooms where they can have no contact with other people and no contact with any “dangerous” ideas?

After all, even the Bible contains stories of murder.