I haven't played Monopoly in quite some time but I do recall getting into a huff when I was a kid when I would lose, which was most of the time. I look back fondly on the game but also see it not so much as a game of strategy but instead a game of chance.
The people in Oklahoma that decided to start an all out brawl which later resulted in shots fired felt differently and unfortunately, they were adults.
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This happened on Thanksgiving weekend of all times and was near Tulsa, Oklahoma. Having never been to Oklahoma I do not know what their gun laws are like but I would imagine since it is a very conservative state, that the gun laws are pretty relaxed. More relaxed than John Ronald Dewayne Armstrong was after the game of Monopoly (combined with heavy drinking of course) turned violent.
According to other family members the shouting turned into a physical fight and then later John pulled a handgun on his step-father and step-sister, who were apparently also playing the famous board game.
Now, while this is a crazy story... why am I featuring it on my channel where I normally talk about how irresponsible the media is in reporting the news? It is because this story wouldn't have gained any traction if it wasn't for the fact that the usual suspects in the media can turn it into a gun control issue. Newsweek is where I first discovered this story and if you bother to read it (I encourage you not to) you will find that they spend very little time talking about the actual incident but instead spend 2/3 of the article focusing on aspects of "gun control" that need to be improved. Basically it is a political piece that wasn't at all concerned about the people involved but instead was using it, as the media does, to try to further some sort of political agenda.
One thing that they don't like to mention in the headlines was that even though a shot was fired intentionally into the ground, no one was injured and it was that shot that actually ended the fracas.
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Another funny aspect about this apparently rage-inducing yet still one of the most popular tabletop games of all time is that a survey was one done where it was shown that nearly half of all American households have banned Monopoly from being played during "game nights" or other family gatherings because of the fights that the game causes.
I always felt like Monopoly depended largely on who was lucky enough to land on certain properties on their first time around the board. I also always thought that Boardwalk and Park Place were overrated as properties and the higher priced properties that are just before them are the real gold mines. I don't really know. I don't think I have ever played a game of Monopoly to completion because it is pretty easy to determine relatively early on who is going to win.
Why play rage-inducing games with family members when you can just go online and play literally anything and get chewed out by a teenager for not being good enough at it?
