8/12/2019 In Defense of Violent Video Games

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In Defense of Violent Video Games

By Caleb Hendrick

In the wake of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, this nation found itselflocked once again in the circle of sadness, anger, and confusion that follows mass shootings.

Once again, this nation found itself asking itself what could be done to prevent another such

shooting from happening again.

Predictably, solutions began to fall along the traditional gun-rights/gun-control lines.

One demanded tighter controls on the sale and possession of guns, and the other explained at

length the need to issue more guns to more people so that people would think twice about

shooting someone.

The National Rifle Association, after its usual declaration that it was too soon after thetragedy to discuss gun control, identified a different culprit: Violent Video Games, amongst

other things.

NRA Chairman Wayne LaPierre launched a vicious tirade against games such as Bullet-

storm, Call of Duty, and Grand Theft Auto as the root cause of the violence amongst the youth

of America. He said, There exists in this country a callous, corrupt, and corrupting shadow

industry that sells, and sows, violence against its own people, through vicious, violent video

games.

Forgetting for the moment that the NRA recently released its own first person shootergame, and has endorsed gun related video games in the past; you may as well assume that

anyone who picks up a video game instantly transforms into a crazed murderer.

As a gamer myself, I can tell you that the notion that playing a violent video game

inherently makes someone more violent is utterly false. Cause a lot of other problems (such as

addiction and obesity) definitely, but certainly not violence.

For one thing, there is no correlation (which is not the same thing as causation) between

playing video games and violence. A study by the United Nations tracked the consumption of

video games (that is how many video games are purchased in a given year) against the numberof gun-related murders in the those countries. The countries that exhibited the greatest

number of video games purchased were the Netherlands and South Korea, both of which have

record low numbers of gun related deaths. The United States purchased two thirds less video

games, but has a higher number of gun related deaths that the rest of the other countries

studied combined.

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The trend actually goes downward, rather than upwards, which indicates that there is

no correlation between murdering someone with a gun and playing a video games. If you need

more proof, the FBI statistics on violent crime indicates that violent crime has been on the

decline since 2005, despite record sales of games like Halo 4 and Call of Duty: Black Ops 2.

Video Games are being purchased in record numbers, but violent crime is going down.

I, personally, find the notion that I am incapable from telling fiction from reality

insulting. Killing in fiction is far different than killing in reality. In fiction, there are not any

penalties for shooting another player. I also know that I myself am not going to be killed by

bullets on the screen that other players are firing at me.

The fear of a painful death, the relentless need of my body to be alive, and the

necessary know-how to fire a gun are also notably absent when I play video games. Holding

and using a gun is not, in any way, equivalent to holding a controller or using a mouse to play a

game.

For parents worried about the potential influence of video games on their kids, the

solution is simple. Dont let them play them. Believe it or not, this is something that hate video

games industry takes fairly seriously. After complaints in the early 1990s about the impact (or

potential impact) of violent games like Mortal Kombat on children the Entertainment

Software Ratings Board was created. The ESRB then came up with a rating system for games,

so that parents can know which games are appropriate for their kids to be playing. These

ratings range from E (appropriate for everyone to AO (adults only), the idea being that the

rating would discourage parents from allowing inappropriate games to be played by kids.

That is the way my parents did it. I was first introduced to video games in the mid

1990s and my experience withthem was rigidly controlled and enforced. The most violent

games I was allowed to play back then was Star Wars. I was not allowed to play games that my

parents felt were in appropriate for me.

If a parent does not want their kid to be playing Call ofDuty then that parent should

be exercising their authority and taking the game away from their kid. In the parent-child

relationship, the parent has all the power; not the other way around.

Playing video games does not cause violence. Banning them, or using them as ascapegoat for violence in America is a waste of time, effort, and will not keep children safe.