By Chris Kavan - 01/06/13 at 02:48 PM CT
The recent tragedy that took place at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut has opened up multiple avenues of debate. While much of the attention has been devoted to gun control, the NRA had to weigh in and, unsurprisingly, brought up the specter of violence in the media to shift the burden of blame.
In the words of NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre, taken from his speech given on Dec. 21:
"And here’s another dirty little truth that the media try their best to conceal. There exists in this country, sadly, a callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry that sells and stows violence against its own people. Through vicious, violent video games with names like “Bullet Storm,” “Grand Theft Auto,” “Mortal Kombat,” and “Splatterhouse.”
And here’s one, it’s called “Kindergarten Killers.” It’s been online for 10 years. How come my research staff can find it, and all of yours couldn’t? Or didn’t want anyone to know you had found it? Add another hurricane, add another natural disaster. I mean we have blood-soaked films out there, like “American Psycho,” “Natural Born Killers.” They’re aired like propaganda loops on Splatterdays and every single day."
Let's see... Kindergarten Killers is an obscure flash game that I doubt most people have even heard about until LaPierre mentioned it. Splatterhouse is an over-the-top beat em up that, while quite gory, features no gun violence that I know of. Mortal Kombat has been the target for those citing violent video games being a bad influence ever since it was released... and once again features no guns. Bullet Storm features a lot of shooting - but, have you seen the game play? It's not exactly a realistic scenario. Grand Theft Auto is the closest thing you can get to real life - but you would think with the millions of copies sold, there would be a lot more people flying off the handle after they get done running over pedestrians and blowing up cars. I notice they don't mention anything about games like Call of Duty or Modern Warfare where you're actively shooting other people in much more realistic environment. Go figure.
There are plenty of studies about violent video games and their effect on behavior. If you don't feel like reading a lot - it boils down to this - while some studies do show increased aggression and decreased prosocial behavior with violent games, almost all studies conclude that playing violent games does not lead to violent activity. How many M-rated games are floating around out there? Hundreds of millions - you would think if there was a link, there would be hundreds of thousands of people (if no more) getting all violent after a session of Borderlands or Far Cry 3 or whatever they have been playing. But, guess what, there's not!
Yet that doesn't stop something like a community in Southington, Connecticut from holding a good old-fashioned book burning - or in this case, game destruction. Now, they are quick to say they don't believe violent video games were the cause of the shootings, but rather the continuous stream of violence in all kinds of media are the cause (yet I don't see them calling for the destruction of R-rated movies and CDs with "Explicit Content").
Times writer Christopher J. Ferguson has come up with an excellent response that echoes my own thoughts. My favorite line is here:
"At this point, we don’t know much about Adam Lanza’s media use history. Given that, as researchers Cheryl Olson and Lawrence Kutner note in their book Grand Theft Childhood, almost all young males play violent video games at least occasionally, it’s playing the odds to say Lanza did too. But that has all the predictive power of saying that he sometimes wore sneakers or ate breakfast. In their 2002 evaluation of school shooters, the U.S. Secret Service found no evidence to suggest that these perpetrators consume more media violence than anyone else."
That says more than anything - I bet everyone reading this piece has played violent games at one time. I've played them since their inception and continue to do so. But you know what games cause the greatest aggression in me? Not Grand Theft Auto or Metal Gear or Resistance - no, I tend to get angry when things don't work out well - typically fighting games, platformers and even casual games - and by violence I mean I curse like a sailor and (though not lately) throw my controller in frustration. But I don't go out and shoot some guy in the face because I couldn't beat someone's time on Pac Man Championship Edition DX. I also don't carjack someone because I can do that in a game either.
It seems whenever something terrible happens that results in multiple deaths, the finger gets pointed in many directions. Yet in this I am sure: violent games (or movies or TV or books for that matter) or not the problem. We already have a rating system and it's there for a reason. If you don't want your child playing these games, then by all means pay attention to those ratings (and who they hang out with when not at home). I've been playing them all my life and I've turned out just fine.
Comments
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 01/19/13 at 02:09 PM CT
It's pretty dumb to associate shootings with violent games. Your comment that all young males play violent games at one time or another really hits the nail on the head: Even before videogames were capable of displaying graphic violence, kids of our generation (and earlier) were playing "War" or "Cowboys & Indians" in real life with cap guns, suction-cup arrows, and other things.
