Video Games And Shootings

In my most recent essay I wrote of the violence attributed to video games in light of various shootings and other tragedies that occurred in the past year or so. In this essay I argued that despite their violent content, video games are not completely to blame for acts of violence committed by children. Throughout this essay I tried to convince the reader by, first, establishing my own credibility with video games, then sharing my own experiences with violent games, and providing both empirical data and valuable insight from trusted sources.

People have always been looking for a reason why horrible things happen. The media is quick to blame video games as the target and cause of many shootings that have occurred, ever since Columbine and Quake. People have been blaming video games for violence for years now, ever since violent video games have been made. News reports blame video games more and more for each shooting, telling the public how this person played video games for x amount of hours a day, and that video games caused him or her to shoot people, and how video games encourage and reward violence. Anti-video game lobbyists have been campaigning to have violence removed from video games, citing resources that they themselves have created as reasons for

Guns. Blood. Death. Three of the most prominent words or actions used to describe video games. Arum Steinbeck wakes up, goes to school, comes home and plays video games. His face glued to the television, he is exposed to gruesome acts of violence. Nonetheless, Arum Steinbeck is not a serial killer. How is this possible? Adolescents who play video games are killers. Dead wrong. 90% of children in the US play video games and 90% of those children play games that involved mature content. Yet, it is possible that not one of these children will grow up to commit serious acts of violence. For most of the children who do end up committing crimes other factors are involved in the equation nonetheless, society tends to blame what they cannot explain. It is easier to blame video games than to accept responsibility for our actions. To put a seranio to words say there is an adolescent drunk driver who gets into a car accident and kills a family. When in court the intoxicated driver will plead not guilty putting the blame on anyone besides themselves. We have fingers to point them. People get in trouble with the law and need a way out, society has made videogame companies a revolving door of allegations that a court of law should find the person rather than the fictional game responsible. In summary, violent video games do not cause real life violence, though some people seems to wish it did.

In fact, according to ProCon, “Gun violence is less prevalent in countries with high video game usage.” One such country is Japan, whose gun-related crime rate is significantly lower than our own. “Even though U.S. gun violence is high, the nine other countries with the highest video game usage have some of the lowest violent crime rates” (ProCon). This suggests that video games honestly do not impact violence. A published report over targeted school violence and its influence described in the ProCon article found that “of the 41 attackers studied, 27% had an interest in violent movies, 24% in violent books, and 37% exhibited interest in their own violent writings, while only 12% showed interest in violent video games. The report did not find a relationship between playing violent video games and school shootings.” This conclusion supports the argument that violent video games are not to be blamed for gun violence--particularly mass

Furthermore, no one is using video games as any sort of indicator of possible future violent behavior. The blame only comes after a major violent incident. Partially, this is because of how ubiquitous gaming has become. A study in 1996 showed that 98.7 percent of children, regardless of gender, had played video games, with violent games being particularly popular with males (93 percent had played fighting game “Street Fighter II” alone.) That was just in 1996, meaning the number has surely grown since then. With that many people playing video games, it’s almost impossible to find a crime that can’t be blamed on video games with the “They played games, that must be the cause” argument. In truth, the only useful indicator of potential future violence (as reported in a 2007 Secret Service report) was the person in question saying they wish to perform violent acts.(Ferguson)

To begin with, video games are something kids, teens, and even adults enjoy playing every day. Video games have provided people endless hours of entertainment to people across the globe, yet people seemingly want to get rid of video games altogether. Whenever any sort of crime occurs and a report comes out that the individual plays video games, video games take the blame rather than the person who committed the crime. Video games tend to be a very common scapegoat for causing violence. However, video games may not be the cause of the crime or issue at all.

People say that video games cause players to go on murderous rampages in real life because they copy intense video game content, but this is completely false. Extensive documentation on the mental health of mass shooters exists, and it cannot be ignored. These documented analyses explain the violence of these people. According to Forbes writer Eric Kain, “The age and gender of many mass shooters, including Columbine’s, places them right in the target demographic for first-person-shooter (and most other) video games. And people between ages 18 and 25 also tend to report the highest rates of mental-health issues. Harris and Klebold’s complex mental-health problems have been well documented” (Kain). The fact that the shooters at Columbine had mental health issues and other mass shooters fall in the target range for mental health issues shows that games take no blame for the shootings. The fault belongs to the person and the person alone. “To hold up a few sensational examples as causal evidence between violent games and violent acts ignores the millions of other young men and women who play violent games and never go on a shooting spree in real life” (Kain). The fact that a person plays violent video games does not mean that person will go on a shooting spree in real life. Video games do not cause mass shootings, but mental health issues

Violent video games are contributing to violent behaviors in the youth and teenagers of America. Youth violence is a seemingly increasing problem in the United States. Juvenile centers are gaining new residents each day.This violence is brought on by an increase in video game violence. Many of the newly developed games are killing simulators which train players for real world violence. There seems to be a lack in evidence against video games. “According to the federal crime statistics, the rate of juvenile violent crime in the United States is at a 30-year low” (Jenkins 32). So called links between video games and youth violence are said to be found, but these links are coming from people who solely research media violence.

Look back several years and one can find various articles blaming video games for inciting violence in youths across the nation. Nowadays people laugh at that very notion of gaming inciting violence. In fact, video games are the main reason I myself have a social life at all. Nearly every friend I have came from our mutual enjoyment of gaming. Instead of sitting on a couch watching television alone, I can journey across foreign lands with friends, compete with or against them in competitive games and then go to school and tell my other friends about my experiences the next

Because the sale of video games with violent content have risen through the years, while the rate of crime committed by youths has decline. Along with that the number of high school students participating in fights has also decline from 43% to 25% within the span of 22 years. Because of violent video games the younger generation are occupied playing videos games to go commit or participate in any violent crimes.

In today?s world more and more teens are playing video games. Many people think its effecting the way teens behave. There are reports that mature video games are the cause of shootings, but there is much more evidence that entails a different cause. In ?10-Country Comparisons Suggest Little Or No Link Between Video Games And Gun Murders? written by Max Fisher states ?Data suggest a slight downward shift in violence as video game consumption increases?. This suggest that video games have a positive effect on gun violence. School shootings have been blamed on violent video games but there are many other things not included, like they may have been bullied at school or a mental issue. So some of the blame is left not answered for. The amount of video game consumption in America is much like other places in the world that has significantly fewer gun deaths. (Kain, Eric Violent Video Games 2015) According to Kain and Eric,? The number of violent youth offenders in the United States fell by more than half between 1994 and 2010 while video game sales doubled

Some people believe violent video games tend to make people more violent. In 1999 Columbine High School shootings that got many Americans thinking about violent video games (Toppo). It shows that the war on video games was started on evidence that counters itself. People need something to blame for a tragedy and video games are still relatively new and misunderstood by

Video games software and hardware are among one of the most used consumed electronic devices. My father would tell me how he and his friends used to play arcade games such as Pac-Man, Space Invaders, and Galaxian in his hometown in Guatemala. I remember I would watch him playing Super Mario 64 on our Nintendo 64 when I was a toddler. Several of my peers grew up playing video games on Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft consoles. Millions of consoles have been sold and millions of people have played at least of video game. It has become one of those common household electronics such as televisions, cell phones, and computers. However, video games have never had complete approval from every person is society. There are individuals who view video games as a nuisance, a distraction, a waste of time and money. There are some people who have used video games as a scapegoat in the aftermath of violent and tragic events. Video games with mature themes (such as violence, blood, gore, drugs, innuendo, etc.) have been blamed for making the perpetrators of crimes commit acts of violence. While I can see how video games can viewed as “influencing violence” at first sight, my issue with blaming video games is the lack of support for their argument. This raises the question, “Are video games linked to acts of crime and violence?” and “If so, what evidence suggests that they

The link between videogames and crime have a very suspicious relationship and the tie between these two different things are even more weirder. This all started when sceptics traced the Columbine massacre to the most important violent video game ever released the ancestor to games like COD or GTA or any game that has blood, guns, and violence.This game is called “Doom”. Doom’s premise is the player killing demons but the thing is that sceptics are just sceptics no facts to back it up. The only “fact” they had is that the killers in the massacre were fans of Doom, that's it, and on top of that, this massacre was in 1999, and now it’s almost been 2 decades. Those 2 measly decades were when violent video games really started to rise, and statistics show that fewer crimes have occurred since. Scientists in 2010 conducted a research and estimated that in 1990, crimes in the U.S were almost 2 million while video games had a low 2 billion in revenue. Around 2005-

Video games have always been a controversial type of entertainment, that may come from how relatively new video games are compared to other mediums of entertainment[1]. Maybe because of that when a violent crime occurs and the culprit has played a lot of games the media is quick to point at violent games as the reason for the crime, but is that true or are the media just biased or looking for quick views, this report aims to answer that question.