Navy Yard Shooting Video Games Blamed Again

Don't Blame Violent Video Games for Monday's Mass Shooting

It'southward been a piddling over 24 hours since Aaron Alexis allegedly opened fire at the D.C. Navy K and killed 12 people. And in that brusque fourth dimension, Alexis's video game consumption, along with the toxic notion that violent video games impale people, has already been trotted out.

This commodity is from the archive of our partner .

It's been a lilliputian over 24 hours since Aaron Alexis allegedly opened fire at the D.C. Navy One thousand and allegedly killed 12 people. And in that short time, Alexis's video game consumption, along with the toxic notion that violent video games kill people, has already been trotted out.

"Aaron Alexis: Washington navy yard gunman 'obsessed with violent video games'" blares the headline fromThe Telegraph. That headline implicitly hints that vehement video games is one of the reasons Alexis killed people. Good Forenoon America and The Mirror are running like stories, equally is The Blaze.

The Telegraph, for 1, makes the connection explicit: "The Washington Navy Yard gunman Aaron Alexis played violent video games including Call of Duty for up to xvi hours at a time and friends believe it could have pushed him towards condign a mass murderer," they write. Permit'due south have one moment to ponder that:The Telegraph has deferred to Alexis'south friend as an practiced in the psychology of a mass murderer.

The race to pivot the blame of mass shootings on video games has become a convenient and successful trope. Newspapers were quick to point out that Kingdom of norway mass shooter Anders Breivik played Earth of Warcraft and Call of Duty. Adam Lanza, the Newtown shooter, played video games likeCall of Duty, too, which the NRA will never let you forget. And, yes, these shooters do accept video game play in mutual — just that doesn't mean that video games are to blame.

Later on all, think about how prevalent video games take come in contempo years. Remember of the millions of people who playGlobe of Warcraft,Phone call of Duty, and similarly violent titles. If video games were really the root of all evil, then logic would suggest that at that place would be more fierce gun crimes as at to the lowest degree a partial result. That only isn't happening.The Washington Mail service'south Max Fisher looked at video game consumption around the world in the wake of the Newtown shooting:

In fact, countries where video game consumption is highest tend to be some of the safest countries in the world, likely a production of the fact that adult or rich countries, where consumers can afford expensive games, have on average much less violent crime

The U.S., which doesn't spend as much on video games as countries like South Korea, Nihon and the netherlands, is actually an outlier when it comes to gun violence.

So possibly everyone in Republic of korea, Japan and the Netherlands is just playing non-violent games likePetty Big Planet or NBA 2k13? They're non, but let'due south just assume that for the moment. The Entertainment Consumers Association, the lobbying arm of the video game industry, specifically points out that the U.S. industry has been dominated by shooter games in contempo years. And in those years, the crime rate has actually gone down:

While video game sales accept increased, violent law-breaking has been steadily decreasing according to FBI statistics. In 2011, video game sales increased to over $27 billion dollars and vehement crimes nationwide decreased iii.8 pct from 2010. Since 2002, violent crime has decreased 15.5 percent. This is all during the time when games similar Call of Duty and Halo have dominated sales.

Couple that with Fisher'southward findings and it's more than show that the correlation between video games causing your average gamer to go on a rampage are slim. And still, these video games practice seem to be the mutual thread betwixt Lanza, Breivik, and Alexis ...

Back in 1999, in the wake of the Columbine shooting, Congress asked the National Academy of Sciences to effigy out if there was a connection between shootings and tearing video games. Information technology was office of the Missing, Exploited, Runaway Children Protections Deed. What that study found is that children, by and large, aren't afflicted by the fantasy of video games. Katherine Newman, the Johns Hopkins professor who headed upward the report, concluded the post-obit in her book on the discipline:

Millions of young people play video games full of fistfights, blazing guns, and body slams. Bodies litter the flooring in many of our most popular films. Nonetheless only a minuscule fraction of the consumers become violent. Hence, if there is an effect, children are not all as susceptible to it.

This gets at the thought of causation versus symptom. What if, instead of looking at video games equally the cause of Alexis's, Breivik'south, and Lanza's violence, we expect at their video game obsessions as symptoms of deeper problems?

There have been studies that show that there is a link between depression and obsessive video game use. This is not to say that depressed people are mass shooters, only that video game usage tin can be a sign that someone may need help. Even so, however, saying video causes low is besides simple. "Depression and pathological gaming seem to be truly co-morbid. Where they make each other worse," Iowa State University'due south Dr. Douglas Gentle told the site Rock Paper Shotgun.

That brings the states back to Alexis. Hither'due south Alexis's friend's "diagnosis":

He could be in the game all day and all dark. I think games might exist what pushed him that way. He always had this fright people would steal his stuff so that's why he would carry his gun all the time. He would carry it when he was helping out in the eating house which scared my customers.

Buried underneath that video game theorem is an chestnut nearly how Alexis carried a gun on himself at all times — a legitimately disturbing fact that seems much more than relevant to Monday's horrific shooting than the video games he played.

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.

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Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2013/09/dont-blame-violent-video-games-mondays-mass-shooting/311003/

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