Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

The frustrating, enduring debate over video games, violence, and guns

""tart banning things lets start with violent video games and violent movies"
Don't they have those games and movies everywhere else?"

'course they do. You know stockmule's is an aged GOP/NRA much debunked
talking point. Heaps on the board over years. This old, yet maybe new here:

We asked players, parents, developers, and experts to weigh in on how to change the conversation around gaming.

By Aja Romano@ajaromano Aug 26, 2019, 8:30am EDT

In the wake of two mass shootings earlier this month in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, the societal role of video games grabbed a familiar media spotlight. The El Paso shooter briefly referenced Call of Duty, a wildly popular game in which players assume the roles of soldiers during historical and fictional wartime, in his “manifesto.” And just this small mention of the video game seemed to have prompted President Donald Trump to return to a theme he’s emphasized before when looking to assign greater blame for violent incidents.

“We must stop the glorification of violence in our society,” he said in an August 5 press conference. “This includes the gruesome and grisly video games that are now commonplace. It is too easy today for troubled youth to surround themselves with a culture that celebrates violence.”

Trump’s statement suggesting a link between video games and real-world violence echoed sentiments shared by other lawmakers following the back-to-back mass shootings. It’s a response that major media outlets and retailers have also adopted of late; ESPN recently chose to delay broadcasting an esports tournament because of the shootings — a decision that seems to imply the network believes in a link between gaming and real-world violence. And Walmart made a controversial decision to temporarily remove all video game displays from its stores, even as it continues to openly sell guns.

But many members of the public, as well as researchers and some politicians, have counterargued that blaming video games sidesteps the real issue at the root of America’s mass shooting problem: a need for stronger gun control. ...
[...]
There’s no science proving a link between video games and real-world
violence. But that hasn’t quelled a debate that’s raged for decades.

Historically, video games have played a verifiable role in a handful of mass shootings, but the science linking video games to gun violence is murky. A vast body of psychology research, most of it conducted before 2015, argues strenuously that video games can contribute to increases in aggression. Yet much of this research has been contested by newer, contradictory findings from both psychologists and scholars in different academic fields. For example, Nickie Phillips .. https://www.sfc.edu/news/zconstiuents/~const-id/49 , a criminologist whose research deals with violence in popular media, told me that “most criminologists are dismissive of a causal link between media and crime,” and that they’re instead interested in questions of violence as a social construct and how that contributes to political discourse.

https://www.vox.com/2019/8/26/20754659/video-games-and-violence-debate-moral-panic-history