PLATTSBURGH, N.Y. (WCAX) The U.S. has seen more mass shootings in 2019 than there have been days. CBS News reports an average of more than one mass shooting a day, the most since 2016.
Many politicians including President Trump blame violent movies and video games for some of the tragedies. But is that accurate? Our Kelly O’Brien is looking into it. She spoke with mental health professionals and those in the gaming community to see their take on the president’s accusations, and they felt very differently than President Trump, one even calling video games a scapegoat.
You could call Armand Langevin a gamer.
“I’ve actually pretty much dedicated my life to it,” he said.
His love for the games started at a young age and has grown into quite the collection
“I don’t really stick to a specific genre, I play a lot of everything,” Langevin said.
Playing each came, accomplishing each mission is a rewarding feeling.
“You go through challenges but once you achieve those challenges, you have this sense that you have actually achieved something,” Langevin said.
You might catch him with weapons in his hands on screen but in real life?
“I’ve played the first-person shooters, the shoot ’em up games that people say are the reasons behind these acts of violence and you don’t see me showing up to work and shooting up the place,” he said.
But the president feels differently and said so right after a deadly weekend marked by mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton.
“We must stop the glorification of violence in society. This includes the gruesome and grisly video games that are now commonplace,” the president said.
“It’s a popular, lazy smoke screen,” said Nick Dubay, a mental health counselor in Plattsburgh who hosts the Mental Health Survival Guide Podcast. “We’ve been blaming video games ever since they were invented but nobody is doing anything about it.”
Dubay is passionate about the issue of video games, mental health and violence.
“We have studies upon studies upon studies that cannot find a legitimate link or correlation between violent video games and violence in real life,” he said.
Dubay says it’s other things left under the rug that are fueling the violence throughout our country.
“Hatred, racism, nationalism lead to violence, but were not blaming those things,” he said.
He said it’s time to stop blaming video games or even violent movies and take a deeper look at the problem.
“If somebody is struggling with hatred or struggling with depression or struggling with anxiety, we need to be able to help them,” Dubay said.
Langevin says video games help calm the nerves that come with those everyday-life struggles.
“Video games kind of helped me escape from the everyday monotony, it just gave me somewhere to go where I didn’t feel as alone,” he said.
A reminder– violent video games have ratings. Most of them you need to be 18 or older to buy or rent.
