Video game

Trump, Republican Focus On Video Games And ‘Call Of Duty’ After Mass Shootings Is A Transparent Distraction – Forbes


After two horrific mass shootings over the weekend, one with 22 killed in an El Paso Walmart and 10 killed in a bar in Dayton, Ohio, Republican lawmakers and President Donald Trump have returned to a familiar old scapegoat, video games.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R) and Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick (R) have both cited video games as one of the possible causes of the shooting, rhetoric that Donald Trump himself has now echoed.

“We must stop the glorification of violence in our society,” Trump said in an address today. “This includes the gruesome and grizzly video games that are now commonplace.”

Trump’s words have actively caused several video game stocks to tumble today, EA, Activision and Take Two specifically, with Activision Blizzard taking the worst hit, a 6.1% drop, likely because of an additional wrinkle, the fact that its signature franchise, Call of Duty, was “named” in the El Paso shooter’s manifesto.

The problem is that it being named is the full extent of what’s being reported by most outlets, and the reference to Call of Duty in the manifesto is actually the exact opposite of the assumption that the game was somehow inspirational for the attack. Warning, an excerpt of the manifesto follows. Here’s the exact context and the only reference to Call of Duty:

“Remember: it is not cowardly to pick low-hanging fruit,” the shooter wrote. “AKA Don’t attack heavily guarded areas to fulfill your super soldier COD fantasy. Attack low security targets.”

In other words, the only reference to the game is that the shooter says attacks should not be carried out like it’s a Call of Duty mission. And yet I heard this exact sentence described by Republican Lt. Gov Dan Patrick as saying the shooter talks about “living out his super soldier fantasy in Call of Duty,” precisely the opposite of what the text says.

Naturally, all of this is a massive, clumsy distraction from the real issues that surround these two attacks. Reading the rest of the manifesto (which I would not recommend), the entire thing a barrage of horrifying, racist talking points directed against Hispanics, and often, in parts, identical to language the President and certain Fox hosts have used in the past.

Of course, the other half of the equation is access to high powered weaponry, something Republicans do not want to discuss in the least, thanks to the views of their base and their reliance on the support of the NRA. This is why they look for causes, any causes, other than gun laws in the US, including video games, and another recent catch-all, mental health issues, which Trump has also brought up.

Study after study has shown that video games do not lead to an increase violent behavior, despite repeated, unsubstantiated claims to the contrary in moments like this. Furthermore, video games were secured First Amendment protection as an art form in 2011 when California attempted to criminalize the sale of violent video games to minors. Of all people, it was Justice Antonin Scalia who wrote the most compelling defense of the games, and dismissal of science trying to “prove” their harmful effects:

“The State’s evidence is not compelling,” Scalia’s opinion reads. “California relies primarily on the research of Dr. Craig Anderson and a few other research psychologists whose studies purport to show a connection between exposure to violent video games and harmful effects on children. These studies have been rejected by every court to consider them, and with good reason: They do not prove that violent video games cause minors to act aggressively (which would at least be a beginning). Instead, “[n]early all of the research is based on correlation, not evidence of causation, and most of the studies suffer from significant, admitted flaws in methodology.” They show at best some correlation between exposure to violent entertainment and minuscule real-world effects, such as children’s feeling more aggressive or making louder noises in the few minutes after playing a violent game than after playing a nonviolent game.”

Past the science, statistics are clear as well. A popular type of tweet is making the rounds in the wake of these massacres, showing just many other nations have next to no mass shootings, compared to the US’s hundreds, and it reflects real-world data on how infrequent these kinds of massacres are in other countries.

Nearly all of these other countries are playing almost all of the exact same video games as children, teens and adults in the United States, but even in a gaming haven like Japan, mass shootings are nearly non-existent due to heavily restrictive gun laws, not any action taken against violent video games. A series like Call of Duty sells anywhere from 15 to 30 million copies worldwide every single year, but a single reference in a manifesto expressly saying that real-life mass shootings are not like the game has generated all of this noise.

This distraction is dangerous. Every day we waste yelling about the junk science behind trying to link video games to mass murder is one we do not focus on the very, very apparent issues actually at play here, from the radicalization of young white supremacists to the ability of those radicalized to access enormously deadly weaponry with ease to carry out these attacks. Continuing to have this debate using games as a scapegoat isn’t just annoying, it’s immoral and actively harmful.





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