US President Trump Blames Violent Video Games For Mass Shootings, And Why He's Dead Wrong

Over 24 hours starting Saturday, the US saw two horrific mass shootings, one in El Paso, Texas, and the other in Dayton, Ohio.

But instead of acting decisively to end this type of violence once and for all, the usual parties are making all the usual disingenuous noise in order to pass the buck. Worse, blame it all on video games. But the facts disagree.

Reuters

In less than a day, 47 people were murdered in cold blood in the US. At least 21 were killed and 26 injured in Texas, with nine killed and dozens injured in Ohio.

In both cases, the shooters were in possession of deadly assault rifles that they had no business owning, but are nonetheless legal in the US, and were white males, the former being 21-year-old Patrick Crusius and the latter 24-year-old Connor Betts.

How the government has responded

According to US President Donal Trump, and indeed the entire Republican party, video games are the real problem.

The spin began just a few hours after the second shooting. Republican leaders, when interviewed, once more cast doubt on whether gun control was actually the solution here. They don't want that. So instead they began pulling out all the old tired clich¨¦s in order to steer the conversation elsewhere.

The cherry on the cake here though is Trump blaming video games for the violent shootings.

"We must stop the glorification of violence in our society," Trump said in his Monday address. "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. We must stop or substantially reduce this."

The truth should be obvious

At this point, the "video games cause violence" argument is so old and played out, that you have to expect someone to suggest it after every mass shooting. It's a ridiculous statement to make given that the US doesn't have a monopoly on gaming.

For instance, the Pew Research Center said in 2015 that 49 percent of American adults (roughly equal numbers of men and women) play video games, be it on a computer, TV, console, or smartphone. According to gaming market research company NewZoo, that was closer to about 54 percent in 2018, spending with those gamers spending about $30 billion in the process.

Now, the same company estimates about 53 percent of the population of Japan played video games in 2018. Of course, they have laws banning the possession, carrying, selling, or buying of handguns or rifles.

In 2014, Japan saw six people killed by gun violence. The US saw over 33,000 deaths.

Right now, the US is second in the world as far as the size of its video game market, with 178.7 million players. Japan is in third with 67.6 million players. Yet it doesn't make sense that the the gap in the number of gun deaths should be that high.

As far as the biggest games market goes, China leads with 619.5 million players, and spent $37.9 billion in the process. Now, the gunpolicy.org resource doesn't have the total gun deaths in China. What they do have however is a total number of homicides using any means (even not guns), which was 8,634 in 2016. The US on the other hand, that same year had 14,415 homicides only caused by guns, not even taking into account knife attacks, strangling, etc.

Similarly, 54 percent of the population of South Korea plays video games as of 2018. And thanks to their strict gun laws, they saw just five gun deaths in 2016.

NewZoo

NewZoo

Both these charts are to show data comparing US to countries like China, Japan and South Korea, among others. Even if we assume the amount of violent first person games played in all countries to be the same, the US still sticks out as a giant flashlight with its bone-chilling number of gun-related violence and death in real life.

And in chart two, the US doesn't even feature in the Top 5 when it comes to Fortnite and PUBG games, arguably the most played shooting games right now. But yes, tell me more about how violent video games are the problem.

Video games might actually reduce violent crime

In fact, there's an older study from 2011 by Scott Cunningham, Benjamin Engelst?tter, and Michael R Ward. They studied video games and their effect on "incapacitation". Basically, that if you're sitting at home playing video games, you're not going out to commit gun violence.

They looked at the "volume of sales of violent video games in a week among the top 50 best-selling video games from 2005-2008 - and relate it to a marker for violent behaviors - weekly aggregate violent crime incidents from the National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS)." It's similar to extra-curricular school activities and the like, designed to keep kids out of mischief.

And the researchers found that when a very popular violent video game comes out, the rate of violent crime goes down, not up.

In the case of the Ohio shooting, authorities have not yet been able to determine a motive. In the case of Crusius though, things are a little more clear. Shortly before embarking on his killing spree, he posted an extremist, white supremacist manifesto on the anonymous message board 8chan. The site is known for being a breeding ground of violent racists, misogynists, and worse.

No one with an ounce of sense can actually believe violent video games spur kids on to violent crimes. Unless of course those parents believe they've raised emotionless sociopaths who also somehow have no self-restraint when it comes to violence.

No, video games are the scapegoat here to avoid the topic of gun control, something the US has sorely needed for decades. It's high time the US learnt from countries like Australia and New Zealand that passed sweeping gun reform laws thanks to strong leaders, in the face of mindless mass shootings, making gun ownership extremely difficult. Instead, they're probably going to try and do something stupid like ban Call of Duty, which won't solve the problem anyway. Like always.