Video Games and Television Violence Aren’t the Problem

Posted on December 17, 2012 at 10:43 am by Bob Cesca

During yesterday’s Meet the Press, violence in video games and the media was brought up as a possible cause of gun violence in America and I couldn’t disagree more. The rate of gun violence in Japan, England, Canada and so forth is a mere fraction of America’s rate, and yet they have the same level of violence in their video games and television shows.

There’s a gun culture in America that worships these firearms as part of Americana, and it has to end. This crisis is about guns, first and foremost, and the mental health of the people who attain them.

My concern is the gun fetishists will use their power to skew the trajectory of this debate in the wrong direction, like always, and any new gun control laws will be watered down in the process of looping in laws about video games and media, not to mention surveillance-state post-9/11 laws involving profiling and over-the-top security measures (like arming school officials) that will invariably be proposed by Bush era PATRIOT Act zealots.

It’s the guns.

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  • zirgar

    The gun nuts task isn’t difficult; all they have to do is appeal to people’s baser instincts, such as fear and anger, and their job is practically done. Whereas gun control people have to overcome all of that to even begin to make people listen–ours is a Sisyphean struggle, but maybe this time we’ll finally be able to get that giant boulder to stay on top of the hill.

  • GrafZeppelin127

    My latest DK Diary: A Reflection on Mental Illness from a Former High School Teacher.

    Basically it’s about an incident where I somewhat clumsily described a student’s alarming behavior and the parent took it to mean I called the student a bad name. Any chance of helping this kid went out the window as everyone occupied themselves with What That Teacher Said and How That Teacher Should Be Punished For Saying It.

    The point is that we sometimes fail to nip mental illness in the bud because we’re afraid to, and therefore can’t, tell parents the truth about their kids, for fear of becoming the subject of the wrong conversation.

    • http://drangedinaz.wordpress.com/ IrishGrrrl

      Mental Illness is a VERY difficult subject in our culture. And then to be the first one to really address it with their parents AND coming from a H.S. Teacher (the role being routinely vilified, blamed for all kinds of ills that you have no control over)……

      Teenagers act weird enough as it is but that’s when a lot of mental illness manifests itself. I bet every HS teacher in America has a similar story. I know as a college prof, teaching computer programming to nerdy introverted kids who wanted to be the next Bill Gates, I saw more than my fair share of very worrisome signs of illness.

  • Guest

    This is exactly what I am addressing/ writing in a letter to the President: mental illness and guns.
    Someone I loved more than life itself, suffered with mental illness. He was not diagnosed well, even though he tried to get help. He was an amazing human being, successful, loving and smart but in those moments, after his breakdown, he was terrifying and police were called to our home. I do not know if he would have hurt us in his madness, he hinted at it but in the end he wrote he took his life to save us. I thank god every day he had the goodness/ clarity to not harm us. I wish he could have saved himself as well. But I will say, I thank god every day he did not own a gun, because I know in truth his decision could have been much different if he had the ease of access to a gun in one of his moments of madness. Things must change in this country and there is no more waiting for the right time. We are long past the right time to address gun control and mental illness (the stigma must be broken as I cannot tell you the heinous things people have said to me and about my family then and ow (30 years later)….)

    • http://drangedinaz.wordpress.com/ IrishGrrrl

      Guest, I’m so sorry to hear about your loss and the way you have been treated. Their cruelty is based on ignorance and fear. Don’t let it reflect on you and bring you down. If possible, if you feel up to it, use it as a teachable moment. Educate them on mental illness so that the next time they encounter someone who suffers from it or a family member of someone who is ill, they might think twice about it. I suffer from Clinical Depression and I know how horrible people can be about mental illness. Although it is hard for me sometimes to not be angry, I try my best to educate and help others understand so we can change the tenor of the discussions or even start a discussion about it in our society. Many blessings to you and yours.

      • LK3

        IrishGrrl, Thank you. I am not sure what happened – my name went from LK3 to Guest over a few hours!
        I am currently writing a letter to the president – and if I am brave enough will post on my blog and facebook. I thank you for your courage in sharing. I went into the health profession because of my wish to educate and help people on various illnesses and to address the mind-body connections. I try and educate and share as well. I am not embarrassed by any means. He was an absolutely amazing human who suffered from depression and some undiagnosed form of mental illness. The night before he took his life, his therapist said he was fine. My heart breaks for everyone involved in this tragedy. I do not know what the answer is, I believe it is multi-faceted (guns, over medicated children, mental illness, chemicals in our food) and people can agree or disagree – I am open to the discussion – We just must have everything on the table, be willing to hear and learn and change from this. (off my soapbox). Many blessings to you as well. Thank you for your kind words. Thank you for sharing a piece of your story.

  • Proto Pat

    Charles Whitman killed 13 people at the University of Texas using a sniper rifle and a handgun, and this occurred way before Pong was even created. The U.S. Secret Service, Department of Education, and several Harvard medical researchers found no links between violent video games and school massacres to date. The whole scapegoating of video games, TV, and movies by the right-wing is nothing more than a deflection away from the fact that military-type weapons are widely available and can be purchased with little obstacle. It also isn’t helped by the fact that the paranoid rhetoric commonly spewed by the far-right have exacerbated the mental state of Americans, believing there that the Kenyan-Communist-Nazi-Illuminati president is coming to take away their guns. If they believe ideas from entertainment media negatively influence the way we think, shouldn’t they tone down the batshit insanity they spew on a daily basis? I think Glenn Beck has a better chance of making an obese, hairy redneck go on a rampage, than Call of Duty. After all, there are reports now that Adam Lanza’s mother was a survivalist, who has been stockpiling guns, food, and supplies in preparation for Helter Skelter. Details like that may factor into Adam’s breakdown.

    Violent people are commonly attracted to violent media, the same way rapists are attracted to porn. Yet, these heinous crimes have existed in America (and even before the formation of the country) since we started.

  • agrazingmoose

    Even talking about mental health is falling into a crafty little trap that the NRA has set. They would rather that we talk about mental health services in this country than reinstituting the assault weapons ban.

    According to the NIMH, in any given year there is about 28% of the American population that has a diagnosed mental health issue. Do we really want the NRA to be shoving us into the direction of stigmatizing these people, along with pubescent boys, as potential killers?

    No. This is about the sale of weapons that are meant to inflict the most amount of damage TO PEOPLE in the least amount of time and with the least amount of precision. These weapons are meant for warfare, and nothing else.

  • trgahan

    Sorry but violent media and mental health problems have been around a long time. Yet since 2007 the US has experienced a marked increase in these assult weapon based tactically planned mass shootings.

    Right about the same time the reality of supply-side, free market-BS became all too obvious and a certain group took to the airwaves blaming the country for not being poltically pure enough to make it work. Then that disloyal public put a black guy with a funny name in the white house and its been 24/7 “end times” ranting from that group. I know correlation doesn’t equal causation, but still…

  • http://www.politicalruminations.com/ nicole

    Mental health should not be the issue here. Guns are the issue. The ease of acquiring them, the type of weaponry that may be easily acquired by pretty much anyone, and the misinterpretation of the 2nd Amendment as used to create a society at risk of death by firearm at ridiculous rates.

    If mental health is the issue, then we had better start the conversation by pointing at the arguably mentally ill right wing who seem to see guns as an extension of their manhood.

  • Nefercat

    Mental illness treatment is important to address. However, we can’t lose track of the fact that the answer put forth by so many people to gun violence is more guns. Plenty of people without mental illness to the degree seen in mass shootings have guns and use them because of the mentality that says, have a problem; solution = guns. The jerk that shot and killed the kid in the car in Florida. Trayvon Martin’s killer. The father who “thought” his gun wasn’t loaded and blew a hole in his child’s chest clearly had no clue what the power of a gun really truly meant.

    Why in God’s name should teachers not only be equipped with guns, but undergo the constant training and practice to be able to instinctively use them appropriately in case of emergency? This is not the Wild West, or a lawless frontier. We have a law enforcement system and a legal system however clumsy and flawed.

    No. We can and should have a civilized society. Guns are not the answer. Second amendment? Fine. It will indeed be a well-regulated militia with all of the responsibilities that entails.

  • http://drangedinaz.wordpress.com/ IrishGrrrl

    Violent video games are symptoms, not the cause. The only way that they actually feed into violence is that they unjustifiably bolster the self-esteem of the players. How many of these gun nuts claiming “they could have stopped the shooter if they were on the scene” do so because they are good at Call of Duty on their XBox. They have no clue whatsoever what it is like to be in combat. None. But they’re so sure of their skill. It’s just delusional and the video games feed into that delusion. But the cause of it all? Absolutely not.

  • muselet

    Joe Lieberman and Joe Scarborough both made a point of calling out “Hollywood” and “violent videogames” when discussing the Sandy Hook massacre. However, the (literally) insane person who perpetrated last week’s horror was not armed with film reels or videogame controllers.

    Lieberman and Scarborough are fundamentally unserious men who should be hooted off the public stage.

    –alopecia

  • JWheels

    But… but but… the big headed former Republican Congressman on MSNBC said it’s the video games and the movies… I mean he was so adamant and so correct about Obama losing his reelection bid, I need to listen to what he says because he clearly knows what’s best for this country…

  • bphoon

    I’ve been off the blog for a few days so I’m sure I’ve missed quite a bit of back and forth on issues of gun violence in our country. Those of you who read my post of last week (before the Sandy Hook shooting) know where I stand on this.

    But, to those of you who don’t, I’ll give you the short version: I’m pro-gun but believe impediments to ownership should be strengthened. Rather than outright broad-based bans, however, I believe mandatory training, mandatory proficiency testing, mandatory licensure, mandatory testing for license renewal, mandatory insurance requirements and imposition of property taxes for ownership of firearms, all at the individual’s expense, will help to mitigate–not cure–the level of risk we presently face.

    Given the history of various broad-based bans in this country, I think a very good argument can be made that they aren’t very effective at reducing the availability of the subject of the ban. On the other hand, they’re very effective at broadening the black market for such items. For example, alcohol prohibition during the early twentieth century in this country is cited as one of the primary factors in the development of various criminal organizations. Marijuana prohibition is currently cited as a significant causative factor in the increased violence that’s been occurring along our southern border. Both substances were in wide circulation while being banned. Such substances as cocaine, heroin and meth are banned, yet, even in my small Kansas town, it wouldn’t take me very long to find an eight-ball if I really wanted one. Prostitution is available in virtually every town and city in the country. No, bans don’t work very well but they do tend to enrich and embolden criminal organizations who thrive off of our citizens’ desire for prohibited goods.

    The assault weapons ban of 1994 had several problems. At first, it was written so specifically, ie banning certain weapons by nomenclature, that all manufacturers had to do was make minor design changes and change model numbers to circumvent the ban. The story of the TEC-9 is a good example. After it was banned the manufacturer changed some minor elements of the trigger and feed mechanism and called the “new” design the TEC-DC9 which was entirely legal. The ban was then amended to broaden the language but it became so vague that it could–and was in some cases– be interpreted to include semi-automatic shotguns that are commonly used for bird hunting, for example, and double-action revolvers which have been in common use since the 1870′s.

    The ban on extended magazines was more effective, since it could be broadly written but applicable only to certain accessories rather than whole classes of weapons. Likewise, the partial ban on fully automatic weapons has been relatively effective in large part because fully automatic weapons haven’t has as widespread applications as semi-automatic ones. In other words, it’s easier to ban fully automatic weapons as a class without undesirable unintended consequences.

    Another thing bans tend to do is push otherwise law abiding people into criminal behavior. How many cases of otherwise law abiding people who are incarcerated for possession of a little too much marijuana do you think could be cited by, say, NORML at any given time? A ban on various classes of weapons, depending on how it’s written and executed, would likely have a similar effect.

    For a majority of people who legitimately own weapons for whatever purpose, the type of impediments to ownership I list above would most likely be, while not exactly welcomed, tolerated as a cost of making our society safer. I would think anyone who seriously believes we should do whatever we can to keep weapons out of the hands of people who shouldn’t have them, as even the NRA says we should, would accept and learn to live with such impediments.

    For better or worse and whether you like it or not, the gun culture is here to stay in America. It is very deeply ingrained so changing that very basic cultural identity would be a very long term proposition and one that would, in any event, most probably fall short of it’s goal. The trick, then, is to devise a way to, on the one hand, learn to live with guns in our society and, on the other, learn to live with more restrictions on ownership and use of firearms than we’re now accustomed to in the interest of making our society a little safer. No one policy will be sufficient to do that; it will take a holistic approach: certain restrictions on the availability of certain weapons and accessories, ie, fully automatic weapons and extended clips, as well as such things as stricter requirements for training and licensure. While nothing will be 100% effective at eliminating some weapons from our streets, such measures, well conceived and executed, will help reduce the risk society faces from unrestricted access to most classes of weapons.