Video Games and US Violence

One morning in December of 2012, tragedy struck at an elementary school in Newtown, CT, when 21-year-old Adam Lanza killed 27 and injured even more The story of those innocent children, and the adults martyring themselves to protect them, has instilled mind-numbing fear in the heart of every student, every parent, every teacher, and every citizen in our nation. It left us all shocked, stunned, and utterly speechless, But not for long Within hours, news coverage of the event was released, And that fear this catastrophe scattered in its wake? It left our country unreasonable, panicking, and struggling to find a scapegoatt And, sure enough, a scapegoat was found: videogamesl The fantasy violence embodied by so many video games seem like a fairly reasonable cause for these murderers to go out and slaughter their unsuspecting victimsl Such appears to be the reasoning behind the new Proposed Bill No.

5735, which some have nicknamed the “sin taxi.

Introduced by Debralee Hovey, a Republican Representative from Connecticut (whose district includes Newtown, where the Sandy Hook shooting took place), this legislation proposes that a 10% tax be added to the price of any and all video games rated “Mature”, or “M’fl The money made from the sales will go towards “developing informational materials to educate families on the warning signs of video game addictionw” That‘s just ludicrous.

There is absolutely no proof that video game violence can influence reaHife violence, even if a person is addicted to it Violent video game playing and addiction are not the cause of shootings Yes, Lanza loved the military-based first-person shooter “Call Of Duty”, as did Anders Breivik, a 33» year—old who gunned down over 70 people on an island in Norway, and Mohammed Merah, 23, who killed seven at a school in France Yes, these killers played violent, M-rated video games, but so do millions of othersi America is one of the most violent developed countries in the world.

Get quality help now

writer-Charlotte

Verified

Proficient in: Video Game

4.7 (348)

“ Amazing as always, gave her a week to finish a big assignment and came through way ahead of time. ”

+84 relevant experts are online

Hire writer

But this violence, this aggression—~it should not be attributed to video games It’s perfectly unreasonable to say that they have caused this violence. In fact, research and statistics show quite the opposite. Violent crime has decreased in America since the 905, particularly among the young, Yet, since then, the popularity and the use of video games of all kinds, including violent ones, has shot up drastically, clue to the birth of the Internet and the great leaps technology has made, If violence in video games such as Call of Duty caused real-life violence, the amount of violence and violent crimes in America would have skyrocketed in the past couple decades, Though violent video games are sold everywhere in America, they are also quite popular in other developed countries.

Yet those countries are much less violent than America is, suggesting that something else in America is causing the high amounts of gun»related deaths and violence There is no research to back up the claims that violent Video games breed violence. There is no evidence that using virtual guns to shoot virtual victims will incite young men to go out and use real»life guns on their real-life victims, or that people will try to do the same things to people in a fantasy world and their fellow denizens of reality. But, most of all, there is nothing that proves that video game violence will turn people into killersi Fellow Americans, I urge you-~think before you speak. Contemplate before you decide to do anything rashi Do not be heedless in your accusations, Are video games really at fault here? Are they really to blame for all this gun violence? Or are they just another scapegoat?