By Tanner Nypen ’15
The Roundup
First-person-shooters are one of the most popular video game genres, but are these games the reason behind recent shootings?
Many quickly point to video game violence as the catalyst for recent events such as the Navy yard shooting and school shootings.
This is not new: blaming video games for violence goes back to Columbine.
After reading about the video game violence debate, I have seen that, yes, many of the shooters played violent video games, and that seems like a likely cause for their actions.
However, this doesn’t explain why the millions of other teenagers and adults who play video games don’t go out and commit huge acts of terror.
Reports on the Navy yard shooting from websites like CNN showed that the shooter also seemed to have some form of mental instability.
Violent video games’ role in these events is minimal at most.
Most people have a sense of right and wrong within them.
These controversial games can get pretty violent but when I look at the games themselves, they aren’t promoting what is being simulated.
The creators of “Grand Theft Auto V,” a popular new release, do not expect its players to go out to the streets and steal and murder.
If that was the case, anyplace where the game is played would be in total anarchy.
This simulated violence isn’t what leads to mass shootings.
When you look at the shooters, they all have some sort of mental illness that is determined to be the main cause of their crime.
Some games can get violent to the point where stricter regulations would be understandable.
But, video game simulated-violence as a whole isn’t bad enough to declare it as the reasoning behind acts of terror.
Whether or not the person involved played violent video games or not should not be the only factor addressed.
There is a point when someone should be held personally responsible for their actions, instead of others looking to something to blame for these actions.
A human person should also have the ability to decipher the difference between the real world and what is part of a simulated world.
Video games can become fairly violent, but citing them as an instigator for the acts of terror that have occurred in our nation is wrong.
