The Same Old Song and Dance: Banning Video Games

The unfortunate tragedy in Newtown has seen a large number of people on both sides of the political spectrum attempt to further their own agenda in the aftermath. The politicians on both sides understand full well that it's easier to try and blame one particular thing for the shooting instead of coming up with any real solutions. United States Senator from West Virginia, Joe Manchin, was recently interviewed by West Virginia Metronews and said "Look at Grand Theft Auto, put out by Rockstar Games in New York City and see what it promotes." He later added, “Shouldn’t that be looked into and maybe be banned?” This coming from the same guy who said earlier in the interview "I'm not supporting a ban on anything."

After every major shooting involving a school, the idea of banning certain video games always is drummed up by certain people. They seem to believe that it's these games fault that a school shooting occurred instead of perhaps better mental health programs or better gun control laws. It's worth noting that we have absolutely no idea if the killer from Newtown even played Grand Theft Auto or even video games at all. However, that did not stop Senator Manchin from jumping to a conclusion about what needs to be done.

If video games were the root cause or at least a contributing factor to this gruesome violence then why are we not seeing this occur more often? After all, there are millions of teenage boys and girls that play video games. The Call of Duty franchise is the top-selling video game franchise year after year. It would be safe to assume in that case that the violent crime rate is spiraling out of control as we have a national pandemic on our hands. Except, we don't.

The violent crime rate in this country has actually been steadily decreasing since 1991. In fact, violent crime in the United States is currently at the same level it was in 1973. The opposite of what should be occurring due to the amount of violent video games being played if you follow the logic of those who would like to see them banned.

It's also worth noting that the majority of the rest of the world have all these same video games. Games like Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto are played all over the world. So if video games are a contributing factor at the very least to all these shootings then why are not also occurring on the scale they are in the United States? 

What we need in this country to prevent tragedies like Newtown from occurring again elsewhere are real solutions. Banning video games in order to stop more shootings is not a real solution. It's an attempt to implement censorship by using tragedies as justification.