Games are not the issue

I like to play video games. In fact, they are my go-to source of entertainment.

While I tend to enjoy arcade games like “Donkey Kong,” “Pac-man” and “Street Fighter II,” my tastes also veer into more mature fare like “Grand Theft Auto.”

With news of Donald Trump hosting a meeting with a few executives from the gaming industry, opened by what video game blog Polygon described as a “gaming sizzle reel” featuring violent acts found in popular video games, it’s clear to me where he and others are aiming when it comes to gun violence.

The government can’t really do anything about violence in video games. They, much like movies, books and this newspaper, are protected under the First Amendment. What Trump and his supporters in this cause are really going for is to create a red herring to turn attention away from debate about access to firearms. Unfortunately for them, arguments against violent media fall flat when comparing violence involving firearms in the U.S. to other countries.

In regards to our neighbor to the north, Canada, the differences can be startling. Video games released in the U.S. are also released in Canada as part of the North American video game market. Supposing violent video games impact people equally, one would expect similar instances of violence in the Canadian provinces. According to the BBC, that’s not the case.

A comparison of the percentage of gun-related killings in 2016 by the BBC shows 64 percent of homicides involved firearms in the U.S., while 30.5 percent factored into homicides committed in Canada during 2015. Canada has stricter gun regulations than the U.S., as do a number of other countries where the same violent video games available in the U.S. are sold. The U.S. is the major outlier when it comes to gun violence, especially when compared to countries where violent video games are available.

According to a 2004 report by the U.S. Secret Service and the Department of Education, video games don’t commonly factor into a student attacker’s interest. The joint report studied 37 occurrences of school violence. While more than half of the attackers studied, 59 percent, studied showed interest in violent media, only 12 percent of the cases studied showed evidence where attackers were interested in violent video games. The largest group, comprised of 37 percent of those interested in violent works, were interested in the violence characterized in their own writings.

“There is no accurate or useful ‘profile’ of students who engaged in targeted school violence,” the report states.

While video games have been referenced in some school attacks, such as Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold’s infamous ties to the computer game “Doom,” that link doesn’t exist with other shooters. Stephen Paddock, 64, who perpetrated the Oct. 1, 2017, Las Vegas shootings that resulted in 58 dead and 851 injuries, did not have ties to video games. According to Polygon, the same is true for Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho, despite early reports he played the multiplayer shooting game “Counter-Strike.” Polygon reports Cho’s roommate debunked that claim, saying he never saw Cho play a video game.

What’s clear here is the fact that law makers want to use any excuse they can to avoid the issue at hand -- that firearms are easily accessible to someone with a dark purpose in mind. This avoidance has caused the national discourse to focus on media as a root problem and propose the only solution deemed acceptable by the right is to outnumber the bad guys with armed good guys, whether it be by arming teachers, police departments providing student resource officers or having armed veterans patrol school grounds. But why are those the only solutions debated?

Unfortunately for responsible gun owners, they’re the ones who are in the best position to address the issue. They are in the best position to find a way to balance the Second Amendment with the need to limit access to firearms by people who want cause others undue harm.

I would even go as far as to say the states are in a better position to address the issue than the federal government, as guns are used in an entirely different purpose and setting in Green River and Rock Springs than they are in Los Angeles and New York City.

Time will tell what, if any, solution will come of this. However, those involved in the debate should take the problem head on and not skirt the issue by blaming violence in the media.