Leland Conway, the midday host of NewsRadio 840 WHAS (Kentuckiana's News, Weather and Traffic Station), talked about the latest school shooting which just shook the United States with Kentucky governor Matt Bevin yesterday. In case you missed the news, on Valentine's Day a student who had been expelled from the Stoneman Douglas High School (Parkland, Florida) entered the campus and killed 17 people while injuring another 15 with an AR-15 style semi-automatic rifle.
In the aforementioned talk, which is available as a recording here, Bevin expressed his belief that violent videogames (alongside other media products such as movies, TV series and even music) significantly affect the minds of young people who commit these horrific acts.
There are video games that yes, are listed for mature audiences, but kids play them and everybody knows it, and there's nothing to prevent the child from playing them. They celebrate the slaughtering of people. There are games that literally replicate and give people the ability to score points for doing the very same thing that these students are doing inside of schools, where you get extra points for finishing someone off who's lying there begging for their life.
These are "video games", and they're forced down our throats under the guise of protected speech. It's garbage, it's the same as pornography. They have desensitized people to the value of human life, to the dignity of women, to the dignity of human decency. We are reaping what we've sown here.
I think we need to start by having an honest question about what value any of these things add. Why do we need a video game, for example, that encourages people to kill people? Whether it's lyrics, whether it's TV shows, whether it's movies, I'm asking the producers of these products, these video games and these movies, ask yourselves what redemptive value, other than shock value, other than the hope you'll make a couple of bucks off it. At what price? At what price?
We as adults have to stop acting like children ourselves. We need to step up and say that right is right and wrong is wrong.
This isn't the first time mass shooting events are blamed on videogames, of course, even though there isn't any evidence of that. In fact, last June we reported on a fMRI study which found no increased aggression or decreased empathy in those who play violent videogames.
Feel free to voice your opinion in the comments.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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