President Donald Trump arrives to talk at a marketing campaign rally Thursday, Aug. 1, 2019, in Cincinnati. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
In the wake of two mass shootings in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio over the weekend, U.S. President Donald Trump and members of the Republican Party are inserting the blame largely on the toes of the video game business.
“We must stop the glorification of violence in our society,” Trump said earlier today in his first main response to the 2 mass shootings which left 30 lifeless in 13 hours. “This includes the gruesome and grisly video games that are now commonplace. It is too easy today for troubled youth to surround themselves with a culture that celebrates violence. We must stop or substantially reduce this, and it has to begin immediately.” A full transcript can be found here.
Video games have remained a speaking level for members of the GOP as they spoke with media over the weekend. Issues of gun management and white supremacy, nonetheless, proceed to be minimised. Speaking in an interview with Fox and Friends on Sunday, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy accused video games that “dehumanise individuals” for the newest acts of home terrorism on American soil. “To have a game of shooting individuals and others, I’ve always felt that is a problem for future generations and others,” he continued.
clip right here — it’s extremely a lot leaping off Tx. Lt. Gov Dan Patrick’s feedback to F&F earlier pic.twitter.com/J8PqvNtvz0
— John Whitehouse (@existentialfish) August 4, 2019
Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick made related feedback on the Fox News present, attributing blame for the El Paso taking pictures to “a video game industry that teaches young people to kill” and the “violence of bullying people on social media”. While Lt. Gov. Patrick said the manifesto which can have been written by the El Paso shooter referenced CoD, there isn’t any proof that both taking pictures was impressed by video games.
Here’s a part of Texas Lt. Gov Dan Patrick’s look on Fox & Friends, the place he makes use of the El Paso taking pictures to name for federal authorities intervention within the video game business, extra prayer in faculties, and extra saluting the flag, amongst different issues. pic.twitter.com/8xqkEyvvH7
— John Whitehouse (@existentialfish) August 4, 2019
Readers with lengthy recollections are prone to really feel, with the deep type of nausea-inducing consciousness of the passage of time, simply how rapidly historical past can start repeating itself. Video games have been inciting ethical panics for many years. From Jack Thompson’s lawsuits against Rockstar all through the early 2000s, and the Family Entertainment Protection Act of 2005 – a invoice co-sponsored by then senator Hillary Clinton which pledged to make the promoting of games to minors a prison act – to the citing of Doom as a cause for the 1999 Columbine shooting and the 1993 hearings held by senators Joe Lieberman and Herb Kohl over the results of violent video games on kids, following the discharge of Mortal Kombat.
But by 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court made its official assertion on violent video games. The case, generally known as Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, acknowledged {that a} California legislation limiting the sale of violent games can be in violation of the First Amendment. In 2017, The American Psychological Association’s media-psychology division issued a public statement asking politicians and journalists to chorus from publicly connecting games and violence. Even the Trump administration’s Federal Commission on School Safety itself released a report in 2018 which attested to a scarcity of proof that violent games affect mass shootings. And but.
Anyway, now might be a very good a time as ever to remember that time after the 2018 Parkland school shootings when Trump held a private meeting to discuss video game violence and confirmed this video:
IGDA govt director Renee Gittins and govt director of IGDAF Nika Nour issued a press release to us concerning the latest shootings within the U.S.
“Our deepest condolences and hearts go out to the victims and families affected by the tragic events in Dayton, Ohio and El Paso, Texas. Society has endured too many senseless acts of violence and horrific mass shootings,” they wrote within the ready assertion. “Blaming video games distracts from the broader issues at hand. There is an overwhelming amount of research that finds there is no evidence linking video games to violence. Video games do not cause violence, and we support efforts to discontinue this misguided information.”
