NRA Blames Video Games and Other Violent Media for Shootings

Now I don’t care what you think about gun control. Whether you think we need more guns to stop guns, or more restrictions on guns, that is not the topic of discussion for this post.

What I do want to discuss is the NRA throwing video games and other forms of media under the bus.

Really, NRA?! There are so many good arguments for having guns and having the NRA. I’ve heard them before. Did the NRA use any of them? No! Instead we have a piss-poor attempt to shift the blame onto video games and the media. But let’s let the head of the NRA, Wayne LaPierre, speak for himself:

There exists in this country, sadly, a callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry that sells and stows violence against its own people, through vicious, violent video games with names like “Bulletstorm,” “Grand Theft Auto,” “Mortal Kombat,” and “Splatterhouse.”

So we have a game where you kill mutant monsters, a campy graphic fighting game, a shoot ’em up driving game, and another zombie and monster fighting game. One of these games doesn’t even have any guns! Yes, all of these game are violent; they are all very mainstream; and they have a wide range of followers. But does the content of the video game really matter?

Sandy Hook Massacre: This has to stop.

(WARNING: This is not a happy post. There is swearing and very little analysis of anything fun. I’ll go back to Christmas posts next time, but I need to do this. You’ll understand in a moment.)

In August, I wrote an article asking for geeks to not support Aurora shooter James Holmes. I argued that just because he was no doubt mentally unstable and fell through the cracks doesn’t mean he should be supported for shooting and killing twelve people in a midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises.

I wanted that to be the first and last real-world disability post about mass killings that I ever wrote. I don’t get my wish, and now I must discuss the death of twenty-seven people, including twenty children, cut down by a mentally deranged man. Oh, and apparently he and I share a disorder.