Ten-country comparison suggests there’s little or no link between video games and gun murders
It’s true that Americans spend billions of dollars on video games every year and that the United States has the highest firearm murder rate in the developed world. But other countries where video games are popular have much lower firearm-related murder rates. In fact, countries where video game consumption is highest tend to be some of the safest countries in the world, likely a product of the fact that developed or rich countries, where consumers can afford expensive games, have on average much less violent crime. …
So, what have we learned? That video game consumption, based on international data, does not seem to correlate at all with an increase in gun violence. That countries where video games are popular also tend to be some of the world’s safest (probably because these countries are stable and developed, not because they have video games). And we also have learned, once again, that America’s rate of firearm-related homicides is extremely high for the developed world.
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And yet the Armed Forces have found that training with video games breaks down natural barriers that humans have in regards to killing each other…who you gonna believe a study likely funded by those interested in making a buck selling you crap or the fact that the Armed forces use the same technique to train people how to kill?
PierreLegrand on December 19, 2012 at 12:02 AM
LTC Grossman on video games…
I am personally on the road almost 300 days a year. I train the FBI; I train the Special Forces; I train the Marine Corps; I train law enforcement, nationwide and worldwide. My job is to examine the act of killing. How do we take a healthy 18-year-old boy, a soldier, a 22-year-old police officer, and make them capable of pulling the trigger? The mechanism we use is, we make killing a conditioned reflex, stimulus/response, stimulus/response. At the moment of truth, the proper stimulus pops up in front of them, and they kill without conscious thought.
If you truly dwell on the magnitude of what you are doing when you kill another human being; if you truly dwell on the reality of another living, vital person, who is loved, and thinks and feels; that’s a very difficult thing to do. You’ve got to separate yourself from the humanity of the person you are killing—turn them into just a target. And the best mechanism we ever found for doing that, was this killing simulator, in which, instead of using bullseye targets, as we did in World War II, we transitioned to a man-made silhouette, and we made killing a conditioned reflex.
The same phenomena that the military and law enforcement uses to enable killing—which is done with the safeguard of discipline—is being done indiscriminately to our children with violent video games. There is a major study that is going to be released in Indianapolis this year. An outfit called the Center for Successful Parenting, has paid several hundred thousand dollars—that’s a lot of money, in this field—in research, hooking MRIs to children playing video games; magnetic resonating imaging, tracing the brain activity of children playing video games.
Now basically, the children who’ve never played the violent video game before, when they have to kill somebody, they’re thinking about it. It’s a conscious, thinking effort. But, the children who’ve played the games a lot, and are very good at the games—there is no conscious thought; there is nothing but brain stem activity; it completely bypasses their conscious brain. The video game turns killing into a conditioned reflex.
PierreLegrand on December 19, 2012 at 12:05 AM
I don’t care what science says, I’m sick of kids these days jumping on mushrooms and kicking turtles!
Gingotts on December 19, 2012 at 12:07 AM
Sp wapo\\\\\
they really stepped up to the plate here,
country by country analysis ear not all that interesting, beaause of the different cultures.
but thx for trying
r keller on December 19, 2012 at 12:08 AM
More LTC Grossman on preparing schools and offices for bad days…
This makes a lot more sense than the typical politician/eore solution to ban large capacity magazines.
http://www.policeone.com/active-shooter/articles/2058168-Lt-Col-Dave-Grossman-to-cops-The-enemy-is-denial/
“In 1998,” Grossman said, “school violence claimed what at the time was an all time record number of kids’ lives. In that year there were 35 dead and a quarter of a million serious injuries due to violence in the school. How many killed by fire that year? Zero. But we hear people say, ‘That’s the year Columbine happened, that’s an anomaly.’ Well, in 2004 we had a new all time record — 48 dead in the schools from violence. How many killed by fire that year? Zero. Let’s assign some grades. Put your teacher hat on and give out some grades. What kind of grade do you give the firefighter for keeping kids safe? An ‘A,’ right? Reluctantly, reluctantly, the cops give the firefighters an ‘A,’ right? Danged firefighters, they sleep ‘till they’re hungry and eat ‘till they’re tired. What grade do we get for keeping the kids safe from violence? Come on, what’s our grade? Needs improvement, right?”
Johnny Firefighter, A+ Student
“Why can’t we be like little Johnny Firefighter?” Grossman asked as he prowled the stage. “He’s our A+ student!”
He paused, briefly, and answered with a voice that blew through the hall like thunder, “Denial, denial, denial!”
Grossman commanded, “Look up at the ceiling! See all those sprinklers up there? They’re hard to spot — they’re painted black — but they’re there. While you’re looking, look at the material the ceiling is made of. You know that that stuff was selected because it’s fire-retardant. Hooah? Now look over there above the door — you see that fire exit sign? That’s not just any fire exit sign — that’s a ‘battery-backup-when-the-world-ends-it-will-still-be-lit’ fire exit sign. Hooah?”
Walking from the stage toward a nearby fire exit and exterior wall, Grossman slammed the palm of his hand against the wall and exclaimed, “Look at these wall boards! They were chosen because they’re what?! Fireproof or fire retardant, hooah? There is not one stinking thing in this room that will burn!”
Pointing around the room as he spoke, Grossman continued, “But you’ve still got those fire sprinklers, those fire exit signs, fire hydrants outside, and fire trucks nearby! Are these fire guys crazy? Are these fire guys paranoid? No! This fire guy is our A+ student! Because this fire guy has redundant, overlapping layers of protection, not a single kid has been killed by school fire in the last 50 years!
“But you try to prepare for violence — the thing much more likely to kill our kids in schools, the thing hundreds of times more likely to kill our kids in schools — and people think you’re paranoid. They think you’re crazy. …They’re in denial.”
PierreLegrand on December 19, 2012 at 12:09 AM
Even something as little as allowing trained professionals to carry guns in schools sets off the mewling libtards.
Push comes to shove, I could understand why school staff would be nervous about every Tom, Dick, and Harry coming in the door packing heat, 2nd amendment or no. But to allow NOBODY to carry? Lambs to the slaughter.
MelonCollie on December 19, 2012 at 12:13 AM
Zing!!!
“Little or no link” my aunt’s glasses. When people whose main job description is “kill people and break things” use very similar techniques for training newbies…
MelonCollie on December 19, 2012 at 12:15 AM
Listen very carefully.
1) More and more violent video games than ever before — unarguable.
2) Less shootings. Not more, less.
Get that?
Bad books didn’t do it. KISS/Judas Priest/Heavy Metal didnt do it. Death metal didn’t do it. Refer Madness didnt do it. Backwards masked audio and subliminal messages didn’t do it. Movies didn’t do it. Dungeons and Dragons didn’t do it. Video games didn’t do it.
Not one of the long line of once-accused scapegoats were ever to blame.
Some people are insane, and some are just evil. They are to blame. Period.
and always have been.
Irritable Pundit on December 19, 2012 at 12:28 AM
No sir, you don’t always get to be a deep thinker. I’m eating my peaches in VN on the helicopter and the VC try to shoot me down and in America a guy pulls a gun on me and my partner as the po pos. WTF you just react.
With that said video games today are not the problem—conflict resolution is as well as just because you got an F you are still special.
arnold ziffel on December 19, 2012 at 12:36 AM
Might be no link between video games and murders but there certainly seems to be between murderers and video games. I think we need better screening. Somehow we need to identify withdrawn people who maybe sequester themselves for long periods with video games and who undergo a recent, sudden personality change and have a look at them to determine if they are just weird or if they are a potential danger.
I lived for a long time with someone who had a personality disorder. It was a living hell. That person eventually took their own life without harming anyone else but there were times when I was worried that wouldn’t be the case. There wasn’t anything I could do. This person was involuntarily admitted three times over the course of about 5 years. There were absolutely over the top bursts of rage and physical violence, there were constant threats of suicide, everyone could see that *something* was coming and there wasn’t much anyone could do about it. Often people’s hands are tied until AFTER something bad happens and then it is often too late. THAT is what we need to change.
crosspatch on December 19, 2012 at 12:45 AM
Or, you can be sane enough to tell the difference between fiction and reality…
Ever read a book narrated in the first person? Were you being conditioned to respond to the world the same way as that character did? The problem is not video games, the problem is seriously insane people who don’t get the treatment they need. Your average kid who plays video games wouldn’t know the first thing about using a gun IRL.
AndStatistics on December 19, 2012 at 12:49 AM
Correlation does not imply causation bud. The vast majority of kids play video games so naturally all of these 20 something psychos play them. Hell I’m sure if you go back to the 60′s people that attempted/did these things all read books most of the time; it’s something you can do by yourself to stay entertained and escape reality.
Unless you’re implying me watching hockey most of my life makes me more inclined to hit someone into a wall every chance I get?
angelwing34215 on December 19, 2012 at 12:55 AM
9 million people bought Call of Duty last year, 1 person shot up a school. Looks like a .00000000001% rate to me. There’s your study. Hopefully I saved the Center for Getting Those Damn Kids Off My Lawn some money.
pauljc on December 19, 2012 at 1:16 AM
People who think about violent things and have violent impulses are going to be drawn to violent media, whether it’s music, movies, or video games.
Another factor in the mind of the killer is that he knows that he will get to show everyone how “powerful” he is. It’s not like the survivors get to pi$$ on his corpse or that everyone goes on TV and talks about how big of a loser he was. It’s all big and scary. Maybe there’s no alternative.
WisCon on December 19, 2012 at 2:09 AM
So many Utopians here. So many so ignorant of history. Surprising.
29Victor on December 19, 2012 at 2:36 AM
No doubt, over 50% of the nation is just out there killing one another on reflexively.
I saw a progtard on HuffPo the other day, loudly proclaiming that guns in the home turn regular arguments into murderously violent affairs. Roughly 50% of American households contain firearms.
(i.e. you sound like a progtard)
WeekendAtBernankes on December 19, 2012 at 6:38 AM
Yeah right dood. Only the True Conservatives (TM) on Hot Air can make that call, and you clearly aren’t one of them.
WeekendAtBernankes on December 19, 2012 at 6:39 AM