Given I have an opinion on almost anything with a presence of corporealism, it may have surprised some that in the two-pieces of news I’ve written on the mass shootings last weekend; I didn’t outright say anything about my opinion on the matter. I didn’t make a sly bit of wordplay about the president and something about penis’. I also didn’t give my overbearing opinion on guns, being one of those Europeans that “think they know better.” I also didn’t overtly call the president out for his claim on video games being the cause of violence, nor did I mention in the same speech he called for the death penalty without due process. I was very restrained in my comments.

However, in the second article, I called everything in gaming political. I did so because I honestly believe there is not a piece of gaming you can find without politics already being there. In the days of shooting alien ships in Space Invaders and playing Tennis in Pong, there wasn’t anything to draw political themes from, but since Mario has been saving the ruler of a kingdom, there have been political themes. There’s no escaping it, especially when there are ruling boards that will block games for anything and everything.

If they could turn back time:

Now we’re running in circles back to the nineties, when Doc Brown goes through time he’s meant to hit 2015, back to the 80s, then to the tail end of the 19th century; back to the 80s, and done. However, thanks to three political figures stating video games are to blame for the mass shooting(s) last week and through the years, we’re back to the good-old-days of blaming little Timmy and restricting fiction. Meanwhile, many studies cite the effect on children to be 1 percent or less.

Before leaving another place to later join Phenixx Gaming, I wrote about an Oxford study that concluded that violent video games such as Grand Theft Auto V vs calmer games such as The Sims 3 do very little. In the study, it displays anger at three stages, once as a baseline, and twice in a post-test environment. For both games, the first post-test displays physical aggression as higher than the baseline, moreover, both second post-tests show lower aggression than said baseline. Which possibly suggests that all physical aggression dissipates following playtime.

What is interesting about this study, in my opinion, is the verbal aggression one may have following each game. In table 1, the players who were in the GTA group lowered their verbal aggression in both post-tests. However, those that played The Sims had a slightly higher level of verbal aggression before falling again, furthermore, the controlled group went higher and higher. This seems to suggest that video games, or at the very least violent video games do little to no harm on those playing.

This makes Walmart’s temporarily decision to pull all references to violence, especially video games, a questionable one indeed. If studies with the highest of validity to them are stating simple facts do not affect this issue, then what hope does anyone else have? Under an American law called, “The Dickey Amendment,” the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) can not use funding provided to them to study gun violence. Jay Dickey, R-AR, later stated this was a mistake following the Aurora shooting in 2012.

However, this doesn’t stop us from looking at other countries with video games and guns or lack there off. As Texas’ LT Governor, Dan Patrick, said last Sunday on Fox and Friends, “We’ve always had guns, we’ve always had evil, but what’s changed when we see this rash of shooting? And I see a videogame industry that teaches young people to kill.” According to the BBC, in 2014 Japan had only six gun-related deaths compared to 33,599 in the US. Meanwhile, Japan places 3rd behind the US with a game’s revenue of $19.2BN to the US’ $30.4BN in 2018. With only 0.9 percent of a difference in the total population playing games in each country.

According to Newzoo, Belgium, Austria, and Switzerland sit 19th, 20th, and 21st respectively on their world rankings (by revenue) in 2014. Meanwhile, during a report by the Small Arms Survey in 2017, Austria places 14th and Switzerland 19th in their gun ownership, with an estimated 27-29 percent making up for their population. Gun homicide per 100,000 people in the US was 4.46 in 2017, according to GunPolicy.com, while Switzerland had 0.15 in 2018.

So the question is, why does Walmart still sell and display guns? Meanwhile, they are momentarily restricting their display of video games and violence there within. From an outsiders perspective, this is complete stupidity. The only reason this could be happening is a result of the comments by the president; including his two Republican colleagues, and the noise created by these statements. Walmart has gone so far to state as such as the redaction of violent video games is only for a short time following this shooting in their El Paso store.

What is more shocking is the idea that these shootings are new and out of character for the US now in 2019 as a result of gaming. This year alone, there has been 22 gun-related injuries and/or deaths in schools between January and May. If we go further back in time to 1881-1889 there were two deaths and six injuries. In one case it was a 15-year-old boy who made a racially charged comment to, as the newspaper said at the time, “A negro school house.” This resulted in the boy injuring two people with a gun he had.

In the decade video games became a reality, the death toll had already reached thirteen between 1950 and 1959. The only gun-related death in schools on record immediately following the release of Bertie the Brain (a digital game of Tic-Tac-Toe) was 1, where Western Military Academy lost quartermaster Henry Suhre, 61, to a 17-year-old cadet. The first time the number grew above 2 deaths was in 1966, as 25-year-old Charles Whitman, shot and killed 14 people, not including his mother or wife whom he killed early that morning (nor including his death). This was the deadliest college shooting for 40 years until Virginia Tech.

Two years following the release of Mario Bros. and only one year removed from the release of Super Mario Bros. A 14-year-old girl, Heather Smith, shot and killed her ex-boyfriend and another boy, she later took her own life. This was the first shooting in a school by a minor to reach above two deaths. It was not until a whole year before Columbine did the number spike to five people dead at the hands of a minor in schools. Numbers spiked, but only for adults shooting children or adults shooting adults. Something that would be blamed on “mental insanity.”

Following Charles Whitman, school shootings and on general mass shootings increased decade by decade, then year by year. By 2013 many listings state the mass shootings by year. With a total of three school-related shootings reaching further than Columbine, then many none-school related shootings such as the Orland nightclub and Las Vegas shootings. None of these shootings can be or will be linked to video games because they simply can not when the matter of the fact is, video games didn’t cause the killing of people between 1840 (Charlottesville, Virginia) to 1984 (the San Ysidro McDonald’s massacre) and beyond.

Looking outward:

So once again, I return to the noise of it all. Now that politicians have called for a ban on video games, with Walmart almost immediately kowtowing to the demands, why still sell assault weapons? There’s hunting in other parts of the world, and there’s no mass shootings or almost any gun-related deaths. Why? Restrictions on the loud thing that fires little pieces of metal twice the speed of sound are what caused these incidents. To return to Switzerland, it is illegal to have your gun loaded when you are not immediately going to fire it. Could this help America?

In Great Britain, following two shooting sprees in nine years, guns were restricted and then all but banned. This has resulted in 1 mass shooting since the firearms act of 1997 and a second later that same year, preceded by the 1988 firearms act. In the years following the 2010 spree, the total of deaths by massacre have hit 37. The same year the three massacres happened in England resulting in this total, Stephen Paddock shot and killed 59 people (including himself) in just ten minutes.

It was not video games that caused any of these mass murders, it was several episodes in their lives, coinciding with the widespread availability of guns to anyone and everyone in the US. It may very well be partial mental health that causes these shooters to go on a bloodthirsty rampage, but their weapon of choice isn’t a Tonka toy or several handfuls of pixels.

However, let’s look at the argument that illegal weapons will always get in the hands of “the bad people,” as the NRA calls them. Yes, that’s true. In 2016, David Sonboly (born Ali Sonboly), had obtained a semi-automatic Glock 17 and killed 9 people before killing himself. The first shooting in Germany in several years. Given the laws surrounding Germany on guns are decided on by both the Bundestag (German parliament) and the European Parliament, it is a little complicated. In short, most guns are banned though not all, you really have to work for them.

In the last 30 years of Australian gun massacres, the mass shooting in Port Arthur caused a ban on semi-automatic rifles, pump-action shotguns, and introduced a licensing system, 35 people died. In 2002, following the Monash University shooting, there was a handgun buy-back system in place a year later, 2 people died. In 2014 during the Sydney Hostage Crisis, a pump-action shotgun was used to kill 1 before Man Haron Monis killed himself. Even with restrictions came deaths, but numbers have dropped. The deadliest shooting since Port Arthur is via rifles owned by Peter Miles, killing 6 family members then himself.

In the manifesto believed to be written by Patrick Crusius, the El Paso shooter, he states: “In general, I support the Christchurch shooter and his manifesto.” Christchurch, New Zealand is the first massacre in New Zealand in my lifetime. Twenty-two years it has taken from the Raurimu massacre, taking 6 lives, to the 51 taken just earlier this year in Christchurch. In the months following this Jacinda Ardern, prime minister of New Zealand, has introduced bans, buy-backs, and a second bout of reforms just last month. In less than 30 days the bans were in place.

If the video games are to blame for every mass shooting in America, then why is it that they aren’t to blame in Japan, Great Britain, Switzerland, New Zealand, or anywhere else really? Yes, Vehicular homicide and knife crime are higher than guns in many of these places, as is death by putting stuff in your orifice, alien mind control, and being stupid for Instagram likes. Jokes aside in an article too serious to do so, games aren’t the leading cause in more than seventy percent of these cases. So I return to my question before: Why restrict video games?

Bans in place:

In the UK, under PEGI rules and UK laws, I could walk into a store, pick up any Grand Theft Auto, place it on the counter, and as long as I had an adult with me when I was 10 I could buy it. If you are an adult and live in Australia and tried the same, you’ll be placed alongside murders, rapists, and a man named Steve who smuggled black tar heroin into the country inside balloons forced down a baby’s throat. Within months of the R18+ rating being installed, Australia was back to their RC (refused classification) mess with Saints Row IV and State of Decay. So while Australia has been pulling classification, shooting sprees happened.

With such games as Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude, Marc Eckō’s Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure, and Fallout 3 being banned for the following reason: Sex, “the glorification of graffiti,” and drug use. Even We Happy Few was pulled for that last one. To which none of these bans prevented the deaths of those in Port Arthur following the ban of point-and-click FMV horror game, Phantasmagoria. Which means banning games doesn’t work to any effective means.

The conclusion:

You could expect people to parent their children, though after the ten minutes of laughing that I have had to do between writing that as a portion of a sentence, I doubt it. So what could be done? First: Don’t sell guns on wholesale at conventions where you don’t require checks on the person being sold to. Have some checks in place that aren’t “Do you have a criminal record?” Followed by someone just having to say no, and no work being done. Some states already have steps where this is the case, though gun show loopholes (or a private seller loophole) persist and can be the result of numerous deaths a year.

There are laws around the world, including Switzerland’s policy on ammunition, that could significantly reduce the number of deaths per year, per month, per week, per day, or per town and city. I’m not saying, out-right ban all guns; but is there a need for weapons that fire about 100 bullets a minute? Do they need to be sold online? Do you need 60 people gunned down in 10 minutes? Why?

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