Tag Archives: guns

Video Games and Violence

The latest scapegoat promulgated by the NRA, gun manufacturers, and talking heads like Joe Scarborough for the unrelenting gun carnage taking place in this country––3,000 gun deaths since Newtown––is to blame the video game industry rather than the proliferation and easy access to guns.

But is there ANY evidence linking video games and gun violence?

The simple answer to that question is, “No.”

Some research and aggression studies have shown that playing violent video games can stir hostile urges and mildly aggressive behavior in the short term. And children who develop a gaming habit can become slightly more aggressive — as measured by clashes with peers, for instance — at least over a period of a year or two.

However, there is no definitive research indicating that playing violent video games over longer periods increases the likelihood that a person will commit a violent crime like murder, rape, or assault, much less a massacre.

If violent video games actually caused people to commit violent acts, then we would expect to see those violent acts in Japan, England, France and the rest of Europe. After all, don’t the youth of those countries play violent video games? Of course they do. But the youth and gangs in those countries are not killing each other in the streets. I wonder why?

Interestingly, as reported by Science Daily, according to a study by University of California sociology professor Augustine J. Kposowa in the February issue of the journal of Social Psychiatry & Psychiatric Epidemiology, states with the highest rates of gun ownership — for example, Alaska, Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Alabama, and West Virginia — also tend to have the highest suicide rates.

“Kposowa is the first to use a nationally representative sample to examine the effect of firearm availability on suicide odds. Previous studies that associated firearm availability to suicide were limited to one or two counties. His study also demonstrated that individual behavior is influenced not only by personal characteristics but also by social structural or contextual attributes. That is, what happens at the state level can influence the personal actions of those living within that state.”

If we’re going to have a serious debate on gun violence, then let’s quit introducing red herrings and unsupported facts that distract from solving the real problem at hand.

Wayne’s World

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In the fantasy world where NRA CEO and shill for the gun manufacturers, Wayne LaPierre, lives, the US is just one natural disaster away from a complete societal meltdown in which armed gangs roam the streets and chaos reigns. The only way to save our country, according LaPierre, and ourselves, is to buy as many semi-automatics with high capacity magazines as possible.

Then, when the “government” decides to confiscate all guns, we’ll flee with our wives and children to the hills where we’ll conduct some Red Dawn guerilla war in which we defeat the whole military industrial complex, that, for inexplicable reasons, have all decided to support a president and congress that has voted to abolish the second amendment.

In the meantime, we, the majority of the people who don’t believe Armageddon is in our future and who support common sense changes, cannot make ANY change to current gun laws. In fact, LaPierre believes we should continue to loosen laws to make it even easier for “law abiding citizens” to own and to carry firearms.

One of the tenets of the NRA’s arguments for loosening gun controls is that thousands of gun permit holders have used their weapons in self-defense. However, an investigative report from the Star Tribune in Minnesota shows that claim, like many the NRA makes, is completely false. Since 2003 only 5 instances of justifiable use of firearms by a permit holder have been reported. Three other cases were documented, but not reported. The FBI reported an average of 250 justifiable homicides per year from 2006-2010, an average of 5 per state, or well in line with what Minnesota has reported.

On the flip side, the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension reports show that permit holders have been convicted of 124 crimes using a firearm during that same period of time. Nineteen of those cases were assaults, ten were for carrying under the influence, six were for drug-related crimes, and one was a homicide.

For those of us who believe Armageddon is not in our future, or that the “government” has no intention of taking away our guns, this Star Tribune report undermines the arguments of those who live in the alternate universe known as Wayne’s World, and for those who believe more guns make us safer.

The Hypocrisy of The NRA

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We constantly hear from the National Rifle Association that we don’t need more gun laws. We just need to enforce the laws we have. The federal agency primarily responsible for enforcing gun laws is the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. So what has the NRA done to help the AFT enforce current gun laws?

In 2004, a Republican congressman and friend of the NRA from Kansas, Todd Tiahrt, added an amendment to a bill regarding the ATF. Until that point, data had been kept on the history of guns used in murders and shootings, which allowed police and policymakers to trace them back to corrupt dealerships and other holes in the system. The rule change written by the NRA and known as the Tiahrt amendment, made this data much harder to acquire. It also forced the justice department to destroy within 24 hours the records of any gun buyer whose background check was approved. The overall impact of the amendment made it much harder for police to clamp down on illegally distributed guns.

Thanks to Wisconsin Republican senator James Sensenbrenner’s provision in the Patriot Act reauthorization in 2006––supported by the NRA––the director of the ATF now has to be confirmed by the senate instead of merely being appointed by the President. The ATF has been without a director ever since. Sensenbrenner was given the NRA’s Defender of Freedom Award that same year.

The NRA has made several attempts to usher through Congress an “ATF reform bill” that would make it much harder – some say virtually impossible – to revoke the gun-selling licenses of crooked dealers. If passed, the ATF would have to prove the dealer’s state of mind, in terms of his or her premeditated intention to break the law.

The NRA backed legislation prohibiting AFT agents from inspecting a firearms dealer more than once a year. They’ve fought against the creation of a federal registry to track gun sales and backed legislation from releasing information from its firearms trace database. The NRA opposes legislation that would close the gun show loophole requiring background checks for all gun sales. They’ve even opposed measures that would allow background checks to block terror suspects from buying guns.

If there were any doubts as to the NRA’s feelings toward the AFT, it can be summed up in the words of its Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre. “If I were to select a jack-booted group of fascists who were perhaps as large a danger to American society as I could pick today, I would pick the ATF. They are a shame and a disgrace to our country.”

So much for the NRA’s contention that we just need to, “fully enforce existing federal gun laws.”