QuoteVideo games – we all know about them, whether it's that harmless card game your grandma plays, the one in which you shoot as many people as possible, or that sandbox building-mining game. It has been demonstrated by many studies that violent video games can make people more aggressive, violent, and generally dangerous. Now, I'm not saying that any video game involving any type of harm is going to make you a crazy mass murderer, but some people do become killers because of these games.
In fact, these video games are a lot like mass murder: you go in with a gun and shoot as many people as you can. The difference is this: in the video game, you are rewarded for killing; while in real life you are put in jail. Young, irrationally thinking adolescent gamers may not realize the consequences of real-life Call of Duty, so they could easily go out and shoot people in real life.
The shooters at Columbine, Sandy Hook, and other tragic homicides and killings all played video games of this type. After playing many hours of Call of Duty to "train" for his "mission,"Anders Breivik, a Norwegian, went out and killed 77 people. The aforementioned mission was, in fact, to kill as many people in real life as he could. It was also recently discovered that Adam Lanza admired Breivik and tried to top his kill count when Lanza killed 27 people, including 20 children, at Sandy Hook.
Video games like Grand Theft Auto and other first-person shooter games affect teenagers more than adults, partly due to the adolescent brain's developing prefrontal cortex (the part that enables them to make wise decisions) and therefore the adolescent's self-control. Because of this, teenagers are more prone to making rash decisions – such as taking a gun and shooting as many people as possible – in real life, because they've been conditioned to do so through these video games.
In these games, if you kill someone, you don't go to jail, you don't die, you don't get fined – you get extra points! Is this the message we want to send our children – that killing is good? Because it will translate into real life, and then we've been raising mass murderers on shoot-'em-up video games! When the children who played these games yesterday shoot and kill people today, who or what takes the blame? Is it the parents, for having the gun that the child used? A law preventing kids from taking their parents' guns cannot be enforced within the privacy of one's home– that would be grounds for violation of the Fourth Amendment, so it's up to the responsible adults to keep the guns from the kids. Is it the gun control laws, for having loopholes? Every law has loopholes, and you can't close them all. Or could it be the murder games they play, the graphics disturbingly similar to reality... ?
People may dismiss this issue because they aren't mass murderers: "I play Call of Duty, and I've never had an urge to go out and shoot people!" They may never have had homicidal tendencies, but they are one person in the sea of video-game players, some of whom have turned up in the news as the most recent mass murderers. What a violent video game or gun control law would do is keep those kids from committing homicide.
I recently watched a video of someone playing Call of Duty. It involved the player working in a team of terrorists and shooting as many people as possible in an airport. It was, of course, all animated, but there was still much blood and gore whenever someone died. The aim of this particular mission was to kill as many people as possible, as most of the missions' goals were. I, like many others, find playing a game that rewards the player for murder to be despicable and sickening. Why play a game that rewards you for killing? Might it be "because it's fun," as I have heard my peers explain? Or because these games groom them for The End Game... ?
Chris Christie even made this statement pertaining to violent video games, "You cannot tell me that a kid sitting in a basement for hours playing Call of Duty and killing people over and over and over again does not desensitize that child to the real-life effects of violence." Some people I know were perfectly nice... and then they started playing violent video games. Now they're easier to provoke and more aggressive. There is a clear link here - children and teenagers and murderers have proved it time and time again. But somehow, people just don't see it.
Some of my peers frequently discuss the video games they play. I have overheard quite a few conversations about Call of Duty and other shooter games. I became curious about these games and decided to do some research. I used a well-known media review website, Common Sense Media, which gives all Call of Duty games a rating of NOT FOR KIDS, due to graphic violence, uncensored language, and other mature elements. After all, the Entertainment Software Rating Board rated Call of Duty as "M [mature] for Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Strong Language, Suggestive Themes, and Use of Drugs." A rating of M from the ESRB means that the content is generally suitable for ages 17 and up, because of graphic violence and/or sexual content. The kids I heard discussing this game were between ages 11 to 13, which is nowhere near ages 17 and up.
Most soldiers in the American military during the Civil War and World War II didn't actually shoot at the enemy. They just couldn't bring themselves to kill at close range, where they could see the enemy soldier, look them in the eye, and shoot them and kill them. But by the Vietnam War, over 90% of troops could be counted on to kill in close quarters. How did the military make this happen, you
ask? The secret to their success... was simulations of actual battles. The military now trains their soldiers using violent video games. Now children – some even as young as eight years old – spend hours in similar battle simulators. Most of these kids will not become mass murderers, but combine emotionally troubled children with battle simulations that train them to kill and it's fairly simple: real-life homicides can happen. And nobody wants real-life homicides, now do we?
I've heard the statistics and comments – "I play Call of Duty and I've never had the urge to run out and murder everyone!" Though most gamers won't ever become homicidal, that statistic provides no relief for the families of gun violence victims. Our media has become more and more violent over the years. The most recent mass murderers have played violent video games. We raise our kids on these battle simulators. It's time we stop training our kids to kill people!
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That's my paper, any comments or edits I should make before submitting it? (It's for a contest, otherwise I wouldn't ask for help.)