Let's Talk About Violent Video Games

On December 14, 2012, a twenty year-old gunman entered Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, and shot 20 children and 6 adult staff dead.

Television and print media wasted no time laboring to connect the shooting to video games. The National Rifle Association implicated the video game industry, calling it a “callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry that sells, and sows, violence against its own people”, and a small nearby town of Southington, CT, was almost ready to host a modern day book-burning.

Talking about acts of violence – and the violent games and entertainment frequently blamed for them – can be a terribly complicated affair. But that doesn’t mean we must do it terribly.