President Donald Trump blames violent video games as the source of America’s epidemic of mass shootings.
Last Saturday, a lone gunman with anti-immigrant attitudes stormed into a mall in El Paso and killed 22 people. The next day, another shooter killed 9 people in Dayton, Ohio roughly 1,400 miles away. Unlike the El Paso shooter, the Dayton shooter seemed to have leftist views and even had a Twitter history showing support for gun control.
Clearly, the problem with mass shootings in the United States has nothing to do with political affiliation or views towards guns. According to US President Donald Trump, the source of America's mass shooting epidemic is in violent video games.
"We must stop the glorification of violence in our society. This includes the gruesome and grisly video games that are now commonplace," said Trump in a national address on Monday. "It is too easy today for troubled youth to surround themselves with a culture that celebrates violence. We must stop or substantially reduce this and it has to begin immediately."
Video games are often cited as a scapegoat when it comes to violence, but is there any truth to the accusations? Not according to science. Both NBC and CNN point to numerous recent studies that show no link between real-life violent behavior and playing violent video games.
Former Nintendo of America COO Reggie Fils-Aime added weight to the argument by tweeting out a chart that also showed the rates of gun violence when compared with sales of video games. As you can see, the more games a country consumes has no relation to the number of violent gun deaths.
Various organizations in the US say the widespread availability and lack of restrictions on firearm ownership is the true cause of mass shootings in America. While the Center for Disease Control has been able to report facts and figures on gun deaths, a 1996 Congressional order prevents the government agency from studying the issue to determine a root cause.
One thing is for sure: it's not games that are causing mass shootings.