NRA calls games a "corrupting shadow industry"

So...it's not the parents' fault for buying their 8 year old a clearly marked 'M' rated game with blood, gore, suggestive themes, and violence? Seems like the parents just want to blame someone else for their lack of basic child-raising skills.

Only crazy people cannot tell real life from games or movies. He is right on one account, the news media is irresponsible and glorifies and sensationalizes these crazy nuts, plastering their faces all over the shop and making them famous. I'll not get into the ridiculousness of letting the public own guns for "personal protection" or even having an organization such as the NRA in a first-world country anyway... shameful!

Personally, I feel video games AND movies HAVE had an influence on the younger generations without a doubt.. As any other military person because as I have seen, younger military are coming in with a completely different mindset not to mention skill capability and familiarity. There is no disputing that. Games and movies have desensitized kids in a major way when it come to seeing dead people, gruesome visuals and the emotional impact of those type actions. Those of you disputing this actually have no factual basis where with my argument I do being that I was active duty military and experienced this first hand. I saw newbie military come in to combat grinning, laughing and joking around about 'taking' someone out. I have seen those who were just outright anxious to see battle. I have even seen the reaction to a few of them that honestly could not comprehend that in real life, you cannot go back and reload the last save when you screw up or things do not go your way... For me that was probably one of the largest shocks.. seeing or hearing someone come to the realization that this is not a video game! The other area game violence and graphic display detail is the affect it has on the moral of individuals. Think about it.... How many of you play games and have NO problem blowing away human beings including kids, babies, women etc? How many of you have literally laughed out loud when you nail a human being with a particularly gruesome kill? You think that is normal? I happen to be one that when I play games I will NOT shoot or take out innocents. I treat any game I play as if my decisions were the same ones I would make in real life. That is moral choice. And it is an honorable choice. One good example is in the Call of Duty Modern Warfare series where you can opt out of a terrorist strike on civilians in an airport setting. How many of you played that part and felt no moral ambiguity when you did? Sorry, but video games and movies DO impact the growth and mental choices kids make. There is no disputing it no matter what you gamers want to say.

What do you mean, "you gamers," do you not consider yourself a gamer despite playing video games? It is very surprising to me that despite the growing popularity of video games, it's still treated like a fringe community, and so it's easy to use low blows against games (shadow industry...wtf?) I wonder what "those movie watchers" think about violence in movies... :P

Why put the blame upon works of art? You could say the same about books, and how they desensitize children if its about fighting and killing. Why not blame books too? Oh while we are at it lets blame all of music for making violent and suggestive music like, Honky Tonk Badonka Donk, it is encouraging our youth to love asses. Pay no head to the labels on everything that was forced on the gaming industry/movie industry. Pay no heed that you need to have an adult get the game or movie, or take you to see them. To say that it is the fault of an inanimate object in my opinion is to say that you would rather blame your own lack of parenting on an object that you cannot control and say OH ITS ALL VIDEO GAMES AND MOVIES FAULTS. Do you know what made our world progress? Art was one of the key factors. The people that end up killing others in the US usually are a bit mentally unstable, why not stop cutting our tax dollars to mental health facilities and start boosting it and getting more mentally unstable people off the streets to prevent deaths instead of blaming the problem on inanimate objects. One more question I would pose to you is, how can you be sure that those people who were "desensitized" are actually so? You are not in their heads, they could just be really good at covering up their feelings and you wouldn't know the difference. Your arguments sounds like pure speculation because of the simple fact that you cannot be inside someones head, even psychology is at the bare minimum a science. I come to you with this not being biased by gaming, simply by being biased against the idiocy of calling a inanimate object the reasons someone goes and shoots someone. Unless they are Gollum from Lord of the rings then they really wont do it. If they are gollum they probably should be sent to a mental ward, not left alone for hours with their precious.

I will say, without a doubt, media (Video games, movies, T.V, music, news reports etc.) has desensitized me to violence, however in no way can you blame the gaming industry for the problems that are in America. First off, he's clearly biased and has a terrible argument. He's not so much arguing against the medium of video games as he is free speech with that free web game that he's bashing. I've never heard of it and I doubt any of my gaming friends have either, they clearly did an internet search for the most controversial game title they could find and slapped it into their complaint list to make their argument valid and attempt to hide their obvious bias. Now, to an extent, I'm against gun control. I'm a responsible citizen who wants to be able to defend my home and family and I feel like a concealed carry is the most effective, safe way to do this. Can it be abused? Yes without a doubt, but from what I've heard these types of crimes aren't becoming more frequent, but rather they are receiving more media attention than before. Anyway, back to the topic. He clearly doesn't know what he's talking about and if video games are censored it's only a matter of time before other media is targeted next as the problem will continue with or without it.

I RREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEALLY dont think that people who root for high caliber rifles in a domestic setting have the highest moral ground, and they damn sure dont have the right to judge or blame video games for anything.

The government will always blame something other than themselves or the NRA because if they blame themselves they have to carry out reforms. If they blame the NRA someone is gonna lose out on election lobbying money next time around. It's all a big GAME to them. Isn't that weird considering they are blaming GAMES for this HA!

"news media for chasing an anti-gun agenda" So anything that's for violence is wrong, and everything against guns (sometimes a cause of violence) is wrong. What a laugh.

the dude was batshit bottom line. personally i hate guns.. I've lost may friends to guns one way or another and if i had my way, world wide ban on them. I suffer no delusion of getting my way so i'm not here to force my thoughts and beliefs on you. what caused this is the guy(don't know or want to know his name and hope he gets forgot about) was disturbed and was either unable or unwilling to get help. That is it bottom line. Not a flash game or the fact that he logged 30 hours a week playing Call of Duty. If this dipshit really wants to help he should be asking "why don't we make it mandatory to get a mental health evaluation before you can get a gun look at all the tests you have to pass to drive a car. sorry so long winded i'm just sick and fucking tired of games getting blamed for things like this

i'm sorry for the potty mouth used above this is just something i'm really tired of hearing

Just like all the gun owners like myself are sick of hearing guns are the issue. It's a social and mental health issue period.

They;re more of an issue than videogames.

True that. In America we do totally ignore mental illness. We need the state hospitals back so we have a place to put people that are a danger to themselves and society. We gun owners don't need assault weapons, though. Guns are for hunting, and if you need a 20 round clip to bring down a deer, you should probably find a new hobby.

and please don't think i'm saying your some nut for owning one. just because something doesn't work for me doesn't mean that it won't for you. I'm just saying the NRA really needs to focus on the real issue and games are not it. i mean your a gamer do you get the urge to go shoot up a school probably not. It just worries me that they are going to start some kind of comics code authority type thing on gaming and we are going to be stuck playing nothing but kirby and angry birds

I wonder what this gentleman would say to the following equation: Holland has statistically a consumption of video games twice as high as the US or Germany (where I live) and practically no censorship on their content. Nevertheless, they have zero school shootings and a very low lethal crime rate, firearms related or else. But it's probably because they get appeased by all the marihuana they smoke :D

It's the NRA. Their word on non-firearm matters isn't worth spit.

Don't these idiots know that a good chunk of the people who own guns are also gamers. He's alienating a good portion their membership.

Don'

This guy is an idiot and does not know what he is talking about.