To the Editor:

After the Sandy Hook shooting, this nation has been asking itself many questions. One of which is how to prevent another shooting like this one.

Obviously, the solutions started to fall on gun rights. The National Rifle Association identified a different culprit. That would be violent video games.

The NRA chairman started a vicious tirade against games like “Call of Duty” and “Grand Theft Auto,” saying games like those are the cause of all the violence amongst the American youth.

That is very odd, since the NRA recently released its own “first-person shooter” game, and has endorsed gunrelated games in the past.

You may as well assume that anybody who picks up a violent video game is instantly transformed into a murderer. As a gamer myself, I can say the idea that playing a violent video game inherently makes someone more violent is utterly false.

There is no correlation between playing video games and violence. A study conducted by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime tracked the consumption of violent games against the number of gun-related murders in several countries. The countries that showed the most video game consumption were the Netherlands and South Korea, which have record low numbers of gunrelated deaths. The United States had two-thirds fewer video games but a higher number of gun-related deaths than the rest of the other countries combined.

Personally, I find the notion that I am incapable of telling fiction from reality insulting. Holding and using a gun is not in any way equivalent to holding a controller or using a mouse to play a game.

For the parents worried about the potential influence of violent video games: Just don’t let your kid play them.

If a parent doesn’t want their kid playing “Call of Duty,” they should exercise their authority and take the game away from their child.

Joshua Howard
freshman
Wiscasset High School
Wiscasset