I've long been a person who has screamed against people who complain that violent video games are the reason for the increase in school violence in the last 20 years. I've also screamed against people who say the same thing about TV and movies but, in the words of Alton Brown, that's another show. I've found an article that does a lot to damn the people who have this point of view. It will be posted at the end of this entry. It's an unusual stance coming from someone who identifies as liberal in their political leanings seeing as how liberals/democrats seem to be the main ones who believe this nonsense. Thankfully this seems to be changing as a recent statement by Nancy Pelosi, a democrat, indicates but there are still way too many people in power in Washington who believe such foolishness.
Why do people like to say that Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, Socom, Resident Evil, Call Of Duty, Grand Theft Auto and other such games increase violence? Simple. It's the easy answer to a complex problem. Most people don't want to put some legitimate thought into this discussion and thus, actually have to work their minds so they come up with the easiest answer possible even if it's grossly incorrect. This is the work of people who don't want to work to actually solve the problem themselves but simply want to bitch and moan about it and hope society does it for them.
I have been playing the Mortal Kombat series of games since I was 8 years old. In 20 years of playing those games, I've never once attempted to, or even had the urge to, set someone on fire, pull their head off their torso with the spine attached, or pull someone's beating heart out of their chest. I've never once even had the urge to kiss a stranger just to see if they'll inflate and explode as happens in Mortal Kombat 2. Yet according to these fringe lunatics, I should've already knocked off a few dozen people. I have a close friend who has watched strong R-rated horror films loaded with gore and violence since he was 4 or 5 years old and, to my knowledge, he's never once had the urge or attempted to slice someone in half, crush their skulls, ram a machete through their chest cavity, or anything else that Freddy and Jason ever did on the screen. I myself was the only member of my 2nd grade class to have seen Terminator 2 when it was first released on VHS in 1992. I wondered then why no one else had seen this wonderful movie and it didn't occur until years later that I was the only one in the class who had parents who allowed me to watch a hard R-rated action film. On the flipside of this, I have another friend who, by his own admission, didn't see his first R-rated film of any kind until he was about 16 years old and he certainly wasn't playing any video games like Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, Tekken, Primal Rage, Killer Instinct or any other massively popular violent game of the time period and honestly, I don't know if he would've been allowed to anyway.
Yeah, I know I said movies and TV were another show but this instance figures into my larger point.
What is that point? The point is that we had parents who raised us with a sense of right and wrong as well as a sense of fantasy and reality. Many parents these days teach their kids that the universe revolves around them and do nothing to teach them how to deal with adversity which of course means when things don't go their way, they act out. This factor, combined with how easy it is for any J6P in America to get military grade weaponry, is the biggest reason for escalated school violence.
"Violent Video Games Are Good For Society?"
http://beta.fool.com/reubengbrewer/2013/02/21/violent-video-games-are-good-for-society/25235/?source=eogyholnk0000001
