Video games still a part of the gun debate; blamed for real-life violence

What turns a kid into a killer?

That’s one of the big, overarching, hard to answer questions that politicians who are making decisions on gun legislation are facing.

“Violent behavior is very complex and is determined by many factors,” Dr. Brad Bushman of Ohio State University told Seattle’s Morning News. “Violent media is just one of many risk factors – and there are protective factors as well. If the kid comes from a home where the parents monitor what the child is doing, then those are some protective factors.”

Violent video games, while left unattended then, could be dangerous, according to Bushman’s studies.

Bushman is a professor of communications who has done 50 of his own studies on the effects of violent video games. Most recently he did a comprehensive study of all of the video game violence studies.

“We found over 381 effects from studies involve over 130,000 participants and these clearly show that violent video games increase aggressive behavior. They decrease helping behavior, and they make people numb to the pain and suffering of others,” explained Bushman.

But a fellow violent video game studying professor said there are reasons to be skeptical of Bushman’s results.

“In his statement he implies that studies are consistent between them, but they’re not,” Dr. Christopher Ferguson, a professor of psychology and criminal justice at Texas A&M University told Seattle’s Morning News.

Ferguson said some of the evidence that Dr. Bushman is referring to has actually been funded by some anti-media advocacy groups, and referred to those as “dubious sources” with sincere intentions.

Ferguson’s studies on the issue say there is no clear link between video game violence and those who act out violently in real life. It’s easy to think that there should be a link. The studies, after all are not “hard science,” like physics or chemistry as Ferguson said.

Ferguson emphasized that if we believe video games are a real factor in this violent behavior, then we are doing a disservice to the actual problem.

Ferguson had an opportunity to meet with Vice President Joe Biden as he finalized a package of recommendations for the president to curb gun violence.

“We tried to give him some insight,” said Ferguson. “There may be potential, like what happened after Columbine in 1999, for the country to get distracted by a non-issue [like video games] that could actually limit the country’s ability to be productive on other, more important issues.”

He and other researchers advised Biden to not make any conclusive statement saying that video games lead to aggressive behavior.

As a society, we have tendencies to go down rabbit holes, like getting extremely concerned about video games, said Ferguson. He told Biden that can do a lot of damage at distracting people from more important issues like mental health reform or gun control.