Researcher Finds No Link Between Violent Games and School Shootings 116
GamePolitics writes "A researcher at Texas A&M International University has found no link between playing violent video games and school shootings. Prof. Christopher Ferguson cites 'moral panic' and criticizes politicians, the news media and some social scientists for playing up what he believes is a false connection between video games and school shooting incidents. Quoting: 'Actual causes of violent crime, such as family environment, genetics, poverty, and inequality, are oftentimes difficult, controversial, and intractable problems. By contrast, video games present something of a "straw man" by which politicians can create an appearance of taking action against crime.'"
Re:What about the easy availability of guns ? (Score:2, Interesting)
In the UK guns are not as easy to get hold of as in the USA. We don't have school shootings. Spot the correlation.
In the US wooden clogs are harder to get ahold of as in Europe in general. We don't have clog beatings. Spot the correlation.
Or you could, you know, define the problem sensibly in terms of violent crime or murders at schools. There are countries with higher rates of gun ownership than the UK, but lower rates of violent crime and school murders. What does that imply about the causality of your correlation?
The truth is if you look objectively you can find things that correlate very strongly with violent crime levels and murder rates around the world, and gun ownership and gun control laws are not one of those correlative items. Wealth disparity is the number one correlation and the UK is doing better than the US on that one. Decriminalization of illicit drugs, socialized drug treatment programs, and socialized healthcare in general are also moderately well correlated. But then if you want to understand why you'd have to read a sociology paper and the masses aren't going to do that. It's easier to exploit people's fears about guns to score political points. It's easier to exploit people's fears about not having a gun to score political points. But that's politics not reality. Realistically, gun ownership rates and gun control are not an issue of crime control any more than video games are.