Trump Blames Video Games for School Shootings

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During a White House meeting on school safety today, U.S. President Donald Trump implied that video games are to blame for school shootings. Last week 17 students and teachers were killed (and many others injured) at a school in Parkland, Florida which is what sparked this statement.

Unfortunately shootings of this kind are nothing new in the U.S., and unfortunately video games again serving as a scapegoat (possibly to draw attention away from policy changing issues like gun control laws) is also nothing new in the U.S.

As is typical with Trump, his ideas didn’t seem to be fully formed in this meeting, and were often contradictory. However in addition to video games, Trump also seemed to imply that “the internet” in general is to blame for school shootings, and/or movies are to blame as well -- but just the ones where “killing is involved”. I’m not totally sure, here's the quote, maybe you can help me figure it out:

“We have to look at the internet, because a lot of bad things are happening to young kids and young minds, and their minds are being formed, and we have to do something about maybe what they’re seeing and how they’re seeing it. And also video games. I’m hearing more and more people say the level of violence on video games is really shaping young people’s thoughts. And you go one further step and that’s the movies. You see these movies, and they’re so violent, a kid is able to see the movie if sex isn’t involved, but killing is involved, and maybe we need to put a rating system for that.”
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I don't mean to choose a side here, but I do know for a fact that there are a lot of people (kids) playing a lot of violent video games all around the world, and yet this degree of gun violence seems to be uniquely an American problem.

Take Japan and South Korea for example: lots of gaming, ZERO deaths by firearms -- which is possible due to the fact that these two countries, and many others, have much stricter gun regulations.

And about the whole needing “to put a rating system” for movies in the US… I’m pretty sure we already have that… R, PG-13, PG, G… And I’m pretty sure we have the same thing for video games… M, T, E… So even if you do believe that violent video games are what cause kids to commit these horrific actions, then really it’s the fact that the games ended up in their hands -- despite the clear warning of being for adults only -- that’s the real issue.

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I’d love to know what you all think about this! Let us know in the comments!


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