Guns don’t kill people. Video games, the media and Obama’s budget kill people -NRA executive vice-president Wayne LaPierre
Squint a bit, and Britain and America could almost appear quite similar. They say everyone is beautiful if you squint a bit. But open your eyes, and America is like a garden party BBQ, while Britain is the conceptually pleasant, but climatically shit picnic. The American BBQ chef will invariably be some alpha male with a funny apron and erection problems. The English will dine on potted shrimps and custard tarts, and have their real conversations in the cold silence between words. It’s the little differences. Over there the date comes second. Everything is still measured in feet, gallons and pounds. Strong patriot and puritanical values. Privatised health service. Jaywalking. Candy. Driving on the right.
Squint a bit, and Britain and America could almost appear quite similar. They say everyone is beautiful if you squint a bit. But open your eyes, and America is like a garden party BBQ, while Britain is the conceptually pleasant, but climatically shit picnic. The American BBQ chef will invariably be some alpha male with a funny apron and erection problems. The English will dine on potted shrimps and custard tarts, and have their real conversations in the cold silence between words. It’s the little differences. Over there the date comes second. Everything is still measured in feet, gallons and pounds. Strong patriot and puritanical values. Privatised health service. Jaywalking. Candy. Driving on the right.
And the
ability to buy a gun at the cultural equivalent of Tesco.
On 14
December 2012, a twenty year-old man shot and killed his mother. He then went
to a suburban Connecticut elementary school and opened fire with multiple
weapons, killing twenty children and six adults. Adam Lanza then turned one of
the guns on himself. On 15 December 2012 certain news networks salaciously rubbed
their hands together and showed us in bafflingly unsubstantiated detail the
mechanics of the massacre. The upshot of
this was a renewal in the long-dormant national debate about gun control, and
sparked a complementary- and in some cases diversionary- discussion about
mental health funding and treatment. But it’s also revived another old
conversation, about whether video games are too violent, and whether they play
a role in encouraging, desensitizing, and even preparing mass killers for their
rampages. I just watched the head of the NRA (Neanderthal Redneck Association)
- one of America’s most powerful and influential corporate lobbying groups
(though they play at being a citizen's rights outfit for gun owners, of course)
- hold a press conference to say, effectively: Guns don't kill people,
video-games and Hollywood kill people, and have created a Culture of Violence.
This is not
a new argument. It is a tired, reactionary cliche we've seen trotted out time
and time again, completely lacking imagination. If NRA executive vice-president
Wayne LaPierre was trapped inside featureless room with a single, solitary tea
cosy, he wouldn't even be tempted to
try it on. It isn't just the NRA though. A Jay Rockefeller introduced
legislation in the Senate “to arrange for the National Academy of Sciences
to study the impact of violent video games and violent programming on
children.” That’s right, videogame legislation
beat gun control bills to Congress. I understand why some
people don’t like violent video games. I also understand why some people don’t
like violent films or TV shows. But before you start talking about censorship,
I want to see some proof (of which there currently is none). I worry that if
you decide (with no good evidence) that you don’t like my video games, and want
them gone, then next you’ll come for my films. Then, maybe, you’ll decide you
need to come for my books. That will not do.