What are the root social causes of gun related violence? It's a question the U.S. is asking itself a lot right now. 2012 was a year marked by two of the most horrifying massacres in America's history, with 26 fatalities at Sandy Hook Elementary School and 12 in Aurora, CO. Lots of opinions and theories have been flung about, most of them centered on mental illness and gun control. And while some have been quick to label video games as the problem, one writer says a simple ten city comparison on gun violence and video game purchases suggests otherwise.
In an article from the Washington Post, Max Fisher lays out the data from ten different countries, comparing gun related murders to video game spending per capita. Evidentally, in areas where the consumption of video games is high, the gun violence is less frequent, likely due to the low crime rates of developed countries. A graph comparison:
Interestingly enough, the U.S. does not spend the most money per capita on games (that honor goes to the Netherlands, followed by South Korea). It also has far and away the highest gun related deaths per capita, hovering around 3.25 per 100,000, while the next highest, Canada, is at 0.5 per 100,000. Statistics also show that there are an average of 88 guns for every 100 American citizens, a number barely challenged by the second most-armed country, Yemen, at 54 per 100.
While it's irresponsible to quickly eliminate any ongoing social factors that contribute to the epidemic of violence in our country, the facts seem to support the evidence that gun violence is strongly tied to…well, having a lot of guns. If the watchdogs of the world would actually ask gamers what the appeal of our hobby is, they'd find that the vast majority of us only enjoy fictional violence because the element of actual harm is removed. It would cease to be fun once real people are hurt. The quicker they realize that, the quicker we can all move on to discussing the real causes of gun related homicide, like mental illness. The stakes are too high to keeping herding the scapegoats.
