The following are among the findings on the US small arms economy—production, imports, domestic sales, and exports—that can be gleaned from public information sources:That's much worse than I imagined.
- The US public is the leading world market for US and most non-US firearms manufacturers.
- The US public holds about 230,000,000–280,000,000 guns—at least one out of every three guns in the world, and nearly one gun per per person in the United States.
- The US military holds approximately 3,600,000 small arms—1.38 guns per uniformed serviceperson.
- US law enforcement officials hold approximately 900,000 small arms.
- On average about 5,300,000 new firearms were introduced into the US civilian market each year from 1998 to 2003.
"Violent video games are like peanut butter," said Christopher J. Ferguson, of Texas A&M International University. "They are harmless for the vast majority of kids but are harmful to a small minority with pre-existing personality or mental health problems."And from the meta-study:
He added that studies have revealed that violent games have not created a generation of problem youngsters.
"Recent research has shown that as video games have become more popular, children in the United States and Europe are having fewer behavior problems, are less violent and score better on standardized tests,"
Results from the current analysis do not support the conclusion that media violence leads to aggressive behavior. It cannot be concluded at this time that media violence presents a significant public health risk.So, yeah. These are not the droids you are looking for. Let's all listen to some Katamari Damacy.
Of course, violent video games are played all over the developed world -- but only in America do massacres like Sandy Hook happen on a regular basis.posted by tonycpsu at 8:25 AM on January 21 [3 favorites]
So, OK, Ralph and Wayne, let's assume you're both right. Let's assume that violent video games really do inspire the desire to imitate the violence in some players. That doesn't seem to be a problem in other countries, because in those countries you simply can't imitate the shooters, because you can't get access to the weaponry. So you can no more imitate the games than you can go out and deal with your own zombie apocalypse. The games are pure fantasy for players all over the world -- except in America where (maybe) they're imitated because they can be.
So even if video games are being imitated -- and there's still no convincing evidence of that -- the problem is still the availability of guns. So you're wrong again, Ralph.
This, it seems to me, provides a background to the proliferation of rage murder. On the one hand, ordinary Americans have been, as Ames says, experiencing a concerted assault from neoliberalism for some decades now, producing a profound social dislocation. The traditional bonds between people dissolve, with the normalisation of an ideology of radical individualism. In Europe, the austerity agenda has provoked substantial resistance, and even where those struggles have failed the prospect of collective responses at least provide a framework in which the world can be understood. In the US, however, the traditions of the Left are much weaker, with the result that individuals are more likely to perceive their misery as an existential personal failing.posted by the man of twists and turns at 9:19 PM on January 21 [1 favorite]
What’s more, more than any other industrialised nation, the US remains deeply embroiled ongoing imperial adventures, conflicts that foster a twenty-first century version of the militaristic values expressed so forcefully in 1914. Throughout the early phases of the Iraq war, the army recruited under the slogans ‘Be all you can be’ and ‘an army of one’, catch cries that replicate the Edwardian sense of battle as an experience that will restore the individuality crushed by capitalist modernity.
In that setting, is it really so surprising that Grenfell’s joy of battle takes a certain proportion of damaged men by the throat, that some of those who know themselves to be among the detritus of a neoliberal order seek the power and clarity that comes from aiming a rifle and pulling its trigger?
So those of you who are not mobilizing to change the Second Amendment, those of you who are not mobilizing to make it more difficult to get guns and weapons are the modern equivalent of people who sat around and let Bull Connor turn his dogs loose on the marches at Selmaposted by Slap*Happy at 4:42 AM on January 24
What the hearing did reveal, though, is that the people who tend to blame video games for violence have some of the same fantasies about using weapons in real life that make the abstracted violence in first-person shooters so attractive.posted by zombieflanders at 10:04 AM on January 31 [4 favorites]
That’s not to say that video games were completely absent from yesterday’s hearing. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) took himself to MSNBC to declare that “I think video games is a bigger problem than guns because video games affect people. But the First Amendment limits what we can doing about video games.”
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) lamented “Where is the artistic value in shooting innocent victims?” And LaPierre, listing what he described as common-sense solutions to gun violence, included “Stop putting out violent video games that desensitize.”
But at the same time that they were lamenting the idea of young men sitting at home working themselves up to kill by playing video games, both witnesses and senators were engaging in some of the same fantasies of heroic deployment of guns against imaginary enemies.
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posted by Sternmeyer at 1:01 PM on January 20 [1 favorite]