After 14 more children were murdered in a school shooting in Parkland, Fla., last month, many people refused to see that easy access by teenagers to assault-style rifles is potentially part of the problem.
They pointed to all the other regular suspects, like mental illness, “pure evil,” poor child-rearing and violent depictions in movies and video games.
President Donald Trump himself raised concerns about video games at a White House meeting with members of the industry and some of their most vocal critics.
Searching for ways to respond to last month’s school shooting, Trump questioned the impact of video games. Now, we are no fans of violent video, but so far, research has failed to find a link between gun violence and graphic depictions of violence in games. While some studies have shown a connection between gaming and emotional arousal, there’s no evidence that this heightened emotional state leads to physical violence.
The Entertainment Software Association sees “numerous scientific studies establishing that there is no connection between video games and violence.”
Melissa Henson, program director for the Parents Television Council, a conservative watchdog group, however, asserts there is evidence that video games can “contribute to violent attitudes” or feelings of isolation — which presumably can lead to violence by affected gamers.
After the video games meeting, the White House put out a statement saying Trump “acknowledged some studies have indicated there is a correlation between video game violence and real violence.” The statement included a link to a YouTube video with clips of video game violence.
So, at the end of the day, we have just another example of a White House that conducts meetings that only create an impression of being serious about understanding and solving a problem.
We need to be serious about understanding the problem in an empirical way.
This is not the first time Washington has considered video games as a possible cause of gun violence but has not followed through with any scientific study.
In 2013, after the shooting at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Conn., Vice President Joe Biden held three days of wide-ranging talks on gun violence prevention, including a meeting with video game industry executives. After the 2013 meetings wrapped up, the White House called for research on the effect of media and video games on gun violence, but nothing substantial came out of that.
Why can’t we find out more conclusively if violent video harms young impressionable or disturbed minds? For that matter, why can’t we study other claims and counter claims about the causes of and remedies for gun violence in America? Each side in the gun debate asserts its feelings and beliefs and stakes out its positions with little fact-based evidence. Talk about shooting from the hip.
One reason we don’t have better answers to these questions is a federal law, the 1996 Dickey Amendment, that bars the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from funding research that “may be used to advocate or promote gun control.” The NRA-backed law was adopted after a CDC study in 1993 showed that bringing a gun into the home puts everyone at much greater risk.
Ambiguous language in the law has discouraged private-sector research, as well as federally funded studies, since then. So today, gun violence, which is among the nation’s top causes of death, is among the least researched, according to a Journal of the American Medical Association review.
Even former Rep. Jay Dickey, a Republican from Arkansas who authored the law, has since reversed his position and regrets the amendment was ever adopted. We agree. This isn’t about wanting to take anyone’s guns away; it’s about trying to understand and solve a problem, based on actual data and not gut feelings, predilections or political leanings.
What’s wrong with studying the causes of an epidemic? It’s the only sensible thing to do.