A 13-year old gamer has six guns. Media response: SHOCK HORROR future murderer!

As an extension of Rachelle's post on videogame violence and addiction, I thought I'd comment and explore an example of 'good parenting' that unfortunately still resulted in a media sh*tstorm about violent video games and their link to firearms, but said comment became pretty long and horrid to read without formatting, so here we go:


This Eurogamer article was posted by Kevin here on the blog, and it gives a case study of a gamer who developed an interest in firearms as a result of his family buying him Call of Duty, so they could supervise him playing at home, rather than going round to a friend's house. Responsible parents buying their progeny restricted content, yay! Keeping in mind of course that for every golden example, somewhere on the internet it is possible to find a not-so-golden counterpiece, especially when this is the side chosen by the mainstream media: this particular example was only reported because said 13yr old was found with one of his guns at school for a dispusted reason.

"I have six pellet and BB guns," says Aidin Smith, a 13 year-old resident of Springfield, Illinois. "These include two BB guns, modelled on the M14 rifle and M1911 pistol, and two pellet guns, modelled on the AK-47 and M16. I also own an M14 BB rifle M1911 BB pistol. And I got an AK-47 rifle, M16 rifle.
"My favorite is the M1911. I shot a real M1911 when I lived in the country. I shot with my Grandpa. I love the action on it, it is like a real M1911, it recoils and springs back like a real gun. All of them are ones that are in Call of Duty. I like guns more because of Call of Duty. The M1911 is a pistol in almost in every Call of Duty."

Article goes on to quote his grandfather, who had taken him to the gun range and "showed him what the real thing can do. I told him never to point a gun at a real person and that no one gets an extra life if you shoot them." That's some deep and meaningful wisdom right there.


With many mainstream violent games, such as this the often lambasted CoD series, I believe they restrict your 'negative' behaviour: like leaving a team member to die or bleed out, and shooting innocent civvies or your comrades.
Some will also reward you for 'better' kills, involving precision targeting and conservative fire. Of course this can still be seen as training for a serial killer's rampage, as the media would have us believe on a regular basis.  We should all be familiar with the hypodermic needle theory by now.

If we were to restrict this sort of morally-questionable content would we not be painting a picture of a perfect world, a perfect war?

(Given, this series will also teach you that ammunition is abundant in every corner of the world and that the West is always best, so they're not the greatest examples. . .)

With regards to the school shootings, little attention is placed on the media's coverage and (un)intentional glorification of such events. It really is easier to point the finger at someone else: none of the videogame developers interviewed for the Eurogamer agreed to discuss the report's questions, nor did the NRA on what role guns in video games had on their sales.
 Again, as with video games, we can't restrict content or newsreporting to stop copycat antics. But what can be done is a change in attitudes and production values. In this course we have heard tales about alternative means of demonstrating death or violence without the need for "BOOM HEADSHOT"-esque visualizations and buckets of gore. A careful balance is needed to lower expectations for hyperviolent content, as with overly-sexualized representations of gender stereotypes and other issues modern game developers face.

But of course, we can turn to a Youtube clip for simple answers to the problems. Problems which were still evident in the reporting of the Sandy Hook shootings :/