On December 14, 2012 a 20 year old Adam Lanza shot 20 children at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Although this is a tragic event it was blamed on something that I don’t think is right. The shooting was supposedly caused by Adam Lanza playing violent video games. Even though this does sound like something like violent video games could provoke violence. That’s not it.

Video games have been blamed for many school shootings. But what the people that are blaming these acts on video games don’t know is that youth violence has fallen to it’s lowest level in forty years says Christopher J. Ferguson, a professor and department chair of psychology. For me video games are a good stress reliever. I play these video games myself and I have absolutely no urge to go and shot and hurt somebody. Video games actually help out with the stress of school and other things. Video games are actually helping to keep the violence down. So instead of a person going to go shoot someone in real life they could do in a video game instead. But there was one instance that someone went way too far. A frenchman named Julien Barreaux stabbed a man in the chest for killing him in a online game called Counter Strike: Source. Although this was provoked by video games the game did not promote it and this man’s own bad decision.  And somehow the topic of video games have made it into the courts.
 

There has been a couple Supreme Court cases about video games. One of the cases Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association was a case that went up the courts starting in California. California senator Leland Yee was the person to introduce this law. Although this did make it to the Supreme Court it did not win and the law was not passed and the court explaining that the law infringes the first amendment rights, the freedom of speech. This law has not been tossed up any other time but it is very well debated. Although no other cases have popped up I think one will soon.

All of the violence that has been blamed on video games almost all of it is wrong. Video games just serve as an easy scapegoat. Video games could not provoke this violence. Video games would make more sense actually helping and they do. Having the violence drop to its lowest in 40 years really shows that. I mean what’s easier blaming violence on video games? Or blaming on our bad community. I would say video games. Video games are so easy to shift the blame onto. Instead of taking the blame on other things.

Overall video games cannot be a reason for violence they actually make it better. Violence has gone down to its lowest in 40 years. The supreme court case saying that playing video games in the US is legal and protected. And there was no reason shift the blame on to video games other than being a “scapegoat”. Video games just cannot be the reason for violence in the real world. Video games are just a fun pastime and actually helps the violence problem.