1. Video games don’t cause insanity

Many politicians in favor of censoring violence have argued that video games cause people to become violent and unstable. The Navy Yard shooter was supposedly addicted to Call of Duty and would spend the entire day locked in his room playing the game.

Ok, well, I will admit, this summer I spent a few days sitting in room talking to my friends on Skype and playing games. The reason I haven’t gone and killed anyone? Because I have no reason to. I can tell reality from a computer game and know right from wrong. Mentally insane people can’t. Some of the most infamous killers in history were born before computers, the internet, and video games were even thought about. Josef Stalin, Adolf Hitler, and Heinrich Himmler killed hundreds of millions and lived in time periods where color TV was a rare occurrence. Stalin was a manic depressive with a severe paranoid personality disorder. Hitler had a meth addiction, was a malignant narcissist, had multiple personality disorders, and Parkinson’s. Himmler had Severe Attachment Disorder and, you guessed it, had narcissistic personality disorder. I’m starting to see a pattern here.

2.  Tv  violence is just as bad as video game violence

Many countries have already censored violence in video games. Germany banned the original Wolfenstein 3D because one boss was Hitler in a mecha robot suit. People can get all up in arms about violence and content in video games but it’s nothing more than what you’d see on television. My parents won’t let me watch shows like Game of Thrones and other HBO shows, but they will let me play games that involve slaughtering waves of Nazi Zombies and the Battle of Stalingrad, the bloodiest battle in history.

I can actively participate in all this barely moving from my couch, except to get a drink and change the disc. It’s amazing really. I can lead Soviet troops into battle in Company of Heroes 2, or explore the post-apocalyptic Moscow Metro in Metro: Last Light. This, I believe, is what has caused so much controversy. The player is in active participant in the violence. The player feels what the game wants them to feel. If the game is done right, we get attached to the main character, even if during the entire game the player character doesn’t say a word. But if it’s violence we are worried about, then why does everyone freak out over video games, when television involves real people?

In video games, you aren’t witnessing real people get maimed and tortured. It’s fake, and even in this day and age, obviously so. There are only a handful of games that people can barely tell the difference from the game and real life, and those games aren’t the ones under fire for promoting violence. If we are going to blame media, we should blame all forms of it.

3.  Games have ratings for a reason

Like TV and movies, video games have ratings. Mature 17+ games don’t belong in the hands of little kids. In a recent shooting, an eight-year old boy killed his grandmother after playing Grand Theft Auto 4. Even though this was a great tragedy, it’s obvious this kid had no adult supervision. Somehow, he got access to a gun and knew how to use it. If you are a parent, and your nine year old kid is able to find your gun, I think you’re doing it wrong. Plus, this kid has access to the game. There’s a neat little box on the back of the game that tells you the rating and WHY it deserved the rating. I have GTA 4. Never in a thousand years would I think it’s ok to give this to anyone whos not in at least 7th grade. The rating system wasn’t created for no reason. It was created to give parents an idea of what content the kids will be exposed to.  It’s up to the parents to actually see what their kids are playing.

4. There is no proof

No are no studies linking violence in video games to violence in kids. Politicians like to blame video game violence because it’s our generations scapegoat. They used to blame music and comic books, but now they blame video games. Instead of blaming something that’s hard to fix, they blame the easiest thing to blame; video games. There is absolutely no proof that video games will ever make someone violent. If video games cause someone to be violent, they had problems long before they picked up that controller.

5. Crime is actually at an all time low  

Crime in the U.S. has been declining since the early 90’s. Researchers believe that the invention of the internet and the growing rise in home gaming consoles caused most of the decline because people are inside playing games instead of messing around with drugs and getting shot outside. So, technically, the more technology has improved, the more crime rate has dropped.