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Trump once again blames video games for mass shootings rather than guns

Trump once again blames video games for mass shootings rather than guns

The president of first-world death cult the United States Donald Trump has said that video games are partly responsible for recent mass shootings.

Making a statement alongside vice president Mike Pence following two incidences of gun crime within 24 hours - one in El Paso and another in Ohio - the US president said that a culture of violence is turning troubled minds into shooters. Our thoughts are with the families and friends of those killed and injured in these heinous acts of violence.

Trump also said that he was asking social networks to look for red flags to give an indication that someone might be planning to execute a mass shooting.

"We must stop the glorification of violence in our society," he said.

"This includes the gruesome and grisly video games that are now commonplace. It is too easy today for troubled youth to surround themselves with a culture that celebrates violence. We must stop or substantially reduce this and it has to begin immediately."

If this sounds familiar, it's because Trump did the exact same thing in February 2018 following the Florida school shooting, saying that video games need to be rated. Of course, games in the United States have had video games since 1994 when the ESRB was formed.

Following those remarks, Trump met with members of the video game industry, including US trade body the Entertainment Software Association. Ultimately nothing really happened at this meeting

Once again, the United States is content to blame outside factors for its gun crime problem rather than facing up to the fact that guns are the problem. Looking at the United Nations' 2019 Homicide Report, the United States has a murder rate of 5.1 per 100,000 citizens for the 2017 calendar year. In the United Kingdom, that figure is just 1.2. One of these countries has guns reasonably available and the other does not.

Photo credit: Evan El-Amin / Shutterstock.com


PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.