Speech-Connor Foley Assignment 16

August 26th, 2018, Jacksonville, Florida. Jacksonville Landing is a community center, and one of the many businesses there is the Good Luck Have Fun Game Bar. On this day, about 130-150 attendees, consisting of both participants and spectators, come to the bar for a video game tournament. One of the participants was a boy named David Katz. Katz participated in the tournament, but lost before getting to the finals. He refused to shake his opponent’s hand, and left disgruntled. At around 1:30 PM, Katz returned to the bar with a handgun. One of two that he brought to the event. Katz killed two young men, both of which were participants in the tournament. Eleven more people were wounded. David Katz then took his own life. Not only did David Katz have two guns, but he also had a history of mental health issues. The usual song and dance for gun violence debates, right? Well this time, the violence occurred at a video game tournament. Video games, sometimes given then prefix of “violent”, sometimes not, were swiftly blamed, as you can imagine. The prevailing belief by many uniformed media spokesmen and non-gamers that playing violent video games caused you to replicate what you see as real world violence was seemingly being conveyed perfectly. But make no mistake. The game at the tournament was not Call of Duty. It was not Mortal Kombat. It wasn’t DOOM or Grand Theft Auto either. It was Madden NFL 2019, a football video game. 

There is no definition for what a “violent” video game is. Now, some games do come to mind as video games that have very violent themes contained within, some I’ve already mentioned, such as Call of Duty and Mortal Kombat. Heck, Call of Duty and its genre, military shooters, is even a popular talking point “Video games like Call of Duty provide military level training for our nation’s youth to kill.” Yeah, someone contact the president, tell him he can cut our $700 billion defense budget down and just buy a few Xboxes. Same thing pretty much. Now, ladies and gentlemen, I do not wish to cherry pick. Whether the game is Duck Hunt or Manhunt, the fact of the matter is that video games, whether violent or not, do not cause violence. Japan has an approximate gaming economy of $14 billion in a country of approximately 130 million people. America has a gaming economy of about $25 billion in a country of approximately 325 million people. That’s about $108 per citizen in Japan and about $77 per United States citizen. So obviously, following that logic, Japan must be a violent, cruel death. In 2017, almost 40,000 people were killed by a gun in the United States. About 14,500 of those deaths were homicide. How many people died by firearm in Japan in 2017? Three. Three people. Let’s look at South Korea. In the world of gaming, it’s widely accepted that on average, South Korean players are better than every other region’s players. South Korea has a gaming industry worth to citizen count ratio of about $84 per citizen, larger than the U.S.’s $77 per person. In 2015, about 34,000 people in the U.S. lost their lives to guns, 13,000 of those homicides. In 2015 in South Korea, 31 people died from guns. These countries with bigger gaming industries have disproportionately low gun death statistics when compared to the United States. So why are we still blaming video games for gun violence?

Some may find chagrin with me leaving out the obvious. And of course, it would be ignorant to ignore the fact that yes, both Japan and South Korea have laws and restrictions that make it harder to own a gun. And perhaps it’s even true that both Japanese and South Korean citizens are less likely to have mental health issues. These things very well could be causes that contribute to less gun deaths in both countries. But at that point...the argument has shifted away from video games. Perhaps there is an argument to be made that David Katz should not have had such easy access to the two handguns that he had on him at the Jacksonville Landing shooting. Perhaps there is an argument to be made that David Katz should have gotten help with his previous mental health issues. Perhaps there’s even a middle of the road argument that someone with history of mental health should not have had one gun, much less two, in the first place. But at the end of the day, there is no justifiable argument that Madden NFL 2019 caused David Katz to commit violent acts. Whether you’re a gamer or not, you should not stand for baseless arguments to cloud our political airspace. It’s easy to hear the voice of a gamer advocating that gaming does not cause violence and role your eyes, but forget for a moment that we’re talking about video games entirely. There is not only absolutely no proof of a correlation, but proof of the absence of a correlation on this supposed “cause of violence”. As we move forward, it’s important to remember that whichever side of the political spectrum you are on, and whatever views you have on gun control, that this debate is not a baseless or meaningless one. There are people losing their lives every day in the United States to gun violence. So don’t stand for the lies. Or, at the very least, if you want to falsely blame anything for gun violence in America...please leave my favorite pastime and hobby out of it.

Works Cited

“2018 Video Game Industry Statistics, Trends & Data - The Ultimate List.” WePC.com, 16 Dec. 2019, https://www.wepc.com/news/video-game-statistics/.

Darrah, Nicole. “Jacksonville Gaming Tournament Shooter Had Been Hospitalized for Mental Illness, Documents Show.” Fox News, FOX News Network, 27 Aug. 2018, https://www.foxnews.com/us/jacksonville-gaming-tournament-shooter-had-been-hospitalized-for-mental-illness-documents-show.

“Gun Crimes in Japan Remain Rare.” Nippon.com, 6 Mar. 2019, https://www.nippon.com/en/features/h00178/gun-crimes-in-japan-remain-rare.html.

“Gun Violence Archive.” Gun Violence Archive, https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/.

Howard, Jacqueline. “Gun Deaths in US Reach Highest Level in Nearly 40 Years, CDC Data Reveal.” CNN, Cable News Network, 14 Dec. 2018, https://edition.cnn.com/2018/12/13/health/gun-deaths-highest-40-years-cdc/index.html.