A Fox News guest on Wednesday revived the widely disputed theory that video games fuel mass shootings. (Watch the video below.)
Randy Sutton, a former Las Vegas policeman and spokesperson for Blue Lives Matter, appeared on “Your World” after a suspected 14-year-old gunman shot and killed four people at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, and left nine others hospitalized.
“Human life has less value because of many of the social mores that have changed over the decades,” Sutton said. “From violent video games ― which, I can tell you right now, I fully believe play a role in these type of tragic situations ― to the culture that has evolved surrounding the glorification of gangs and of violence and of lyrics to songs that espouse violence.”
Ted Williams, a former D.C. homicide detective, also mentioned the games as a factor in a “Your World” segment on Wednesday. He spoke of “video games showing very, very violent acts.”
The law enforcement veterans’ analysis doesn’t stand up to mounting evidence to the contrary.
In 2023 the Stanford Brainstorm Lab reported that “current medical research and scholarship have not found any causal link between playing video games and gun violence in real life” after reviewing more than 80 research articles, according to Fortune.
After a cluster of mass shootings in 2019, then-President Donald Trump, who’s again the Republican nominee, blamed electronic games. That prompted backlash.
“We must stop the glorification of violence in our society,” Trump 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.”
The president’s talking point, which has been echoed by other conservatives afraid to steer the conversation to gun control, got a resounding fact-check from NBC News.
“There’s absolutely no causal evidence that violent video game play leads to aggression in the real world,” Oxford University researcher Andrew Przybylski told the network after a 10-year study. NBC also cited several other studies that debunked the assertion.
h/t Media Matters
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