I'd hate to call this pack of fallacies
an informed interview, since that presupposes a reasonable grasp and
analysis of facts, but there are plenty of grandstanding quotes from a
lawyer who like to misdirect the blame for violence onto video games.
It's the same paranoid, "blame the culture" crap that promised we'd
have packs of devil-worshipping, human-sacrificing, suicidal people
running around today because they played Dungeons and Dragons in the
80's. According to this nutcase, I should fear for my life because my
friend Sandy plays Grand Theft Auto.
How lovely that GTA weds sex and violence in the same game. We are
training a generation of teens to combine sex with violence, just what
America needs.
He then goes on to use this statistical misdirection:
Question: According to the Center for Child Death Review, 1,242
kids were murdered with guns and 174 children died from accidental
firearm-related injuries in 2000. Aside from stories that get covered
in the news like Columbine, there are few, if any, actual
statistics that show how many children's deaths are directly linked
to video games. Do the facts speak for themselves? Or is it just that
nobody is really keeping tabs?
A: The federal government found that in the school year 2003,
there were 48 school killings. The year before that there were 16, and
the year before that 17. Something is going on. I submit that the
video game generation is coming of age.
Clearly it also correlates with George W. Bush's presidency and his
"No child-left-behind" reforms. Shouldn't someone be looking into
that? Won't anyone think of the children!?