Texas Expert Shoots Down Connection Between Video Games & Street Violence

So do violent video games really lead to school shooting? President Trump cited violent video games during his 'listening sessions' last week in the wake of the Florida school massacre.

But Gary Brubaker, who teachers video game development at Southern Methodist University, tells 1200 WOAI he doesn't buy it.

He says there is no indication of any link between 'fantasy violence' in video games, and any violence in the real world, from domestic to criminal to the type of planned carnage seen in Florida on Valentine's Day.

"Just because someone who is violent enjoys a certain type of movie or game, that doesn't mean that everybody who likes that type of move or game is violent," he said. In fact, he says video games were the first to add a rating system.

"It will say 'cartoon violence' or 'gun violence' or 'sexual content'," he said. "And it was only after video games started doing that that TV shows and movies started doing the same thing."

He points out that ever since Shakespeare's plays, which are very violent, people have blamed mass culture for violence in the streets, without any proof. 

He says from novels in the 19th Century to movies in the early 20th Century to Tipper Gore's famous crusade against the lyrics of heavy metal music in the 1980s, people have tried, without success, to find a link between consuming a certain type of popular culture and violence in the real world.

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