Dalitso Njolinjo, a guest writer for British news outlet The Moderate Voice, turned his thoughts on Sunday to recent shootings in the US, opining that those who have traditionally laid the blame for such incidents at the feet of video games – and pop culture in general – have shot rather wide of the mark:

‘I remember the Columbine High School massacre in 1999 and how the American press dealt with the news story. Instead of having a serious conversation about gun crime and gun control, the majority of the news stories based on sensationalism. ‘The Trench Coat Mafia’, ‘they played violent video games’, ‘they were fans of Marilyn Manson’ and ‘they were fans of Natural Born Killers’. No real deconstruction of how they were able to obtain the murder weapons — and as soon as the conversation did veer towards gun control, the NRA would call foul play and blame someone in pop culture.’

Moving on to a broader censure of American reticence to enact more stringent gun control laws, he suggested that the true root of the problem lies not within the entertainment industry, but rather in what he perceives as the inadequacy of the strictures placed upon access to firearms themselves:

‘When anyone can purchase a fire arm with such ease and with impunity and thereafter go and take somebody’s life, someone somewhere has failed the victims.’

It is his hope, he writes, that President Obama will take ‘the opportunity…to lead the country in a respectful conversation on gun control.’

Source: Game Politics