News media has been spiraling out of control when there is a teen who went on a killing spree for some horrible reason or obvious reason (based on human behavior) and it is society job to place the blame on. The video game industry are given a bad rep when a impressible teen decide to go on a bloody rampage and kill innocent people. It's more like the video game reason is being replaced from bad parenting. Like the latest LAX shootout. If the police (or they probably did) search that dude's house and discover GTA 5 and Call of Duty in his room, they will say he was influenced by these games to go out and do this heinous act. And we don't look at the main focus here. The real focus is kids who already have mental problems in the beginning.
I hear most adults who don't understand video game industry saying, "Let's ban video games from country". You wouldn't believe it but I have heard this. And my argument is "if we get rid video games, then we should rid of television show, movies, books, music, and any form of entertainment that talks or demonstrate violence". But, that person is still violent. Why is that? It's because as humans (believe it or not, we are mammals so therefore we are animals), we are violent anyway. We are the most violent organism on the planet. We were violent thousands of years ago and nothing is going to change that. I mean look at how we build houses or shopping malls or whatever things we need to build. In order to build things, there's got to be destruction. We destroy natural habitats for animals for a Wal-Mart. But back to the subject, with morals and law and order, we still have people who violent or have violent tendencies. But, roots down to one solution to that problem, bad or the absence of parenting.
Right now, there is a parent who is letting their ten year old son or daughter play Call of Duty and they are the ones who complain about the violence in video games. They would say video games are too violent for my child. As if it's the developers responsibility to tone down the violence in gaming, but in reality, the only responsible thing that developer or company have is the ESRB rating. The developers aren't your babysitter, that's not their responsibility. That's the parents' job. We have become a country where we want to shield our children from any form of adult content, but our children will find out about these anyway. And parents should know this. One thing that I learned in parenting from the brother is children will tell you what they want or they lie to you about what they're up to. It's the parent's job to find out what they are up to. If the kid is acting weird, investigate it. Yes, it sounds awful, but you need to know what's going because it is a thin line between your life and the lives of many people.
When the (Heaven forbid) Connecticut Elementary school shooting happened last year, they investigated that kid and found out that he was a gamer. So, video games manipulated this poor child to kill his mother and shoot the elementary school and shoot himself. And we blamed video games for this. Nevermind the fact that the kid had access to guns, his mother taught him to shoot guns, and has a low self-esteem because his parents look at his older sibling like a success. Video games did not create his lifestyle, his parents did. And that's for every single person who did the same mass shooting. I watched Fox News about this on Youtube and they showed all the people who did mass shootings throughout the years up to today. The commentators linked the connection that all these kids were gamers. I said BS, all of them have a common denominator, there were no parenting influence and that they had mental issues way before they were exposed to video games.
Can we say video games are scapegoat to hide our incompetency in parenting? We do that a lot in America and not just on video games. We blame things or other people about our problems but we don't look at ourselves. We don't look at ourselves for the problems that befallen us. It's time to look at ourselves and see we are fault with our own problems. For these parents, why my kid is violent because you are not looking at the signs. And most parents don't want to see the fact that their own child would capable of this and I don't blame. But they have to vigilant and face facts, if your kid is doing something out of the ordinary, find out what it is. You might be helping this person shape himself/herself to be a better person. Put morals in their lives. So that way, we can reduce the violence that we have now instead of blaming other things that has nothing to do with situation. Video game industry is a business. Just like alcohol and cigarette business that provided warnings, Video game industry provides rating labels for each game. They are not responsible for us.