US Politician Pushing For Violent Video Games Ban Attempts To Justify Decision
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Okay we all know the drill by now, don't we? A politician is trying to get 'violent' video games banned as a way to somehow improve the behaviour of young men in the area they're from. It's a tale as old as time and it's happening once again in Illinois, USA where Marcus Evans, the state representative for the 33rd district (including Chicago) is pushing for a bill to ban violent games.
An interview with Spiel Times has now shed some light on exactly why Marcus Evans is pushing for a video game ban on titles like Grand Theft Auto V, and it's because he thinks that there may be a correlation between consuming something and then committing an act of violence. At the very least, he says, he just wants there to be a conversation about that possibility.
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Talking to the Spiel Times, Rep Evans says, "The bill was an idea to ban violent video games in general, not focusing on one, as there are a lot of video games that include violence. The purpose of the bill is to bring up the questions: Should we have violent video games, should we censor them, and should we examine these violent video games contributing to the acceptance of violent deviant behaviour. These are questions which prompted me to file the bill."
He goes on to talk about how many issues Chicago is undergoing in terms of violence and it's a serious problem. When the interviewer presents scientific studies which conclude that no link between violence and violent video games has been found - Rep Evans says that the scientific studies aren't based on men in Chicago, so could be irrelevant to the problems he's talking about.
I would like to point out here, that there are multiple studies on this question, not just one study, and a solid link between consuming violence in a game and then committing acts of violence have not been found. A ten-year study has recently been published, again, showing there is no link. This war on video games as a cause for societal problems has no basis but was perpetuated after the awful Columbine school shooting in 1999 where experts searched for a motive or a cause for the terrible acts. Some of the experts landed on video games as causation.
Evans is asked to give a message to people who play video games if they could hear what he has to say and his message is, "Well I'm 36 and I have friends in their 40s and we still play. The gaming community is a big community, with all ages - 60-70-year-olds all the way down to teens and kids. We just want to be sure that the younger gamers understand that yes, we can enjoy GTA and various games, but these are games, they're entertainment. And we do not want to condone any of this behaviour in the real world. Let's make sure people enjoy their fantasy worlds, but only within fantasy, so we work together, in reality, to spread love and improve the real world with the passion of gaming.
"There was an insurrection where people attacked the Capitol. We never want people to think that's okay behaviour. We want to keep all of that crazy behaviour in the fantasy game world. A part of my mission is drawing that line, to help gamers reject bad things and support the fun in games."
Marcus Evans does honestly seem like he wants to improve the lives of the people in Chicago - the interview covers some of the campaigns and movements he supports to keep people safe. You can read the full interview to give you more insight into him as a politician on Spiel Times.
