On Easter Sunday, Steve Stephens, upset by his failed romantic relationship, randomly killed Robert Godwin Sr. What made this crime more horrific was that Stephens uploaded a video to Facebook of the moment he shot and killed the 74-year-old grandfather. In the short amount of time since this crime, politicians, the media and researchers have sought to examine the role technology might have played in this crime. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged that his company will "keep doing all we can to prevent tragedies like this from happening."

Although some killers do crave attention, including on social media, there's little evidence to suggest that media plays a primary causal role in the etiology of crime. Nonetheless, it didn't take long for a familiar bogyman to emerge in the Stephens case – video games. Hours after the shooting CNN senior media correspondent Brian Stelter said it was disturbing how similar the Facebook video looked to video games. (Stelter later clarified he hadn't meant to imply games caused the crime.) This isn't the first time careless statements drew a link between killers who film themselves and video games. On Aug. 26, 2015, Vester Lee Flanagan posted a video to Twitter and Facebook of shooting a news reporter and cameraman to death. Within 24 hours of this horrific event one pundit suggested the video " looked like a first-person shooter video game to me. The viewer had the same visual perspective as the killer."

Linking video games to horrific acts of violence is nothing new. The video game "Grand Theft Auto" was blamed for the arrests of William and Josh Buckner in 2003 for homicide, Devin Moore in 2003 for first-degree murder, Cody Posey in 2004 for homicide, Ryan Chinnery in 2008 for rape and grievous bodily harm, Stephen Attard, Samuel Philip, Dylan Laired and Jaspreet Singh in 2008 for various robberies and assaults and in 2013, only four days after the release of "Grand Theft Auto V," the arrest of Zachary Burgess for vehicle theft and kidnapping.

The tendency to link violent crimes to the video game habits of the perpetrators is so prevalent that there is a term used to describe it: The Grand Theft Fallacy. The reason why individuals commit the Grand Theft Fallacy is because when a horrific act of violence is committed by a gamer, someone will publicly connect the violent act and the killer's interest in video games. What is missing from these accounts are the thousands of violent acts committed by perpetrators who did not play a violent video game or the millions of people who play violent video games and do not commit violent acts. When a crime is committed by a non-gamer, no one ever highlights the lack of a connection between violence and video games. This lack of information is responsible for creating an illusionary correlation between violent video games and real world violence.

Such an illusionary relationship is even more likely to occur when events are particularly distinctive and memorable. Consider the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting from 2012. Because school shootings are emotionally laden and easy for us to recall, we overestimate how often people who play violent video games have committed these crimes (though it would turn out the Sandy Hook shooter mostly played the non-violent game "Dance, Dance Revolution"). We are misattributing the ease of remembering when gamers committed severe acts of violence with the frequency at which these events actually occur together.

In sharp contrast to the Grand Theft Fallacy, research strongly suggests that violent video games are actually related to reductions in real world violence. Countries that consume more video games have lower levels of violent crime than those devoid of this media. Likewise, as video games have become more popular over time, homicides and violent assaults have decreased.

The explanation for this is simple. Video games, especially violent ones, are popular among the young males most likely to commit crimes. Young male gamers spend a total of 468 million hours each month playing video games. During this time at-risk individuals are inside of their homes, instead of on the streets. In this manner, video games are the ultimate after-school program to reduce crime. No taxpayer money is needed.