I won’t stand for that. I won’t stand for intellectual dishonesty. And I hope you won’t either.

On March 5th of this year Jeremy Bailenson wrote this article, entitled: If a possible mass shooter wants to hone his craft, don’t hand him a virtual boot camp.

You cannot blame a consumable piece of media — meant as entertainment — for real-life violent actions. One’s a game, the other isn’t.

Bailenson goes on to write this: …virtual reality can take skill acquisition to a new level…Repeated movement while in virtual reality causes changes in brain structure, which in turn improves performance in the real world. In other words, virtual reality is the ultimate training machine.

There’s your justification for stripping a video game down because of a can, or a chance, or a possibility.

Guns are not toys. Games are.

And changing a game because it mimics violence, instead of fixing the real-life problem, is daft.

Bailenson writes: First, let’s change the physics of bullets…A more subtle example can be seen in paintball...

Paintball is a real life action game hinging on teams trying to shoot other people with physical pieces of machinery intent on felling the opposing team.

Paintball would therein be more dangerous as it is a real life function with guns that shoot projectiles, albeit paint-filled projectiles.

Instead, let’s change how bullets in games function. Makes perfect sense.

To judge one thing is to judge another.

We should then analyze every piece of violent media and consumable entertainment ever to have existed and rank it according to its potential use of violence by humans.

It’s only fair and right to have to extend this to Television, isn’t it?

It’s only fair and right to ban books, isn’t it?

What about LARPing, where people swing plastic swords at each other?

Oh no, mass deaths by swords! Whatever will we do?

That’s intellectual dishonesty in a nutshell, if ever there was a case for the term.

This insidious idea isn’t new.

Blame a consumable, functional entertainment device instead of pointing at the actual problem isn’t new.

Which, specifically is; gun safety, gun regulation, gun laws, and staggering mental health issues.

Looking for some other reason for the crimes of those who ought to never have been given a gun in the first place sounds like insanity, to me.

But there are differing opinions from Bailenson’s illogical rhetoric. For that I am grateful.

This article by Susan Scutti paints another picture.

Persuasive evidence comes from an economic study published in February 2016, which looked at violent criminal offenses in the weeks after the release of popular video games…the authors discovered that general societal violence decreased in the weeks after the appearance of a new edition of a popular title.

And here is the statement sealing the deal, supporting intellectual honesty instead of knee-jerk reactionary values:

“Almost all young males play violent video games,” and yet the majority are not committing crimes.

Read that again, but slowly.

Almost all young males play violent video games, and yet the majority are not committing crimes.

As a gamer, as a person who is tender to the issues of violence on any scale, as a gun control advocate, and as a person who thinks we should apply contextual logic to the constructs of our lives, I had to write this article.

Because I cannot stand to be thrown back into the 90s shit-show that is rallying against video games, instead of rallying for better mental health support and gun regulation.

I have only one last thing to say before I step away to play the ever-so-violent Silent Hill 3 that will indubitably make me turn into a psychic god-girl who wields a light saber…

Silent Hill 3 by Konami, who hates games more than Bailenson, apparently.

Guns are not toys. Games are.

The moment you change the concept of gaming to fit the narrative of real life violence is the moment you can’t see the forest for the trees.