BORIS EPSHTEYN: After the recent mass shootings in El Paso, TX, and Dayton, OH, there has been a lot of discussion of whether violent video games and movies create mass shooters. Both sides of the argument have come to the table with charts and figures that support their perspectives. That being said, the impact of violent media on the psyche of our youth is not just about cold, hard facts.

As a parent, I absolutely do not want my child consuming violent media -- not when he is little, and not until he is an adult who is fully able to separate make-believe from the real world. I believe that violent games and movies expose our children to the very worst our world has to offer and trivialize taking the lives of others. Whether it has a chemical reaction or statistical correlation with as rare an occurrence as mass shootings is beside the point. This is more about the degradation of our society and our ill-fated pursuit of the “awe factor” than about proving an exact formula to combat mass shootings.

Here’s the bottom line: Preventing mass shootings is an incredibly complex issue that one statistic or formula will not be able to solve. Having said that, we do have to make sure that the minds of our children and teenagers are not polluted with gratuitous violence that is produced to be as lifelike as possible.