The recent shooting at Virginia Tech was a very human tragedy, and it is human nature to immediately try to figure out who is to blame whenever tragedy happens. However, instead of coming to the obvious conclusion—that the blame should rest solely with the shooter himself, who was apparently a very disturbed individual—certain media outlets have taken it upon themselves to suggest that violent video games are actually at fault.

This is nothing new—the tragedy at Columbine was also blamed on the computer game DOOM—but the difference this time is that there doesn't appear to be even a casual relationship between games and the shooting. Nevertheless, Dr. Phil immediately went on CNN's Larry King Show to state that "common sense tells you that if these kids are playing video games, where they're on a mass killing spree in a video game, it's glamorized on the big screen, it's become part of the fiber of our society." The Washington Post published an article that largely ignored the most disturbing aspects of the shooter's character in order to focus on the fact that "he was a fan of violent video games, particularly Counterstrike." (The article has since been replaced with a link to a more well-researched article, but the text from the original article still comes up when searching the site.) And anti-gaming crusader Jack Thompson wasted no time getting on television to proclaim that, once again, evil video games were responsible.

Thompson's report in particular contained numerous falsehoods, including disproven claims that previous school shooters had "rehearsed for the massacre" using video games as trainers—Thompson even said that one killer used the game called Super Columbine Massacre to prepare for the event, despite the fact that said game is a turn-based RPG and as such provides practically zero tactical training.

A closer look at the VT shooter's life shows that he was an antisocial loner who wrote disturbingly violent essays in his English classes and had already made both students and faculty nervous. He had been diagnosed with depression and may have had other mental illnesses as well. To take a sick individual like this and blame video games for his behavior is completely irresponsible.

While knee-jerk reactions are a common response to any tragic event, the fact that video games are once again singled out for immediate criticism reveals a fundamental generational disconnect in our society. The baby-boomer generation that continues to hold so much power in the media and government simply does not understand video games and perceives them as something dangerous and scary, much as legislators in the 1950s felt about comic books. Gamers themselves report that they are much more influenced by movies than by games.

In the end, blaming new forms of media like video games, or even a "violent society" is pointless and wrong—violent deaths have actually gone down since the 1990s, despite the proliferation of video games. The place to point the blame for the Virginia Tech tragedy is squarely on the killer himself. If there is any secondary blame to go around, it might be more useful to look at how someone who was paranoid, depressed, and had violent fantasies did not receive the treatment he so desperately needed.