First of all, before going into the story, on behalf of everyone at Gameranx, we extend our deepest condolences to everyone affected by the recent Kentucky school shooting.

Kentucky governor Matt Bevin was recently featured in the radio with Leland Conway, the host of NewsRadio 840 WHAS. Bevin expressed his opinion on the relation between violent video games and the recent shooting in his city, discussing the fact that even if they are listed for mature audiences, children still have access to them and can play them. He continued to say that video games is similar to pornography, and that they “have desensitized people to the value of human life, to the dignity of women, to the dignity of human decency.”

There are video games that yes, are listed for mature audiences, but kids play them and everybody knows it, and there’s nothing to prevent the child from playing them. They celebrate the slaughtering of people. There are games that literally replicate and give people the ability to score points for doing the very same thing that these students are doing inside of schools, where you get extra points for finishing someone off who’s lying there begging for their life. These are “video games”, and they’re forced down our throats under the guise of protected speech. It’s garbage, it’s the same as pornography. They have desensitized people to the value of human life, to the dignity of women, to the dignity of human decency. We are reaping what we’ve sown here. I think we need to start by having an honest question about what value any of these things add. Why do we need a video game, for example, that encourages people to kill people? Whether it’s lyrics, whether it’s TV shows, whether it’s movies, I’m asking the producers of these products, these video games and these movies, ask yourselves what redemptive value, other than shock value, other than the hope you’ll make a couple of bucks off it. At what price? At what price? We as adults have to stop acting like children ourselves. We need to step up and say that right is right and wrong is wrong.

I, personally, don’t agree with Bevin. The relation between video games and violent incidents have been repeatedly debunked. Video games were mentioned also around two years ago during the Istanbul attack but of course they have no correlation. Let us know what you think, and once again, we are sorry for those who lost any loved ones or have anyone affected by the latest incident in Kentucky.