The director, critic and screenwriter Jean-Luc Godard said,
" All you need for a movie is a gun and a girl." It seems that many
film makers subscribe to this maxim as you only have to look at the posters for
the latest films to see guns and girls a-plenty. Then take a look at the covers
of the DVDs in your local supermarket and you will see that the majority seem
to carry a picture of Liam Neeson or Bruce Willis or Jason Statham or some
other hero figure brandishing a handgun. Even comedies frequently feature
characters carrying some weapon or another, and yet while there are undoubtedly
a large number of on screen deaths attributable to gunshots, considering the
amount of fire power expended in the average Hollywood blockbuster the ratio of
deaths is actually quite low. I often feel that this blasé use of firearms and
the frequent lack of severe consequences from their use is at least partially
responsible for many of the gun related tragedies that occur each year.
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| Gun? Yes. Girl? Yes. |
In the UK the police are not routinely armed so unless you
are at an airport or sometimes a major rail terminus, chances are the average
person won't see a gun from one year to the next, although as of March 2010
there were firearms certificates issued for 1.8 million guns in this country,
which still represents one gun for every 35 people in the country. In the USA,
if the figures are to be believed, the ratio is one gun for every 1.14 people
(270 million guns for 308 million people in 2010). That sheer number of weapons
means that gun crime and associated tragedies are inevitable, but news of
events such as the shooting by Vester Williams of a TV reporter and cameraman
in Virginia last week still have the power to shock and appal.
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| Vester Williams. |
And every time such an incident happens, the debate over gun
control in the US opens up again. "If you ask me where is the one area
where I feel that I have been most frustrated and most stymied, it is the fact
that the United States of America is the one advanced nation on earth in which
we do not have sufficient, common sense, gun safety laws." "Even in
the face of repeated mass killings," said President Obama in a recent interview
with the BBC. In the aftermath of the Dunblane shootings in 1996, UK gun
controls were tightened to the extent that even Olympic marksmen had to train
abroad but that doesn't mean that gun crime has been eradicated and it probably
never will be, because guns are not the problem, people are. The debate over US
gun control sees people like rock star Ted Nugent quite obviously diametrically
opposed to his president: " Where you have the most armed citizens in
America, you have the lowest violent crime rate. Where you have the worst gun
control, you have the highest crime rate, " he has said. I'm not sure that
stacks up against countries with strict gun controls and where gun crime is
much lower than in the States, but of course the issue as ever is that
controls, indeed all laws, only work if the populous buy into the concept of
observing them. Just as guns are not the problem, so gun controls are not the
solution (well, not the only one), people are.
It is often claimed that violent video games and films are
responsible for aggressive, anti-social behaviour, but there are just as many
people who refute this idea as there are those who support it. It is my
opinion, opinion mind, I have nothing to back this up other than gut feeling,
that video games of many types have had an effect on people's behaviour.
Principally this is driven by an inability, albeit unconscious, to
differentiate between what is acceptable when it happens within the confines of
a video game and what is acceptable in the real world. It may be difficult to
support the idea that there is a direct correlation between consumption of
violent video games and films with an increase in violence generally and gun
crime particularly, but I am convinced that playing violent video games has a direct
effect on behaviour.
First person shooter games and those that feature aggressive
driving, like Grand Theft Auto[1]
reward intolerance, impatience, aggression and selfishness. Tolerance,
patience, passivity and the like are qualities that will get "Game
Over" flashing in next to no time; can it really be a coincidence that the
very qualities which these games demand bleed into real-life?
Touch wood, I've never seen a gun in a public place other
than in the hands of a policeman or member of the armed services, but I have frequently
seen equally lethal weapons wielded by members of the public quite evidently
under the influence of violent, aggressive multi-media experiences, like the
motorists who think that the A13 from Dagenham to Southend is some freeway in
Los Santos. Just last week some cretin in a Porsche decided that veering
between the lanes, and other vehicles, at high speed and at close proximity was
appropriate; it isn't. The worse that can happen in a video game is that you
lose a life; it's equally possible that a life is lost in the real world too.
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| A rare sight. |
Obviously it is neither practical nor reasonable to suggest
that video games that might encourage violent or anti-social behaviour should
be banned and withdrawn from sale; there are millions of responsible gamers
just as there are millions of responsible gun owners. And the misuse of guns
and inappropriately aggressive driving habits may be exhibited by people who
have never played anything more violent than Donkey Kong, but Call Of Duty,
Grand Theft Auto and the like cannot help but exacerbate and reinforce
aggressive tendencies among the impressionable.
Where my argument falls down, as does that of many others
who hold similar views, is that there was gun crime and other brutal crime long
before the first violent video game was released, just as there was road rage
and aggressive driving before GTA.
Quite clearly the answer isn't to ban guns, it isn't to ban
violent video games. What is needed is for someone to do something about other
people.
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