According to this Foxnews.com report, the National Rifle Association (NRA) plans to hold a press conference on Friday where it will push back against the call for tighter gun control laws in the United States. An anonymous "industry source" tells Fox News that the NRA is prepared to point its finger at the culture of violent media found in various forms of entertainment including television, movies, and video games.

While there is much discussion and hand wringing in Washington on cable news networks about the cause of the recent school shooting in Newton, Connecticut, this Washington Post report actually looks at some data. WaPo compares data from 10 countries related to video game spending versus gun-related homicides. The conclusion?

Disbarred Florida Attorney and anti-game crusader Jack Thompson seems to have come out of hiding to talk about the as-of-yet unestablished link between video media and the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut on Friday. In an attempt to connect with the Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA), Thompson decided to leave a voice mail message for ECA President Hal Halpin. The roughly 35 second-long message from Thompson is equivalent to an "I-told-you-so" to Halpin, gamers, and the non-profit.

After several editorials called Electronic Arts out for including links to real world weapons to promote the new Medal of Honor game, the company has decided to discontinue the practice. The real down-side to this news is that the money generated from those real-world weapon sales was going directly to the charity Project Honor.

An editorial in the Baltimore Sun written by former White House and Pentagon official Douglas MacKinnon laments the "lessons lost" that could have come out of the Aurora, Colorado shooting about what the author calls "a culture that desensitizes us to violence." While his general sentiment that there are lessons to be learned about the shooting, what those lessons are or might be are up for debate.

Senators Frank Lautenberg (NJ), Barbara Boxer (CA), Jack Reed (RI), Bob Menendez (NJ), Kirsten Gillibrand (NY), Schumer (NY) and Dianne Feinstein (CA) submitted an amendment to the Cybersecurity Act of 2012 which would limit real-world gun rights. The language intends to make ownership or transfer of magazines (and other ammunition-feeding devices capable of holding ten or more bullets) illegal.

Forbes has an interesting article on the popularity of shooting ranges in Las Vegas and what one owner of a popular establishment thinks has driven the industry to grow over the last few years.

According to the Asharq daily, a four-year-old boy (four years, seven months) shot his father for not buying him a "PlayStation," and now authorities are trying to figure out if they should charge the boy with murder. According to the publication, police in the southern Jizan area of Saudi Arabia claim that the youngster asked his father for a PlayStation.

The demand for modern day weaponry is apparently on the rise in Canada, and video games are the reason why, according to a report in The Times Colonist. The paper of note for Newfoundland notes that the tastes of Canadian gun owners has shifted from firearms associated with hunting to modern-day, military grade weapons, or what the cool kids call "black rifles."

Bungie's IT guy, Jeff Fletcher, is an information specialist for the Halo creators during the day, but sometimes he's a gun-toting vigilante, according to this report from Seattle news station KING 5.

Arizona State Senator Linda Gray recently said that the Tucson shootings weren't caused by lax gun control laws, but a culture of violence.. and abortion. Yes, you have read that right, ABORTION. She later distanced herself slightly from her comments. How abortion factors into the equation I’m not sure, but politicians do so enjoy tying irrelevant things to tragedies to score political points..

"The problem is not the gun, but about respect for all human life, from the unborn, a 9 year old child, a senior citizen or a political leader," Gray told Raw Story, by e-mail. "The shooter had no respect for the value of any these innocent citizens who were injured or killed."

Conservative T.V. talking head Glenn Beck has entertained the notion that video game violence leads to the real thing, but in the aftermath of Sunday's triple cop slaying in Pittsburgh, some critics are drawing a connection between Beck's on-air political rants and accused killer Richard Poplawski's horrific rampage.

The Daily Beast reports that the 22-year old Poplawski is a white supremacist and conspiracy theorist who harbored fears that President Obama will seek to establish some type of "new world order" and remove guns from private citizens.

Poplawski is also a Beck fan:

The alleged killer posted a YouTube clip to [white supremacist site] Stormfront of top-rated Fox News host Glenn Beck contemplating the existence of FEMA-managed concentration camps... Three weeks later, Poplawski posted another Youtube clip to Stormfront, this time of a video blogger advocating “Tea Parties,” or grassroots conservative protests organized by Beck and Fox News contributor Newt Gingrich against President Barack Obama’s bailout plan...

David Neiwert, a veteran reporter on right-wing militia movements... explained that by co-opting conspiratorial rhetoric from the farthest shores of the right, mainstream conservative talkers can inflame the passions of paranoiacs like Poplawski to a dangerous degree...

 

"What it does is unhinge fringe players from reality and dislodges them even further. When someone like Poplawski hears Glenn Beck touting One World Government and they’re gonna take your gun theories, they believe then that it must be true. And that’s when they really become crazy.”

With the United States rocked by a series of mass-murder incidents in recent weeks, Dalitso Njolinjo of The Moderate Voice wonders why the influence of video games, music and movies are often blamed for such events:

As an avid hip hop fan... When my favorite rappers veered into subjects of violence and gun play, my thought always seem to lead me to one question, how do they get these guns so easily? ...

I remember the Columbine High School massacre... Instead of having a serious conversation about gun crime and gun control, the majority of the news stories based on sensationalism. ‘The Trench Coat Mafia’, ‘they played violent video games’, ‘they were fans of Marilyn Manson’ and ‘they were fans of Natural Born Killers’... as soon as the conversation did veer towards gun control, the NRA would call foul play and blame someone in pop culture...

Fast forward to the aftermath of the Virginia Tech massacre, what did Fox News ‘journalist’ Bill O’Reilly want to talk about? [rappers]...

 

When anyone can purchase a fire arm with such ease and with impunity and thereafter go and take somebody’s life, someone somewhere has failed the victims.

Anti-violence campaigners in the U.K. are upset by iPhone apps which simulate real-world firearms, reports the Evening Standard.

At issue are freely-distributed titles such as Bang Bang and Shotgun Free, which advertise a gun-like user experience. From the Evening Standard:

Software available free from Apple's online store allows the devices to emit a loud gunshot sound when the owner points it and shakes it... Several different guns are available, from revolvers to shotguns, including a "gangsta edition" where the serial numbers have been filed off.

John Beyer of mediawatch UK, a frequent critic of violent video games, told the newspaper:

In view of recent events in Northern Ireland and elsewhere, I think anything that glamorises guns and shooting is in extremely poor taste. I would hope that whoever is responsible for this would withdraw it immediately.

Via: Mediasnoops

Violent video games have been under fire in Germany following the horrific school shooting carried out by a 17-year old earlier this month.

But while some German political and law enforcement officials have called for bans on violent games, the Harvard Crimson urges the government not to rush a judgment against the medium.

Instead, suggests an editorial, political officials' efforts would be better channeled toward keeping real guns, not virtual ones, away from toubled youth:

Few crimes are more disturbing than violent murders at schools... In the aftermath [of the recent German rampage], a call has gone out to remove violent video games from store shelves. Banning video games or enforcing a blanket social restriction, however, is not the answer.

After a tragedy such as this, video games often receive immediate scrutiny... Studies may have found corollary evidence linking violent games to violent behavior, but... correlation does not equal causation, and there is no convincing evidence of a causal effect here. There are simply too many lurking variables—socially awkward teenagers may play violent video games, but so do many perfectly happy teens. We cannot prove that playing the games somehow morphs teens into serial killers.

Many people are concerned and look to lawmakers to respond. We must be reasonable, however, in our expectations. There will always be sociopaths and oddballs... We cannot hope to make every single person happy or non-violent. Exaggerating the link between video games and teen violence in this case smacks more of political ploy than effective measure...

More of the weight of such crimes must fall on the parents and others who leave such weapons in reach... Stricter penalties and regulations on gun sales could help keep such weapons out of troubled hands, but, as long as licensed guns are available, we must work harder to keep them secure.