Bob Cesca points to this interview Chris Christie gave about gun control.
Christie was asked about specific gun control measures, and instead talked about violent video games. “We don’t allow those games into our house…we think it desensitizes children to all the effects of violence,” and added that all of the issues related to gun violence needed to be dealt with.
When pressed on why he couldn’t answer whether he supports a ban on assault weapons, he said that it depends. “These are complicated issues,” he said. “I’m willing to have that conversation.”
As Bob says, it sure sounds like Christie is towing the NRA line.
But how good is that line?
Yesterday marked the one year anniversary since a member of Congress was shot. Gabby Giffords, along with 19 other people were shot on that day, leaving 6, including a federal judge, dead. In the days following the shooting there was a lot of finger pointing going on. Some of that came from the left. They pointed to gun violence in political ads as a possible motivator, including this map Sarah Palin had posted on her website that includes a target over Giffords district.
Quickly the right went into defensive mode, calling it crazy that anything could influence someone to do something so horrendous. They launched into the “person responsibility” meme to defend Palin and any other political ads that portray violence. It’s much the same as we hear when someone is arrested for planning or executing a serious crime and we find out their reading list was Bill O’Reilly, Michelle Malkin and Sean Hannity. They believe it’s not them influencing the person, but just the person them self.
So how does the same not apply to video games and movies? Are we to believe that video games and movies can create violent people, yet the images and words used by our leaders, both political and media, can’t? If there was ever a definition of hypocrisy, it would be right here.
And speaking of hypocrisy, let’s talk about a video game. The one I want to talk about is where you play a brave Christian soldier charged with the mission of ridding the world of non-believers. How do you do that? Well by shooting them of course! Here’s the trailer from the game.
And did the right start condemning this video game for it’s violence and say it would provoke our people to go out and kill? Absolutely not. Instead they went into a full force embrace of the game. Even the Department of Defense, under George Bush, was linked with sending the game to soldiers in Iraq. And you thought that war had something to do with religion!
Then there’s the red herring of this argument. Our nation holds some sort of patent on these mass shootings, yet these games and movies are available in other countries as well. Ever wonder why something might be released in Japan or the UK and then take a couple of months before we get it here? That’s because they are cleaning it up, removing language, sexual content and violence. They have to censor it for Americans.
So with more violent games and movies appearing overseas, why don’t we see the shootings over there like we do here? Sure you can point to tougher gun laws, but I thought gun laws didn’t work. So why is it Americans are so influenced by this kind of media, yet no one else in the world is? That’s a serious question that should be asked of the NRA.
All Christie, the NRA and the right in general is doing here is creating a strawman. They hope we will take our focus off their promotion of looser gun regulations and more guns in society and place that focus where it isn’t due. Hopefully we can have some logic surface though and more people realize that blaming movies and video games just doesn’t add up.