Biden and Video Games

In case there is any confusion on the matter, I am not a registered Democrat or Republican nor am I affiliated with any political party.  So what I have to say about Biden has nothing to do with his political party.

I cannot believe that people are blaming violent video games for Sandy Hook.  To begin with, the shooter never played anything that the masses would even necessarily term in any way violent (StarCraft is a strategy game where you never even fire a make-believe gun).  And no one has ever been able to conclusively show that there is a link between violent video games and violent behavior.  Whatever people in the media may say, when you look at the actual research, it simply isn't there.  If you want me to sound off on research that may even show that there conclusively is NO link between violent video games and violent behavior, feel free to ask in the comments.

So, to invite the leaders of the video game industry to a meeting in an open letter in conjunction with working on a proposal to give the President/congress is something that I view as a cowardly, political act.  When he actually held the meeting, he said he was "agnostic" about the link between violent video games and violent behavior and that regardless of the truth that the companies needed to work on improving their image for non-gamers.  Agnostic?  He doubts whether the link exists and is unwilling to commit to a side despite all of the research that exists clearly showing, which side is correct?  To me this just sounds like someone that wants to appease all of the pollsters that blame video games for violence in general by appearing to do something while knowing that there isn't really anything that can be done on that  score.  Then he tells the representatives that they could be part of the solution?  By improving their image?? I'm all for making the gore and language filters more apparent to non-gamer purchasers, but I'm not sure what this has to do with the topic at hand.  This just seems to me like another example of a politician choosing to find something that is easy to blame and appear to be doing something when the truly effective course of action is too long term and/or difficult.

Another example of this would be the way the local police reacted to an accident on our street.  Our street is very narrow and full of lots of blind curves and hill tops.  Recently, there was a collision involving two vehicles where it appeared that at least one vehicle was speeding and at least one vehicle drifted out of its lane.  Now even if both vehicles were speeding, they wouldn't have hit each other if they were both in their lane.  But how have the police reacted to this accident?  By putting up a speed checker on a hill nearby (not even the one involved in the accident).  The real problem is that people have a dangerous habit of drifting  into the other lane on this road.  I have several times had to slam on my brakes or honk  my horn because the only other option when a car is coming down the road towards you is to go off the road into a steep ditch.  Not a good plan. But because this is too difficult to address and fix, they instead choose to address something ineffectively that isn't even the real problem.  Sounds familiar..

I'm looking forward to to the day when politicians and the media pick something else to focus on as a scapegoat besides video games.