The Gun Dilemma

I’m a gamer. I’ve been one since I was 3 years old. I wear glasses because of my over-exposure to TV screens while playing them. I also read up on gaming regularly. And while I’m not as avid a player as I used to be, even now I’ll occasionally go for several hours with whichever game catches my fancy.

Simultaneously, I suffer from mental illness. I have anxiety, which can occasionally be crippling. I also have addictive behaviour, brought on from childhood trauma I’ve been coping with for 22 years. Both of those make for a bad combo, which isn’t helped by my past history with depression and occasionally suicidal thoughts. Because of my mental illness, I often find comfort in video games.

This past week saw back-to-back mass shootings in The US, in El Paso and Dayton, as well as fourteen shootings in the city of Toronto. For the most part, this is nothing new: mass shootings have happened often in The US, and there’ve been a few in Canada. But them happening so frequently means that this is a problem that needs addressing yesterday. And while there are solutions-background checks, banning AR-15s, making it harder to buy guns-that this keeps getting ignored or redirected is an issue on its own. And nowhere is this more-apparent than in two red herrings, i.e. video games and mental illness.

I’m not an expert on this, so what I say henceforth should be taken with a grain of salt. But video games, a scapegoat with no definitive correlation, and mental illness, which The American Psychology Association has written extensively about, being used to hand-wave the bigger cause at play hurts. It hurts because it ignores the issue, and it hurts because it stigmatizes the wrong targets. But it also hurts because it makes people like me, gamers with mental illness, targets of unwarranted hate.

Let’s get two points clear: one, there’s no definitive link between video games and gun violence. In a piece from Vox, a chart was drawn contrasting video game sales in developed countries and their gun violence rates. Japan, which was at the top, ranked low on the gun violence chart. Most of the highest-sellers ranked really low, actually, with The US being the exception. Even Canada, which has seen its share of gun violence, ranked pretty low. Clearly, video games aren’t the issue.

And two, mental illness isn’t the cause of gun violence. It’s true that some mass shooters were mentally ill, but pinning the blame on that minimizes the struggles people with anxiety, schizophrenia, bipolar, depression and the likes live with regularly. Speaking as someone who’s mentally ill, I assure you that I’d be more likely to hurt myself before anyone else. Why? Because I have a guilty conscience that makes me regret simply bumping into someone accidentally. I also have been off medication before, and the end results were more dangerous to me than anyone else.

By blaming video games and mental illness, we’ve detracted from real factors that’ve caused these shootings. Factors like white supremacy, which has been classified as a hateful ideology by The FBI. Factors like Donald Trump’s rhetoric, which is amplified by his base. And factors like The NRA, a lobby that pays off politicians and researchers. All of these, combined with loose gun laws in many states, are to blame more.

It doesn’t help to blame mental illness and gaming because it detracts from the conversations that should be had. Conversations like how video games can send out negative messages that desensitize people to real issues. Conversations like how mental health is a serious concern that needs addressing. And conversations like how men are likelier to die from suicide than women. These are ignored when video games and mental health are correlated with gun violence.

Even outside that, pinning the blame on video games and mental illness makes it impossible for gamers with mental health issues to feel valued. I like video games. I also have mental health issues. But am I any more of a threat than, say, a KKK member? Or that guy who ran over Heather Heyer in Charlottesville? Or that guy in Toronto who ran over people with his van? Or every mass shooter of the last 15 years?

I’m not saying this because I have a stake in the matter. I’m saying it because it’s dishonest to lump everything together. Many functioning members of society are either gamers, mentally ill, or both. We simply don’t know because it’s not obvious. And by making this about them, we detract from what they can offer the world.

Conversely, I don’t think Ctrl+Alt+Del’s solution from many years ago is really the answer. Further threats are what we should be avoiding, not perpetuating. And the mentally ill? We should help them, not stigmatize them. We should show them that it’s okay to ask for help, instead of slamming the door in their faces.

Finally, we need to address gun violence. We need to reframe what a gun is, demonstrating that it’s a responsibility and not a right. We need mandatory background checks that pick up red flags, and have unnecessary types of guns be harder to acquire. But, most-importantly, we need to make sure that young, white males, whom most of these shooters were, don’t feel an urge to lash out at society. We, essentially, need to take the “supremacy” out of “white supremacy”. Only then will we be able to remedy this problem.