A former FBI-profiler and risk assessor, Mary Ellen O’Toole warns that some gun advocates were mistakenly linking gaming and outbursts of violence.
Talking with a panel of experts on a CBS show, O’Toole expressed that she does not blame videogames for the latest US school tragic shooting that occurred last December’ in Connecticut.
Videogames were found in the teenage gunman’s room [and every other teenager in the world – Undead Ed], and this was quickly blamed as the catalyst that led to the massacre.
“It’s my experience that video games do not cause violence,” explained O’Toole as reported by RawStory [via GIBiz].
“However, it is one of the risk variables when we do a threat assessment for the risk to act out violently.
“It’s important that I point out that as a threat assessment and as a former FBI profiler, we don’t see these as the cause of violence, we see them as sources of fuelling ideation that’s already there.”
In the same show Christopher Ferguson, a psychology professor at Texas A&M University also pointed out that when new media comes about, society tends to go through a period of what he called “moral panic,” where the medium gets blamed for societal issues.
Ferguson used comics in the 1950s as an example, citing that the US congress and psychiatrists were claiming that comic books were responsible for “juvenile delinquency” and even “homosexuality.” [maybe it was all that spandex comic heroes were wearing – Undead Ed]
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