In 2022, the shooting in Uvalde, Texas, left a macabre impression: after bursting into his former elementary school, Salvador Ramos (18 at the time) opened fire on students and teachers with an AR-15 assault rifle. Before being shot dead by law enforcement, the shooter had killed 21 people (including 19 children) and injured 17.
Unsurprisingly, video games and social media were quick to to establish themselves as the ideal perpetrators. After grieving, some survivors of the Uvalde shooting and relatives of the victims blamed digital entertainment as a catalyst. Two years after the events, a lawsuit was launched, seeking to establish a direct link between the 2022 massacre and Salvador Ramos’ passion for shooting games. first person.
Meta and Activision Sued
To obtain the justice they seek, the plaintiffs accuse Meta, Activision and Daniel Defense (a gun manufacturer) of creating “a three-headed monster“, who allegedly “knowingly” exposed the shooter to firearms, leading him to perceive them as “a way to solve his problems“, and pushing him to use them in real life.
In the sights of justice, we find Instagram in particular, which through its parent company Meta, is accused of allowing “arms manufacturers to come into contact with consumers“, including the youngest. As for Activision, bought by Microsoft in 2023, the plaintiffs urge the studio “to stop training and accustoming children to kill” through its games. The Call of Duty franchise is particularly at issue.
The eternal false debate
For Activision, the complaint is targeting the wrong people: “millions of people play video games around the world without committing horrible acts afterwards“. It must be said that regularly, video games are singled out for precipitating the vices of adolescents, exacerbating their violence and concretizing their passage to action. The phenomenon is not new: in 1999, the shooting at Columbine High School already raised similar questions, accusing the game Doom of the same vices.
The fact remains that contrary to what is regularly pointed out by conservatives, video games (no more than social networks) do not create violence among Internet users. In reality, they only exacerbate already present behavioral and mental health problems, serving at best as a catalyst for latent malaise. Furthermore, blaming countercultures for adolescent ills is not a new phenomenon. Comics, television and novels were given the same treatment, before finally establishing themselves as more “acceptable” parts of culture.
Guns rather than video games?
Behind the Activision-Uvalde debate, it is the free access to firearms that is being singled out. In a press release, the ESA (Entertainment Software Association) deplores: “We discourage unfounded accusations linking these tragedies to video games, which harm efforts to focus on the root issues at hand and guard against future tragedies. Many other countries have similar rates of video gaming to the United States, but we don't see similar rates of gun violence.“
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