Finding a culprit

Late on Saturday night, Jan. 24, a horrible incident occurred in downtown Portland. Erik Ayala, a 24-year-old man, opened fire on a line of people waiting to get into a popular nightclub—killing two people, and wounding seven others before putting a fatal bullet into his own head.

In nearly every news account of this mass shooting, there is mention of the shooter’s lack of a personal motive—and his fascination with video games.

Ayala didn’t know anyone from the crowd he fired into, a group of young people out for a night on the town. And I agree—the shooting is all the more tragic for its senselessness—it’s almost impossible to imagine the amount of pain, fear, loss and grief that Ayala’s unfathomable actions have caused.

Ayala isn’t simply the cause of this violent tragedy; he is also one of the victims. As people who were close to him come forward to express their shock and grief at his actions, they also reveal that he was a young man who had been displaying signs of depression and emotional imbalance for years.

The news media and a horrified public seem anxious to find some additional cause for this massacre—a reason more concrete than the mental instability or desperation of a lethally unhappy human being. The two most popular scapegoats for this crime: lax gun-ownership requirements and violent video games.

I’m all for increasing waiting periods and background checks when it comes to gun ownership. I’m also familiar with the second amendment to the constitution (the one about our right to bear arms) and I’m aware that many of its strongest proponents consider these kinds of restrictions to be in direct violation of their personal freedom.

Perhaps we should be worried about the ease with which he was able to legally buy a gun—but we all know that he would have been able to procure a weapon through some other means if he had been determined to do so.

It is hard to argue that the presence of a gun had nothing to do with a shooting death; it is just as difficult to imagine a gun killing someone without human assistance.

However, it requires the near-hysterical logic of an angry mob to make the claim that the virtual brutality depicted in video games brainwashes anyone into committing real acts of violence. Video games don’t turn people into murderers.

In the horrific 2007 Virginia Tech shootings, Seung-Hui Cho murdered 32 people before taking his own life. The news media couldn’t wait to draw attention to the fact that the shooter played violent video games. Nearly a decade ago, there was a great deal of speculation that the Columbine High School massacre was inspired, at least in part, by the video game Doom.

All the mass murders I’ve mentioned were committed by people who played video games, it’s true. These are people who also presumably listened to music, watched television, went to the movies, ate sugar and experienced personal loss and frustration. Here’s the other common thread in all these cases: These and many other violent crimes have been committed by young men with a known history of depression or mental illness.

When I was little, I loved, obsessively loved, the video game Pac Man. Eventually, I was good enough to play for hours on just one quarter, which I did—as often as I possibly could. In the years since then, I’ve played other video games—never again with the same slavish dedication, but I have dabbled in and enjoyed various virtual worlds. 

To anyone who says that playing video games can be addictive, I say: “Yes. You are right.”

Furthermore, to anyone who says that obsessively playing video games can take time away from other activities—well, once again, I have to agree, and that’s why I don’t really bother with them anymore.

To expand the argument into the concept that video games are taking over people’s minds, creating mindless killing machines is to give in to paranoia. A line is drawn between obsession on a harmless level and correlation to actual acts of violence.

I can relate to the obsessive need to get to the next level. In the hours, perhaps entire months of time squandered on Pac Man, I was never compelled against my will to engage in cannibalism or binge eating. When I attempted to master Frogger, I never once considered that I was impervious to jaywalking laws. More recently, a foray into the digital world of Grand Theft Auto left me as mild-mannered and law abiding as ever (once I put down the controls).

Here’s a true story: In Meadville, Pa. in 1943, two little boys, Conrad and George, were happily playing Monopoly, until a game-related dispute erupted into physical violence. When Conrad punched George, the latter ran home, grabbed his father’s gun, and returned to murder Conrad in cold blood.

Were the manufacturers of the game at fault here? Or was it the wealth and subsequent greed created by the real estate market at the root of a little boy’s impulse to kill? I’d say that something else entirely was the problem.

I think we look for things to assign blame to because it’s supposed to make us feel better. It doesn’t. It distracts and detracts from the real issues. In the case of the recent shootings in Portland, there is a single young man who was responsible for pulling a trigger, over and over again. What caused this to happen?

Whatever it was, it is the same thing that allowed Ayala, and others like him, to exist amongst us—struggling with rage and desperate unhappiness, until they see hurting everyone around them and most desperately, hurting themselves, as the obvious response. I’m sure it’s not because of video games.