Not really.
I’m trying to highlight the hypocrisy of solving a problem by pointing the finger at any potential culprit but That Thing You Love.
Any large cultural topic, especially the US’s penchant for violence in all forms, has an incredible number of complex moving parts, each worth discussing and investigating. That includes the thing I personal love, which is video games in all their forms, especially shooters. Ironically, I don’t and won’t own a gun.
We’re happy to throw science at topics and problems like this because science is illuminating; it helps us understand the world, solve problems, and move forward. But when it comes time for science to investigate the part of this machine that is near and dear to some people—guns, games, film, news media, whatever—some people point the finger in another direction, any direction, besides Their Thing.
If we’re going to discuss a big complicated machine like violence in the US, all its parts need to be fair game, including the one you, I, and everyone else with an opinion loves.
We want to throw science at everything to understand it better and make better things. After all, it’s how we got to where we are as a species. It’s also far more productive than burning or beheading people who say or discover truths we don’t like.
But when faced with the prospects of what science may find were it to study the potential dangers of the thing they like—guns, films, or video games—some science proponents respond with “no no, leave my thing alone, it’s perfectly fine. Go investigate that thing over there, that’s the problem.”
Truth is truth. We may not like what we find, but that doesn’t mean we should be afraid of investigating this thing but not that thing. Disagreeing with the results or fearing what change they might bring is not an excuse to silence science.
“Let’s get real. For many people, gun ownership is a religion. They worship guns. They are irrrational about their religion; they take totally unrestricted gun ownership as their faith. But here in the world in which we actually live, it has been clear for many years that the gun religion is not good for our people or our country. Just as the rest of us don’t allow any other particular religion to rule us all, there is no good reason the gun religionists should rule us all.”
