Or Maybe It's the Other Way Around

Here we go again.

Journalists have uncovered that the man responsible for that horrible shooting at a college in Canada was into guns and liked to play violent video games. He even has been found to post some comment to the effect of "Life is a video game. Everyone has to die sometime."

Charlie Gibson was already on the evening news implying that his love of violent video games had warped his world view.

How come no one thinks it just might be the other way around. That people who have some sort of sociopathic tendency towards violence are likely to enjoy video games that involve high body counts? That people with underlying problems that cause them to be aggressive and have no regard for human life really get off on playing games where they can shoot people full of holes with no consequences.

I know plenty of people who enjoy video games. Many of whom even enjoy ones with guns. And none of them show any tendency to decide that what they see in the game is a good idea and go on a rampage. In fact, most of them are gentle, kind people.

Anyone who has ever done any hard science research knows that associations are easy to prove but causality is nearly impossible to demonstrate. I just wish that more sociologists and psychologists and the journalists who report on them would finally figure that out.