Nancy Pelosi believes that good gun laws, not media censorship, will prevent violence.
There’s no shortage of politicians using videogames as scapegoats for real-world violence, so it’s refreshing to see one go out of her way to defend them. Speaking with a contentious host on Fox News Sunday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi took a firm stand that fantasy violence and its grislier real-life counterpart do not necessarily correlate. Representative Pelosi believes that, instead, better gun laws may go a longer way towards curbing violent behavior.
Chris Wallace, a host of Fox News Sunday, grilled Pelosi during an on-air interview, claiming that there was already sufficient evidence to damn the movie and videogame industries. He urged Pelosi to “shame” her “friends into Hollywood” into modifying the violent content they produce. Pelosi replied that she shared Wallace’s concerns, but not his approach . “I’m a mother, I’m a grandmother,” she reminded Wallace. “But [the evidence] says that, in Japan, for example, they have the most violent games and the lowest death – mortality – from guns. I don’t know what the explanation is for that except they may have good gun laws.”
Other studies corroborate Pelosi’s views, suggesting that video game consumption and violence have little to do with one another on a national scale. A link between violent videogames and aggressive behavior is not impossible, but little evidence has emerged to directly link videogame consumption with actual violence. In my mind, Pelosi still has a long way to go to make amends for the worst graduation speech in recorded history, but it’s a pleasant change of pace to see a politician come down on gaming’s side.
Source: Huffington Post
Published: Feb 11, 2013 04:39 pm