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On the morning of April 20th 1999 in the small town of Littleton Colorado, a horrific tragedy occurred at Columbine High School. Teenagers Dylan Klebold, and Eric Harris (18 and 17 respectively) entered Columbine High School that Tuesday at 11:19AM draped in trench coats while armed with high caliber weaponry, with the intent to massacre whoever was in their path. The aftermath of the incident was horrific. By the time their murderous rampage ceased, Klebold and Harris left fourteen students (including themselves) and faculty dead, plus an additional twenty-three people critically injured. Citizens all across the country pleaded for answers, why would two seemingly average teenagers do such a thing? In an attempt to answer the question of “Why?” multitudes of people clung to the recently discovered knowledge that both Klebold and Harris greatly enjoyed playing violent video games. Thus, violent video were believed to be the spark that ignited this atrocity.
Fast forward fourteen years later, incidents similar to the Columbine High School shooting continued to be problematic over the years. In fact, just recently, similar tragedies occurred at both Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut and inside a Century movie theater in Aurora, Colorado. The shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School was simply bone chilling. Twenty year old Adam Lanza carried out one of the most horrifying school shootings in recent history, as he entered Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14th, 2012 armed with a Bushmaster XM15-E2S fully automatic assault rifle and a Glock 20SF pistol and opened fire upon the young students after previously murdering his own mother earlier in the day. As the dust settled, twenty children and six faculty me...

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...ch a horrific crime. Carey also noted an intriguing statistic that illustrates how the number of youth offenders have actually diminished by more than fifty percent as video game sales have doubled.
Although Mike Jaccarino makes the best possible case to convince me (and others) that violent video games are to blame for these types of massacres, I cannot help but wholeheartedly agree with Benedict Carey as he supports his claims with examples of well thought out analysis. Playing violent video games doesn’t make you a killer. If it did, then you should very well lock me up immediately before I snap, since I myself enjoy playing a fair share of violent video games. Essentially, I am arguing not that violent video games don’t play a part in these tragedies, but that we should consider that there are other chief factors that drive individuals to commit such atrocities.