Dan Patrick, the Texas Lieutenant Governor has blamed video games for the recent mass shooting in a shopping mall in the city of El Paso, Texas, near the US-Mexico border. Officials have said that 20 are dead.
In an interview with Fox News, Patrick immediately condemned the attack as ‘evil’, but quickly moved focus to the video game industry. Here is what he had to say:
Dan Patrick has specifically targeted the video game industry here due to a single quote the shooter had reportedly said, prior to taking out the attack. The shooter reportedly refers to a ‘super-soldier COD fantasy’, COD referring to the popular first-person shooter game Call of Duty.
Furthermore, towards the end of his interview, Patrick states that the video game industry ‘teaches young people to kill’.
Prior to this interview, Fox News interviewed former FBI agent Maureen O’Connell, and she also blamed video games for the Texas shooting.
O’Connell would later go on to say the video games ‘dehumanizes’ victims, something the host agreed on.
At this stage, there is no evidence to suggest that playing video games can lead to increased violence or aggression.
