Experts say many factors contribute to mass shootings besides video games.
There are over 100 scientifically-known risk factors, which include poverty, gang membership and bullying, according to Douglas Gentle, professor of psychology at Iowa State University.
Gentile said video games are not as big of a cause for mass shootings. They are an equal factor as any other societal or surrounding issues a person may have.
“It is simply one more risk factor, and as with all risk factors, when it is present the odds of aggression increase in a reliable way and when it is absent the odds decrease in a reliable way,” Gentile said. “Yet, to predict serious violence like mass or school shootings, we need to consider a large number of risk factors as well as the lack of protective factors.”
There are over 100 scientifically-known risk factors, which include poverty, gang membership and bullying, according to Gentile.
“Risk factors for violence are not static,” written in the 2001 U.S. Surgeon General's report on Youth Violence. “Their predictive value changes depending on when they occur in a young person's development, in what social context, and under what circumstances.”
The protective factors are usually the opposite of risk factors, like supportive parents and income security. According to the U.S. Surgeon General's report, these factors decrease the potential harmful effect of risk factors.
Both risk and protective factors are determinants of serious violence, so video games have a smaller effect. The culmination of risk factors with the lack of protective factors increases aggregation which can build up to violence like mass shootings.
Timothy Keel from the FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit agrees with this idea.
“I think of it like a thermometer,” Keel said. “Each risk factor raises the temperature, each protective factor cools it down. To get to the hottest (lethal violence), you need many risk factors and few protective factors.”
Keel spoke about mass shootings and how video games contribute to them at the annual INLETS and Law Enforcement Training Seminar in June.
Keel said it was more acceptable in the past when there was more parental control and kids were playing them at an older age where they understood it was just a game.
“When you start playing those games at seven and eight years old, and you play them for years, a decade, and that's a lot of what you know about the outside world,” Keel said. “I think in combination with other things, mental health issues or just an inability to have any type of reality based decision making process.”
The games have become so realistic with the gun jamming, blood splatters and shell casings that they make people more proficient, according to Keel.
Video games are not the only cause but they are a prominent factor for Keel. He said they help someone prepare for violent coping mechanisms, specifically when that person is “teetering between doing something and not doing something,” being able to cope versus coping with violence.
“And when you go through different scenarios, and again, without parental support, without love of family members, without an idea that, hey, this isn't reality,” Keel said. “This is a game, you know, and it should be a game, that can add to issues.”
