Why Gun Violence and Fortnite Have No Correlation
By Ethan Smith
Over the past couple of years, gun violence has been a chronic issues in the United States and many are blaming video games such as Fortnite for causing these incidents. To be fair, many games include violence but as far as gun violence and video games, the two have absolutely no correlation.
This story is a little more hard hitting than some of our other Fortnite content so here goes.
Gun violence is and has been an issue in the United States for some time now. The United States by far has had the most mass shootings in the past five years than any other country in the world and despite this it seems that nothing has changed.
Many have been drawn by President Donald Trump to blame video games, including arguably the most popular one Fortnite, for these mass shootings and many gamers in the Fortnite community and outside of the video game community expressed their concerns for this false narrative.
Dear mainstream media,
— DrLupo (@DrLupo) August 4, 2019
The only thing desensitizing a majority of the US to gun violence is all the gun violence. Video games haven't influenced me, or anyone else, to go out and kill someone.
Please stop lying. This is exhausting. We need actual change.
Love,
-Lupo ❤️💜
We take a look at the statistics behind gun violence and video games in the United States, Canada, and other nations. #VideoGamesAreNotToBlame https://t.co/waXxIwXmfF pic.twitter.com/7FzRKCEezY
— IGN (@IGN) August 6, 2019
Ale Badoya scores a goal tonight in DC, runs to corner mic on nationally televised game and yells "Hey Congress, do something now! End gun violence! Let’s go!" pic.twitter.com/AQ9U2URQfR
— lou (@dubois) August 5, 2019
To emphasize, some people don’t think the same way others do when it comes to this issue. Some have mental health issues and allow video games to influence their lives in a negative way but as an overall consensus, many of us players play game to get away from reality and enjoy the moment because everything we care about at that moment in time is the game and everything else is background noise.
Gun violence is a weird issue to fix. Do not get me wrong, banning assault rifles would go a long way in fixing this issue and would likely eliminate all sources of gun violence but some would still find a way, but saving 20 lives is better than saving none.
Fortnite has a strong impact on our youth and everyone knows that. You see kids flossing at baseball games and Hot Topic and Spencer’s selling Fortnite merchandise and kids begging for time to play Battle Royale when they get back to school and the reason why is because the game is so big and allows everyone to express themselves for who they are.
Kids enjoy the time they get when they get to play Fortnite and I highly doubt their parents would allow them to play the game if they thought their son or daughter would turn around a shoot a school or an open area of people 20 years later. Parents know what Fortnite is and everyone needs to know what Fortnite is, a video game.
No matter how big the game gets, it will always be a video game. It has no real life aspect whatsoever and will never have that aspect of having a real life effect on someone besides them raging over being eliminated by a B.R.U.T.E for the seventh time in one day.
There is a reason you are “eliminated” in Fortnite and not “killed”, Fortnite knows it’s audience and is influencing it’s youth and professional players in the most positive way possible.
Yes, gun violence is a sensitive topic but among the Fortnite and video game community, we are tired of being the one’s who seem to have to take the blame. Blame those who pull the trigger or get them help before they do so.
End gun violence. There is no need for more hate in the world than we already have.