Newspapers are shifting the blame for the tragic event

Dec 18, 2012 10:34 GMT  ·  By

After Americans wrongly accused the Mass Effect video game franchise of influencing Adam Lanza, the man responsible for the horrific shooting at the Sandy Hook school in Newtown, Connecticut, tabloids from the UK are now pinning the blame on two other series of games: Call of Duty and Dynasty Warriors.

The tragic events that happened in Newtown last week serve back into questioning an array of topics from the United States' stance on mental health to its strategy concerning gun control.

Sadly, some media outlets immediately started rummaging through the lives of the shooter, Adam Lanza, and that of his brother, Ryan Lanza, in order to find any link to video games.

UK tabloids The Sun and the Daily Express quickly found such links and largely proclaimed on their current editions, via Eurogamer, that Adam Lanza was passionate about games in the Call of Duty and Dynasty Warriors franchises.

"The boys were fans of the military. They had posters all over the wall in the basement. They had one poster of every piece of military equipment the US ever made. It was a huge poster with every tank ever made. The kids could tell you about guns they had never seen from the '40s, '50s and '60s. The kids who play these games know all about them," said plumber Peter Wlasuk about the two brothers.

"I'm not blaming the games for what happened. But they see a picture of a historical gun and say 'I've used that on Call Of Duty'."

The two newspapers also quote "experts" in the fields of psychology that claim the two violent titles could have easily influenced Lanza, even if he was a 20-year-old man.

"When someone with a mental-health disorder becomes very isolated and at the same time is obsessed with playing violent video games, the games break down their impediments to killing," child violence expert James Garbarino told the newspaper.

"When the incident takes place, it is almost as if they are living out the video game. They feel rejected by society and this is their way of getting back."

Considering video games are still a controversial topic for media outlets, you can expect them to be made responsible for all sorts of other terrifying things in the future.