File this under "real problems, real solutions." Would you believe that there is no rise in mass shootings in the United States? But, "we" just spent 17 billion dollars on violence based video games, last year, alone.

<<<<<  How do you rid society of this visual menace and stay within the confines of the Constitution?  Simple.  Do what the anti-cigarette crowd has done,  make these video games so expensive as to be unavailable to the every day young person. 

According to FOX News Sunday there have been 13 mass shootings in the United States this year. Yet, despite these recent mass shootings in Aurora and Wisconsin and Connecticut, there is no rise in mass killings in the United States according to a prominent criminologist. 

WAFF reported, via Free Republic:

Grant Duwe, a criminologist with the Minnesota Department of Corrections who has written a history of mass murders in America, said that while mass shootings rose between the 1960s and the 1990s, they actually dropped in the 2000s. And mass killings actually reached their peak in 1929, according to his data. He estimates that there were 32 in the 1980s, 42 in the 1990s and 26 in the first decade of the century.

Chances of being killed in a mass shooting, he says, are probably no greater than being struck by lightning.

Still, he understands the public perception – and extensive media coverage – when mass shootings occur in places like malls and schools. “There is this feeling that could have been me. It makes it so much more frightening.

While the above is an interesting fact,  one that helps to add context to the Sandy Hook murders,  it does not speak to a solution of any kind.  Gun ownership is being blamed,  along with an increasing mention of mental illness . . . . . the Sandy Hook killings were committed by a young man with Aspergers,  a form of autism.    

Understand that gun ownership and mental illness have been with us "from the beginning of time"  while school shootings are a "new" expression of criminal activity.  Why?  What has changed?   What is relatively new in a society sense,   is the proliferation of violence visuals,  especial as they appear in video games.  

In a recent study published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology reports that after three days of playing violent video games like “Call of Duty,” research subjects exhibited a spike in “hostile expectations” as compared to the group who played nonviolent games. As Science Daily reports:

After playing the game each day, participants took part in an exercise that measured their hostile expectations. They were given the beginning of a story, and then asked to list 20 things that the main character will do or say as the story unfolds. For example, in one story another driver crashes into the back of the main character’s car, causing significant damage. The researchers counted how many times the participants listed violent or aggressive actions and words that might occur.

The results showed that, after each day, those who played the violent games had an increase in their hostile expectations. In other words, after reading the beginning of the stories, they were more likely to think that the characters would react with aggression or violence.

I am not aware of any mass murders similar to what we are experiencing today,  committed by young people in the Baby Boomer generation or before.  We (Baby Boomers)  all owned guns or were exposed to them,  as young people.  And,   there was plenty of mental illness to go around.  What we did not have,  was a heavy dose of and access to violence and the fun of killing.  The youth of today,  is given a daily dose of gun violence in the context of winning a game,  in the context of having fun.  In every case,  those involved in the recent history of school shootings played video games.  The violence of these games was a daily feature in the lives of these people,  and the guns used in the video's are the same guns used by these murders.   

In 50 short years,  our youth has gone from spending "zero"  to spending 17 billion dollars per year on such destructive nonsense.   If I was in charge,  I would focus my attention on these games and their extermination.  

How do you rid society of this visual menace and stay within the confines of the Constitution?  Simple.  Do what the anti-cigarette crowd has done,  make these video games so expensive as to be unavailable to the every day young person.  

Let's start taxing the blue devil out of these games.  Give it 10/20 years,  and watch this aspect of our culture demise,  mend itself.