An Idaho man who killed three has decided to blame video games for his own criminal behavior. The story is on Oregonlive.com.

His excuse is a blatant appeal to the narrative that video games cause violent behavior, which is something that we know to be untrue. But because he decided to blame them, it wouldn’t be surprising to see people who hate video games eagerly use this to make their case that video games are violent, so they can either regulate them or succeed in getting video games taken away from everybody, then having succeeded in doing that, they’d move on to regulating just about anything else that they can so the rest of us can’t enjoy some simple pleasures.

It’s obvious that the killer just blamed video games for his behavior because he, like many people, doesn’t like placing the blame for his behavior on himself, which is right where it belongs.

The man said that playing video games made killing easier for him. Is that so? Why didn’t he blame the guns and knives that he brought with him? Did they make killing easier for him? Only in the sense that that they were tools that he used to carry out his desires.

Sadism comes from within. People don’t want to kill because they own video games or guns. People want to kill because they’re messed up in the heads. The man himself said that he was depressed and suicidal, which is evidence that he had some sort of mental infirmity that wasn’t properly treated.

There’s the problem. The man had mental problems. Depression is a psychosis. However, we’re seeing America becoming more shy about admitting that certain mental problems are even problems, instead deciding to chalk deviant mentalities to being “personality quirks” or saying that they were “born that way”, as though that makes them any less harmful. Saying that a problem is not a problem doesn’t make the problem go away.

It’s time for America to wake up. Taking stuff away isn’t going to make anyone any less vicious. Unless the mental infirmity is diagnosed and treated, the harmful behavior associated with it is just going to continue.