This past week yet another gun violence tragedy struck the United States, this time in Jacksonville, Florida at the Madden NFL 19 tournament. More specifically the incident occurred at the GLHF Game bar on Sunday August 26th.
In the middle of the gaming tournament shots were fired as the gamers and their supporters tried to scramble out of the venue. During this scramble, ten individuals were injured, leaving three deceased including the shooter.
Not only is the whole incident terrifying for everyone involved but for also for those watching on the game streaming network, Twitch TV. It was reported that over 12 shots could be heard through Twitch during the shooting, the game stopped after the first few moments in which the shots were heard but unfortunately, the audio continued on the Twitch stream.
The two victims of the gunman were recognized as Elijah Clayton, age 22, and Tayor Robertson, age 28. It was also recognized that the victims were known to the gunman as competitive gamers, leading a lot of law enforcement individuals to suspect that the gunman specifically targeted these two gamers. One very bizarre addition to this story is that the gunman had just recently won a Madden tournament round in Buffalo, NY this past year.
One common “explanation” for this shooting is the idea of ‘toxic gaming culture.’ However, in my own opinion, that is bullshit. If we keep putting “explanation” for the shootings that keep occurring multiple times a month, where is the solution going to come from? And I might add that the game competition was purely a sports game, not anything related to guns/violence. It was also identified that the gunman had prior mental health problems, why would an individual at such a young age, especially with prior admittance to a mental institution, have any kind of access to a firearm? This certainly is a temporary “explanation” for a bigger problem the United States is continuously having. Another problem with blaming the toxicity of gaming culture is the fact that in several other countries such as our neighbors in Canada and other places such as Japan, Sweden, and Australia, have equally as large of a gaming community…without the constant mass shootings that overtake the US news weekly.
As a conclusion, I’d like to make notice to how America makes up 4.4 percent of the entire world’s population BUT we also own almost half of the world’s civilian-owned firearms. Hmm…