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FC: Anti-gun group says videogames let manufacturers target kids
From: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
Date: Fri, 15 Dec 2000 09:39:04 -0500
******* Date: Thu, 14 Dec 2000 10:41:11 -0500 To: declan () wired com From: Naomi Seligman <nseligman () vpc org> Declan,Here is the text of the first part of the report. The rest is too graphic heavy to e-mail. Thanks for your interest.
[snip --DBM] -------------------------------------- Naomi Seligman Communications Director Violence Policy Center 1140 19th Street, NW Suite 600 Washington, DC 20036 202 822 8200 x105 voice 202 822 8205 fax www.vpc.org web IntroductionThe gun industry has struggled with stagnant or shrinking sales for several years due to the saturation of its primary market of white males. According to the
General Social Survey conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, the percentage of gun-owning homes dropped nearly 20 percent from 1977 to 1996.[1] An advertisement for New England Firearmssummed up the challenge facing the industry, "In effect, [the] greatest threat we face is the lack of a future customer base for the products which we all sell."[2]
To meet this challenge the gun industry working hand-in-hand with theNational Rifle Association (NRA) has targeted children as vital to the future of the gun culture in America, both as future customers and as political foot soldiers for
the gun-control battles that lie ahead.[a 3]The latest assault in the gun industry battle for the "hearts and minds"[b] of
America's youth is the use of video games that put virtual guns in the hands of potential customers. Designed and marketed as children's toys and sold freely through channels such as eToys.com and amazon.com, they are the newest marketing tools for attracting children to the gun industry. In fact, one game Remington Upland Game Hunter features an "On-line Catalog" of selected Remington firearms.Scott Farrell, editor of Guns Magazine, outlined the thinking behind such video
games, "What we need is a computer game which combines the use of a realhandgun...with state-of-the-art graphics and an exciting story....A game like that would be an extremely effective vehicle to introduce safe recreational shooting to the video-game generation."[4] Or, as the NRA urges on the cover of InSights, its
youth magazine for members age 17 and under, "Get into shooting cyber style" (see report cover).The gun industry's addition of video games to its youth marketing strategy is hardly surprising given the explosive growth in video game sales and the attractive demographic profile of video game players 39 percent are under the age of 18 and 43 percent are women.[5] In fact, the video game industry is the fastest growing segment of the U.S. entertainment industry.[6] Retail sales of computer and video games have grown from $3.2 billion in 1995 to $6.1 billion in 1999.[7] According to a survey by Peter D. Hart Research Associates, 60 percent of all Americans over
the age of five or 145 million people play computer or video games. [8] Using video games offers several advantages over other youth marketingstrategies employed by the gun industry. Through video games the gun industry is able to appeal to a larger and demographically more diverse audience there are 145 million video game players versus 44 million gun owners, 43 percent of video game
players are female versus nine percent of gun owners, and the average age of avideo game player is 28 while the majority of gun owners are age 40 or older.[9]
As a result, the gun industry is able to put "virtual" versions of their deadly products into the hands of children who are not legally eligible to purchase firearms
and would be unreachable by more traditional means of marketing.Despite the fact that children can't purchase guns from dealers, in many cases
they can legally possess them. A 1998 poll conducted by The New York Times and CBS News found that 15 percent of American youths owned their own gun.[10] Renowned gun writer Grits Gresham summed up the situation in a 1993 column in the gun industry publication SHOT Business: Kids can't buy guns, you say? Well, yes and no. It's true that most students from kindergarten through high school can't purchase firearms on their own. But it's also true that in many parts of the country, youngsters (from preteens on up) are shooting and hunting. Pop picks up the tab.[11]Video games featuring shooting have been played for as long as video games have existed. Typically, these games featured traditional hunting rifles or shotguns.
Recently, as gun companies have lent their brand names to video games, the products featured have become decidedly more lethal. Shooting games nowinclude fully automatic machine guns, assault weapons, and all types of handguns
from "pocket rockets" and "junk guns" to large-frame 50 caliber pistols. The industry sees these games as a means to introduce children to guns and the shooting sports, as well as an opportunity to engender brand loyalty.As the guns have changed, so have the targets. Where once were stationary targets or perhaps a flock of ducks, now stand human targets or, as Remington Top Shot euphemistically phrases it, "interactive targets." Colt's Wild West Shootout instructs the player that "you're the law and you carry the firepower to back it up!," while Soldier of Fortune offers the more direct, "Meet interesting, exotic
people from all over the globe, and dispatch them."[12] Recent school shootings and disturbing levels of youth firearms use have focused attention on the problem of youth gun violence. Clearly, there is aspectrum of factors involved, ranging from the remote to the proximate. In other words, some factors may only arguably contribute to the problem, but other factors
most certainly do.For example, some might argue that such cartoon violence as that seen in a
typical "Road Runner" scene contributes at some level, however remote, to a desensitization of youth to the nature, meaning, and real-life consequences of violence.On the other hand, it is clear beyond doubt that real guns in the hands of troubled
young people have been the immediate cause of countless tragedies, from lonely suicides to mass public shootings. Unfortunately, policymakers such as members of Congress and more recently the Federal Trade Commission have devoted an enormous amount of attention to the more remote end of this scale of factors. They have preferred to expend resources on largely repetitive, redundant "investigations" of the alleged contributions to youth violence of media images and song lyrics rather than scrutinize the role of gun companies in their target marketing of firearms tochildren. For the most part, the gun industry and it affiliates have gotten a free ride
in the national inquisition into the causes of youth gun violence.The games reviewed in this study lie at the more proximate end of the scale of factors for two reasons: they put surrogate firearms into the hands of children, thus closely approximating the real experience of shooting to kill. And they are intended to lure children into possessing real firearms. These should be of at least as much interest to parents, Congress, and others concerned about youth violence
as the putative effects of music and motion picture images.It is time to end the gun industry's free ride: Congress, independent agencies
such as the Federal Trade Commission, and investigative agencies such as theGeneral Accounting Office should examine closely the role of the gun industry in
promoting the gun culture to children through these games and other marketing schemes. Footnotesa) The gun industry has launched a campaign to attract children to the gun culture
on several frontsAdvertising in magazines aimed at youth, such as Boy's Life and the NRA's
own youth magazine InSights.Funding the National Rifle Association's Eddie Eagle program a marketing tool designed to put a friendly face on gun ownership disguised as a safety
program.Designing smaller, lighter versions of their firearms which are marketed as
youth models.Using public school wildlife management lessons to develop schoolchildren's
interest in hunting and firearms.b) At the NRA's 1996 Annual Meeting, then-President Marion Hammer outlined
the NRA's agenda to "invest" in America's youth saying, "It will be anold-fashioned wrestling match for the hearts and minds of our children, and we'd
better engage our adversaries with no holds barred....If we do not successfully reach out to the next generation, then the freedom and liberty that we've lived for and that many of our ancestors have died for will not live beyond us." Endnotes 1. General Social Survey accessed from www.ipcsr.umich.edu. 2. Advertisement, New England Firearms, Shooting Sports Retailer, September/October 1998. 3. For more information on these marketing efforts, see Start 'Em Young Recruitment of Kids to the Gun Culture (Washington, DC: Violence Policy Center, 1999); Young Guns: How the Gun Lobby Nurtures America's Youth Gun Culture (Washington, DC: Violence Policy Center, 1998); Joe Camel with Feathers: How the NRA with Gun and Tobacco Industry Dollars Uses its Eddie Eagle Program to Market Guns to Kids (Washington, DC: Violence Policy Center, 1997); and, "Use the Schools" How Federal Tax Dollars are Spent to Market Guns to Kids (Washington, DC: Violence Policy Center, 1994).4. Scott Farrell, "SHOT Show '99 Writers' Picks," Shooting Industry, April 1999,
46. 5. "Computer and Video Game Industry Data Updated for 2000," Interactive Digital Software Association, downloaded from www.idsa.com.6. 1999 State of the Industry Report, Interactive Digital Software Association,
4-5, downloaded from www.idsa.com. 7. "Computer and Video Game Industry Data Updated for 2000," Interactive Digital Software Association, downloaded from www.idsa.com. 8. "Computer and Video Game Industry Data Updated for 2000," Interactive Digital Software Association, downloaded from www.idsa.com. 9. "Computer and Video Game Industry Data Updated for 2000," Interactive Digital Software Association, downloaded from www.idsa.com; Philip J. Cook and Jens Ludwig, Guns in America: Results of a Comprehensive National Survey on Firearms Ownership and Use (Washington, DC: Police Foundation, 1996): 16, 33; "Who Plays Computer and Video Games?" Interactive Digital Software Association, downloaded from www.idsa.com. 10. Laurie Goodstein, "Teen-Age Poll Finds a Turn to the Traditional," The New York Times, 30 April 1998, A20. 11.Grits Gresham, "Community Relations," SHOT Business, September/October 1993, 9. 12. Promotional blurbs, Remington Top Shot, Head Games Publishing, 1998;Colt's Wild West Shootout, Encore Software, 1999; Soldier of Fortune, Activision,
Inc., 2000.
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