NRA's scapegoating tactics: an attempt to clear the deck for THEIR video game?

In a move I can only characterize as rank unvarnished hypocrisy, the National Rifle Association has just released a gun range game where you can shoot at “coffin-shaped” human silhouette targets. The ink isn’t even dry on reporters’ dutiful relaying of the NRA’s last attempt to blame video games for the Sandy Hook shooting, and the game-burning fires are barely quenched, and there they are, releasing a video game of their very own!

NRA Practice Range for iOS screenshot


I absolutely adore the fact that they chose a medium like iOS, where such violent games are apparently not subject to ESRB ratings the way they are in storefronts or even digital distribution methods like Steam or Playstation Network. They’re evidently only subject to Apple’s own internal and non-standardized rating scheme. And, sure, Apple certainly did rate it… for ages 4+. Who doesn’t want to start a kid early on learning to aim for the head or the heart?

Think Progress notes that the NRA also had a Hollywood Guns exhibit extolling the guns used in Hollywood films, even while they blamed violent movies for gun murders. So here they are, making a video game supposedly to teach proper gun handling (I’m guessing, sight-unseen, by making you read cut-screens between rounds), and where the only goal is to learn how to blow holes in human-shaped targets with bonus points for a kill shot. And don’t forget the target practice you get to do in a real-world environment in the Hunting Range module!

The best part about this app is that you can upgrade to an MK11 sniper rifle for an extra $0.99. Get your toddler primed on how to use a sniper rifle against human targets and living creatures in the wild, before they have to do it in real life! But don’t dare let them play Resistance with its hyper-realistic… err… magnum that shoots explosive charges… and plasma rifle that goes bweee when you select it.

Yeaaaaah.

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NRA's scapegoating tactics: an attempt to clear the deck for THEIR video game?
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9 thoughts on “NRA's scapegoating tactics: an attempt to clear the deck for THEIR video game?

  1. 2

    “Because we here at the NRA must reiterate that guns don’t kill people. Not as poorly as you guys shoot. Here, let’s work on that.” -the truth they don’t want to say.

  2. 4

    Our gun culture doesn’t kill people, movies and video games and rock ‘n roll music imbued with gun culture, created by people steeped in gun culture, whether pro-, anti-, or simply affected by gun culture, kills people.

  3. 6

    Our gun culture doesn’t kill people, movies and video games and rock ‘n roll music imbued with gun culture, created by people steeped in gun culture, whether pro-, anti-, or simply affected by gun culture, kills people.”

    I’m calling bollocks on that. It’s been pointed out many times before – many other Western countries with high numbers of people playing violent video games, watching violent movies and listening to rock and roll (the same also largely US products “imbued” with gun culture) and have nothing like the rates of gun death as the US.

    I’d rather say it’s gun culture, as in large numbers of people people actually owning and knowing how to use guns, as well as military weaponry, kills people.

  4. 7

    @DX:

    Pssst. Read a little more into what you quoted.

    Our gun culture doesn’t kill people, movies and video games and rock ‘n roll music imbued with gun culture, created by people steeped in gun culture, whether pro-, anti-, or simply affected by gun culture, kills people.

  5. 9

    Our gun culture doesn’t kill people, movies and video games and rock ‘n roll music imbued with gun culture, created by people steeped in gun culture, whether pro-, anti-, or simply affected by gun culture, kills people.

    You’re joking surely. I’m Australian and like every other English speaking country in the world I grew up with cowboys ‘n’ Injuns and other “Wild West” movies (there were serials at the satdy arvo films in the 50s) with the Prohibition and other eras US gangster and police drama tv and films, and now littlies and teens are also drenched in the same US culture of guns and violence. And even before we bought back all the guns 16 years ago, we didn’t have anything like the murder and violence rate of the USA.

    Look at a few statistics on murder, death by gunshot (murder, accident, police shootings, suicide), as well as other violent crime for English speaking countries, then for the G20 countries, then for the world at large, and see how the USA rates. If I were American, I’d be a bit down-hearted after that, but YMMV.

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