When the NRA-branded iOS app NRA: Practice Range launched earlier this week (nearly on the one month anniversary of the Sandy Hook Elementary School Shooting that took place in Newtown Connecticut on December 14, 2012) it carried a rating of ages 4+.

It should not come as any surprise that Vice-President Joe Biden's Commission on Gun Violence delivered 19 recommendations on how to deal with... gun violence, with the key word being "gun." Despite much ado about a meeting late last week with video game industry executives, trade groups, and five researchers, Biden didn't seem all that interested in taking on the industry but did tell those gathered at the meeting that the video game industry needed to improve its image with the general public.

It's hard to argue against a culture of violence influencing children when you release an iOS app that teaches kids ages 4+ how to aim a gun and more accurately shoot. Not that the newly released NRA-licensed game developed by MEDL Mobile, Inc. will turn your tiny tot into a killing machine - nor does the game include any type of violent content save the ability to fire a handgun at human shaped targets and clay targets. And to its credit, the game also offers plenty of safety tips for players to keep them from doing stupid things - we assume - in real life.

On CNN's State of the Union with host Candy Crowley, Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TENN.) sat in on a panel discussion about gun control and the likelihood of legislation being passed by the current Congress. But instead of discussing gun control, Blackburn decided to take a few shots at Activision's Call of Duty series. Blackburn said that in preparation to appear on the show she watched some video of the game and was shocked at the violence she saw... she also called the game "Call to Duty."

On this week's show hosts Andrew Eisen and E. Zachary Knight talk about Anonymous putting forth a DDoS free speech petition to the White House, various violent video game buyback programs (Southington CT. and Melrose, MA.), the video game industry meeting with Vice-President Joe Biden's Gun Violence Commission last week, and a whole lot more. Download it now: SuperPAC Episode 36 (1 hour, 7 minutes) 61.5 MB.

According to a Polygon report, the video game industry executives and other interested parties that met with Vice-President Joe Biden's Gun Violence Commission walked away feeling that they were unscathed, and that Biden was looking for general input on media and violence.

Update: Polygon is reporting that the meeting between the ESA President Michael Gallagher and Joe Biden's task for on gun violence also reportedly included executives from many major publishers, researchers, and the nation's biggest video game retailer.

In addition to asking the gaming community to voice its collective opinion on discussions on video games taking place in Washington this week, the Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) has written a letter to Vice-President Joe Biden, who is heading up a task force to look at ways to deal with gun violence in the wake of the Newtown, Connecticut shooting that happened in mid-December.

In an interview on CBS This Morning Republican New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said that a frank discussion on a myriad of issues will be the only way to seriously curb gun violence in America beyond a discussion about gun control. That discussion should include violence found in some video games, substance abuse, and mental illness.

Reuters is reporting that the National Rifle Association, victims of gun violence, gun safety groups, gun owners, and unnamed representatives from the film and video game industries will meet with Vice-President Joe Biden's task force set up to come up with solutions and answers in the wake of the Sandy Hook elementary school shootings in Newtown, Connecticut that resulted in the death of 20 children and six adults.

Drawing conclusions based on a lack of evidence is not mutually exclusive to politicians in America and in Europe, as evidenced in this Peninsula report. According to the publication, one politician in the Philippines is indirectly blaming video and arcade games for the recent rash of shootings in the country.

The Entertainment Merchants Association (EMA) has sent a letter to Vice President Joe Biden offering its input on the effort he is leading to develop policy recommendations to address the Newtown, Connecticut tragedy that resulted in the death of 20 children and six adults.

While there's a lot of people upset over a variety of things the National Rifle Association said today in its press conference, gamers are a bit annoyed with the gun lobby comparing violent video games to pornography. But as this The Escapist report points out, the NRA doesn't think that the medium is so horrible that it won't swim in the interactive entertainment pond.

The National Rifle Association held a press conference this morning defending guns rights and pointing the finger at big media. They also called for a national program for schools that would train school officials on how to best protect educational institutions. The program would use local volunteers and participation would be up to local communities and school boards.

The Hartford Courant is highlighting a story about a 12-year-old Newtown, Connecticut boy who has started a campaign to "stop playing violent video games." Max Goldstein, a 12-year-old student who attends Newtown Middle School, says that he decided to stop playing games like "Call of Duty" after attending the funeral of one of his brother's friends who had been killed during the Sandy Hook Elementary School shoot

Speaking to the LA Times to promote the new Quentin Tarantino movie "Django Unchained," actor Samuel L. Jackson said that fewer guns are not necessarily the answer in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings that resulted in the death of 20 children and 6 adults. Jackson also said that statements against violent media like video games and movies have little to do with the shootings that have happened recently.

According to this Foxnews.com report, the National Rifle Association (NRA) plans to hold a press conference on Friday where it will push back against the call for tighter gun control laws in the United States. An anonymous "industry source" tells Fox News that the NRA is prepared to point its finger at the culture of violent media found in various forms of entertainment including television, movies, and video games.

While there is much discussion and hand wringing in Washington on cable news networks about the cause of the recent school shooting in Newton, Connecticut, this Washington Post report actually looks at some data. WaPo compares data from 10 countries related to video game spending versus gun-related homicides. The conclusion?

Disbarred Florida Attorney and anti-game crusader Jack Thompson seems to have come out of hiding to talk about the as-of-yet unestablished link between video media and the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut on Friday. In an attempt to connect with the Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA), Thompson decided to leave a voice mail message for ECA President Hal Halpin. The roughly 35 second-long message from Thompson is equivalent to an "I-told-you-so" to Halpin, gamers, and the non-profit.

After several editorials called Electronic Arts out for including links to real world weapons to promote the new Medal of Honor game, the company has decided to discontinue the practice. The real down-side to this news is that the money generated from those real-world weapon sales was going directly to the charity Project Honor.

An editorial in the Baltimore Sun written by former White House and Pentagon official Douglas MacKinnon laments the "lessons lost" that could have come out of the Aurora, Colorado shooting about what the author calls "a culture that desensitizes us to violence." While his general sentiment that there are lessons to be learned about the shooting, what those lessons are or might be are up for debate.

Senators Frank Lautenberg (NJ), Barbara Boxer (CA), Jack Reed (RI), Bob Menendez (NJ), Kirsten Gillibrand (NY), Schumer (NY) and Dianne Feinstein (CA) submitted an amendment to the Cybersecurity Act of 2012 which would limit real-world gun rights. The language intends to make ownership or transfer of magazines (and other ammunition-feeding devices capable of holding ten or more bullets) illegal.

Forbes has an interesting article on the popularity of shooting ranges in Las Vegas and what one owner of a popular establishment thinks has driven the industry to grow over the last few years.

According to the Asharq daily, a four-year-old boy (four years, seven months) shot his father for not buying him a "PlayStation," and now authorities are trying to figure out if they should charge the boy with murder. According to the publication, police in the southern Jizan area of Saudi Arabia claim that the youngster asked his father for a PlayStation.

The demand for modern day weaponry is apparently on the rise in Canada, and video games are the reason why, according to a report in The Times Colonist. The paper of note for Newfoundland notes that the tastes of Canadian gun owners has shifted from firearms associated with hunting to modern-day, military grade weapons, or what the cool kids call "black rifles."

Bungie's IT guy, Jeff Fletcher, is an information specialist for the Halo creators during the day, but sometimes he's a gun-toting vigilante, according to this report from Seattle news station KING 5.

Arizona State Senator Linda Gray recently said that the Tucson shootings weren't caused by lax gun control laws, but a culture of violence.. and abortion. Yes, you have read that right, ABORTION. She later distanced herself slightly from her comments. How abortion factors into the equation I’m not sure, but politicians do so enjoy tying irrelevant things to tragedies to score political points..

"The problem is not the gun, but about respect for all human life, from the unborn, a 9 year old child, a senior citizen or a political leader," Gray told Raw Story, by e-mail. "The shooter had no respect for the value of any these innocent citizens who were injured or killed."

Conservative T.V. talking head Glenn Beck has entertained the notion that video game violence leads to the real thing, but in the aftermath of Sunday's triple cop slaying in Pittsburgh, some critics are drawing a connection between Beck's on-air political rants and accused killer Richard Poplawski's horrific rampage.

The Daily Beast reports that the 22-year old Poplawski is a white supremacist and conspiracy theorist who harbored fears that President Obama will seek to establish some type of "new world order" and remove guns from private citizens.

Poplawski is also a Beck fan:

The alleged killer posted a YouTube clip to [white supremacist site] Stormfront of top-rated Fox News host Glenn Beck contemplating the existence of FEMA-managed concentration camps... Three weeks later, Poplawski posted another Youtube clip to Stormfront, this time of a video blogger advocating “Tea Parties,” or grassroots conservative protests organized by Beck and Fox News contributor Newt Gingrich against President Barack Obama’s bailout plan...

David Neiwert, a veteran reporter on right-wing militia movements... explained that by co-opting conspiratorial rhetoric from the farthest shores of the right, mainstream conservative talkers can inflame the passions of paranoiacs like Poplawski to a dangerous degree...

 

"What it does is unhinge fringe players from reality and dislodges them even further. When someone like Poplawski hears Glenn Beck touting One World Government and they’re gonna take your gun theories, they believe then that it must be true. And that’s when they really become crazy.”

With the United States rocked by a series of mass-murder incidents in recent weeks, Dalitso Njolinjo of The Moderate Voice wonders why the influence of video games, music and movies are often blamed for such events:

As an avid hip hop fan... When my favorite rappers veered into subjects of violence and gun play, my thought always seem to lead me to one question, how do they get these guns so easily? ...

I remember the Columbine High School massacre... Instead of having a serious conversation about gun crime and gun control, the majority of the news stories based on sensationalism. ‘The Trench Coat Mafia’, ‘they played violent video games’, ‘they were fans of Marilyn Manson’ and ‘they were fans of Natural Born Killers’... as soon as the conversation did veer towards gun control, the NRA would call foul play and blame someone in pop culture...

Fast forward to the aftermath of the Virginia Tech massacre, what did Fox News ‘journalist’ Bill O’Reilly want to talk about? [rappers]...

 

When anyone can purchase a fire arm with such ease and with impunity and thereafter go and take somebody’s life, someone somewhere has failed the victims.

Anti-violence campaigners in the U.K. are upset by iPhone apps which simulate real-world firearms, reports the Evening Standard.

At issue are freely-distributed titles such as Bang Bang and Shotgun Free, which advertise a gun-like user experience. From the Evening Standard:

Software available free from Apple's online store allows the devices to emit a loud gunshot sound when the owner points it and shakes it... Several different guns are available, from revolvers to shotguns, including a "gangsta edition" where the serial numbers have been filed off.

John Beyer of mediawatch UK, a frequent critic of violent video games, told the newspaper:

In view of recent events in Northern Ireland and elsewhere, I think anything that glamorises guns and shooting is in extremely poor taste. I would hope that whoever is responsible for this would withdraw it immediately.

Via: Mediasnoops