"There are two reasons why this is an ignorant oversimplification of the situation.
First, there are hundreds of millions of people also playing those same violent games who never act on it, including myself. So in order for the argument to be true, that would mean that we are all just powder kegs ready to explode. However, that would ignore the fact that virtually all mass shootings are executed by people who have a tenuous hold on reality due to a mental illness of some kind. Or the fact that they all have easy access to weapons that make killing several people in a short amount of time very easy. Therefore creating a "video game registry" would essentially be punishing everyone who responsibly plays games by allowing the government to keep track of your purchases due to the actions of a select few. Doesn't that sound like a familiar argument? Doesn't that seem a little hypocritical?
The second issue with Hasselbeck's argument is that it sets people up to be mindless sheep, unable to tell right from wrong, and just responding to what they're viewing and interacting with without an ability to think for themselves. Imagine if she actually took the time to extrapolate that out to other people, like her viewers. So ultimately the people watching her show are incapable of thinking for themselves and are just agreeing with her because all they ever watch is Fox News and they lack the mental capacity to not go out in the world and act out what they see on their televisions. But of course she'd never say that. It's only "other" people who can't stop themselves from buying guns and trying to act out their favorite violent video games. Though you'd think after all of these mass killings one of them would realize that life isn't a video game in which one person can take on dozens of heavily armed and trained men and women and still survive. Though I guess that would take the ability to think clearly."
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