Politech: FC: Anti-gun group says videogames let manufacturers target kids

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

*******

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


Introduction

     The 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 Firearms
summed 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 the
National 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 real
handgun...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 marketing
strategies 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 a
video 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 now
include 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 a
spectrum 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 to
children.  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 the
General 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.



Footnotes

a) The gun industry has launched a campaign to attract children to the gun 
culture
on several fronts

          Advertising 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 an
old-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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