Assassination Generation: Video Games, Aggression, and the Psychology of Killing

Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, author of the bestselling book On Killing, examines the connection between violent video games and mass homicide, drawing on crime statistics, social research, and scientific studies of the teenage brain. Grossman documents several mass shooting incidents: a 14-year-old in Paducah, Kentucky (1997) who shot eight students; two high school seniors in Littleton, Colorado (1999) who killed a teacher and twelve students; a political extremist in Utoya, Norway (2011) who killed sixty-nine youth camp participants; and a 20-year-old in Newtown, Connecticut (2012) who killed twenty children and six adults at an elementary school. Grossman argues that violent video games depicting antisocial and savage behavior can affect the developing teenage mind. He contends that a young person's obsession with video games designed to teach killing links these acts of mass murder. Based on decades spent training soldiers and police to overcome human resistance to harming others, Grossman presents his analysis of how video games pose a threat to society and discusses what must be done in response.