American president Donald Trump has blamed video games and movies for the rise in violent gun crime and school shootings, as the debate rumbles on following last week's tragic killings in Florida.
"I'm hearing more and more people seeing the level of violence in video games is really shaping young people's thoughts," Trump said to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi (via Forbes).
"And then you go the further step, and that's the movies. You see these movies, and they're so violent a kid is able to see the movie if sex isn't involved, but killing is involved, and maybe we need to put a rating system for that.
"The fact is that you are having movies come out, that are so violent, with the killing and everything else, that maybe that's another thing we need to discuss."
Trump is not the first prominent American politician to try and deflect blame for these atrocities away from guns and lay it at the door of video games and films, after Kentucky governor Matt Bevin did exactly the same thing last week. Like Bevin, Trump has ties to and is funded in part by the National Rifle Association (NRA), an organisation largely financed by companies who make and market the kinds of weapons used to perpetrate these crimes.
Trump's idea to put in place a rating system to flag violence in films and games is a great idea, though. We should totally do that.