Pushing Buttons: Why linking real-world violence to video games is a dangerous distraction

Welcome to Pushing Buttons, the Guardian's gaming newsletter. If you'd like to receive it in your inbox every week, just pop your email in below – and check your inbox (and spam) for the confirmation email. Remember how, in the wake of yet more awful shootings in the US this month, Fox News decided to blame video games rather than, you know, the almost total absence of meaningful gun control? Remember how I said last week that the video-games-cause-violence "argument" was so mendacious and nakedly manipulative that I wasn't going to dignify it with a response? Well, here I am, responding, because the supposed link between video games and real-life violence is one of the most persistent myths that I've encountered over the course of my career, and it has an interesting (if also infuriating) history.