US President Donald Trump has said that video games are partly to blame for mass shootings which took place in parts of America over the weekend.
The president suggested that games that “celebrate violence” should be discouraged and made harder to buy.
President Trump’s suggestion comes after a shooter killed 20 people in a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas on Saturday August 3.
Hours later another gunman killed nine people in Dayton, Ohio.
During a speech in the wake of the killings, Trump said: “We must stop the glorification of violence in our society “This includes the gruesome and grisly video games that are now commonplace.
“It is too easy today for troubled youth to surround themselves with a culture that celebrates violence. We must stop or substantially reduce this, and it has to begin immediately.”
The president did not give any details on what form that crackdown might take or how it would be launched.
This is not the first time Trump has attempted to link violent video games with the cause of a gunman’s actions.
In 2018, following the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida, the President held a series of school safety meetings at the White House to try to address the crisis.
In the meetings, President Trump repeatedly brought up violence portrayed in media including video games, movies and on the internet.
During one of his speeches, he said: “I’m hearing more and more people saying the level of violence on video games is really shaping young people’s thoughts.”
Major US organisations such as the American Psychological Association and American Academy of Pediatrics have a firm stance against children and teens playing violent video games.
However, recent psychological studies have shown that there is no direct correlation between playing video games and acting out such atrocities.