ABSTRACT
A large body of research has concerned itself with the question of whether violent movies and videogames illicit violent behaviour, a hypothesis now widely considered disproven. Little research has been conducted, however, on whether or not the normalisation implied by parents not allowing their children to play with toy guns has any validity. It is striking that, whether or not a player of an FPS videogame is a supporter of firearms or a proponent of gun control legislation, players of these games learn a tremendous repertoire of information about authentic firearms – including but not restricted to makes, ammunition, and standard accessories.
What is more, the use of the appearance of actual manufactured firearms in such games (and other contexts) carries with it a license fee that supplies money to the companies that market firearms for various militaries, law enforcement agencies, or personal protection. It follows, therefore, that to play an FPS is to participate (however tangentially) in the international arms trade. In this sense, there is a very real (albeit rarefied) sense in which toy guns do kill people. This proposition leads to an ethical analysis of distributed responsibility in the context of extremely tangential contributions to morally unacceptable events.
