Turns out the kids aren't all alright...

...in fact some of them are crazy gun nuts who love assault rifles. Look, I know it's like super easy to throw one's hands in the air and say 'kids these days,' but holy shit, kids these days...

Oh, and don't get me started on selfies.

Oh don't you look at me like that, we're
the ones that will have to live with the
consequences of your poor decisions.

Here, lookit this, it's a Guardian article about a Quinnipiac poll that shows that Americans age 18-34 are surprisingly divided on whether or not there should be a ban on assault rifles. 49% support a ban while 44% oppose one. This is in sharp contrast to the 65% of Americans of any age that support a ban. So what gives? Why are younger people more ok with assault rifles than old people? Shouldn't that be the other way around? Fair or not, we tend to link age with conservatism which is why it's super-frustrating when old people vote for someone like Trump and then we feel bad for pointing out they'll die sooner than us.

Call of Duty WWII: "way more fun 
than asking Grandpa about the war..."

-Activision's kind of

insensitive slogan

Anyway, what gives? The Guardian interviewed a sociologist called David Yamane who has a theory, and brace yourself because he's about to blame video games:

"There does seem to be something in particular about assault weapons, and it could be due to the normality of assault weapons for people who have come of age playing first-person shooter games like Call of Duty..."

-David Yamane about how the 

vidjagames and are warping the youth

Ok, remember how I told you to brace yourself? Well, un-brace and then re-brace because I'm not sure he's wrong. Sure, on the face of it it might seem like Yamane is just following in the footsteps of a hundred sanctimonious hand-ringers who for decades have insisted, without evidence, that video games are harmful, but I think this is more about a cultural issue than laying blame.

Hey, remember that time when Joe Liberman and the rest of the
Senate lost their shit over Night Trap and Mortal Kombat? Good times...

Somethings are just generational I guess,
like teabagging. What's with teabagging?

Yamane's not saying that first-person shooters make people violent, he's just suggesting that they can make assault rifles seem less foreign and 18-34 year olds less inclined to condemn them. He goes on to point out that kids who grew up in the 1950's were more familiar with things like hunting rifles either from first hand experience or from TV so those, for them, are normal. But kids who grew up in the 2000's playing FPS games where you've got to mow down as many enemies as possible as quickly as you can, appreciate the convenience of assault rifles in a way the rest of us can't.

So yeah, I'm going to have to go ahead and blame video games for this one. Not directly for gun crimes of course, but for helping create an entire generation of young people who think that slinging an assault rifle over your shoulder and heading out the door is a thing reasonable people do.

I mean look at these assholes...