In its bizarre response last week to the shootings in Newtown, Conn., the National Rifle Association heaped blame on "vicious, violent video games" for corrupting young Americans and called them the "filthiest form of pornography." As it turns out, many of those very games have marketing relationships with the makers of firearms and ammunition, which are also big financial supporters of the N.R.A., through deals that appear to be designed to increase sales of their deadly wares.
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As Barry Meier and Andrew Martin reported in The Times this week, the gun industry works in partnership with the makers of games like Medal of Honor Warfighter and Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 to publicize their brands to potential customers.
In the case of Medal of Honor, its maker, Electronic Arts, proudly and prominently promoted its ties to the gun industry by listing on its Web sites partners that included the McMillan Group, a gun and ammunition producer, and Magpul Industries, which makes gun magazines and other firearm equipment. The company's Web site proudly declares the bona fides of its game with the motto "Authentic Game. Authentic Brands." and, for a time, even offered a direct link to the Web sites of the companies where its young customers could peruse catalogs of real weapons. While those links have been removed, the Web site still encourages visitors to "Check out the McMillan Website and shoot to win!"
These troubling relationships expose the N.R.A.'s disingenuous strategy of blaming the media, songwriters, filmmakers and anybody else it can think of for mass shootings while denying that the association, which is the most influential opponent of sensible gun-control policies, bears any responsibility for the growing number of massacres like Newtown and Columbine.
On Friday, Wayne LaPierre, the executive vice president of the association, excoriated games like Bulletstorm, another game made by Electronic Arts. Will he and his association now speak just as harshly about the firearms producers that support and try to generate sales of their weapons by agreeing to have their likeness used in such games?
When asked about the relationships between gun makers and the video game industry, an N.R.A. spokesman said that the association had no comment because it does not speak for the firearms industry and simply represents America's gun owners. But that claim is completely hollow since companies like the McMillan Group and Magpul support the association through corporate donations and other initiatives like a giveaway of ammunition magazines and other equipment on the association's Facebook page that was later taken down. These ties make clear that the N.R.A. is an aggressive supporter of the firearm industry, which benefits financially from its powerful lobbying efforts to prevent regulations on gun sales and ownership.
In responding to The Times's reporters, Electronic Arts defended its use of images of real guns in its games as no different than the company's use of licensed images of sports teams or buildings to give its games a real-life-like appearance. In addition, some gun makers and video game companies also said such deals do not include payments to have their weapons included in games. But regardless of whether money changed hands, this kind of marketing is deeply disturbing because it aims to connect the visceral thrill of video games directly with real weapons in the minds of a young, impressionable audience.
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