Politics & Government

Sharkey Wants Video Game Companies to Stop Licensing Real Guns

Companies that produce popular first-person shooting games will often depict real life firearms from gun manufacturers.

Written by Ronald DeRosa.

Connecticut House Speaker Brendan Sharkey is urging several large video game companies to cease the practice of licensing with gun makers.

Companies such as Activision, the maker of the popular first-person shooter series Call of Duty, and Take-Two Interactive, creators of the soon-to-be-released Grand Theft Auto V, will license with real gun manufacturers to recreate weapons used in their games that reflect their real-life counterparts. 


Weapons from Colt, Remington, Beretta and other firearms companies have been depicted in Valve’s popular game Counter-Strike and in Activision’s latest Call of Duty game, Black Ops II, according to a report from Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense.

Sharkey, a Democrat, who penned a letter to the heads of these above video game companies, acknowledged that research has shown little connection between violent video games and actual gun violence in America.

But the house speaker from Hamden then goes on to note how the gun industry will often attack video games as a culprit in real life violence whenever a mass murder is carried out.

“The industry practice of video game publishers entering into licensing, marketing or other financial arrangements to feature real guns in their games blurs the lines between fiction and reality in ways that can have tragic consequences,” Sharkey wrote in the letter to Robert Kotick, Gabe Newell, Strauss Zelnick and Michael Gallagher, all of whom are CEOs for Activision, Valve, Take-Two and Electronic Arts, respectively.

Sharkey also cited how Adam Lanza, the Newtown shooter who killed 20 children and six adults last year, was reportedly an active Call of Duty player, and who carried out his attack using a rifle by a company that markets its products in the Call of Duty games.

Sharkey credited Electronic Arts (EA) for announcing it was ending its practice of licensing deals with gun makers, of which he said he hopes would become an industry standard.

“I write to ask you today to request your cooperating in ending this nefarious relationship between video game makers and gun makers," Sharkey wrote.

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