Navy yard shooter Aaron Alexis obsessed with shooting video games
Aaron Alexis, the 34-year-old former Navy reservist identified as the man behind the Navy Yard shootings in Washington on Monday that killed 12 people, is said to have been obsessed with shooter video games, to the point where friends would even bring him food during marathon sessions.
“He cursed a lot, but I [didn’t] see him angry very much,” Nutpisit Suthamtewakul, owner of the Happy Bowl Thai restaurant in Fort Worth, Texas, said of the shooter, who he described as a friend and drinking buddy, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Suthamtewakul said that sometimes Alexis would play for hours, and he would bring him plates of food during marathon sessions.
Police have failed to establish a motive for his actions so far.
Suthamtewakul noted that as an African American, sometimes Alexis complained about racial bias and said that he was a victim of discrimination.
Sparked by the Newtown shooting, social commentators have tried to offer a number of different reasons why some people turn to extreme levels of violence – violent entertainment, including video games, has been suggested as one possible influence.
“Gun control proposals now circulating in Washington and in many state capitals don’t address a more important issue – the constant stream of violence put forth by the entertainment industry,” the Rev. Franklin Graham wrote in a statement in February.
“Every year brings a flood of movies, not to mention cable and television programs, that are filled with violence. Whole segments of America’s music industry make their profits from song lyrics that glorify gratuitous violence, and there is seemingly an endless number of video games that are nothing more than murder simulators.”