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Opposable Thumbs / Gaming & Entertainment

The NRA’s new shooting app isn’t the hypocritical PR disaster it seems

Practice Range could serve as a helpful distraction for the gun lobby.


Yesterday, the NRA released Practice Range, a free iOS app that lets you choose from multiple guns, then practice aiming and shooting them at targets using the iPhone's built-in tilt sensor. Judging by the outraged response from all corners of the media, the release wasn't a brilliant PR move for one of the country's largest lobbying groups.

And yet the NRA has already had some success at shifting the conversation away from "guns" and back to violent video games. The new app also fits that strategy and, in doing so, might actually do more good than harm for the NRA.


TechCrunch accused the NRA of "profiteering" because the app lets players unlock weapons like AK-47s and MK-11 sniper rifles through $0.99 in-app purchases. Gizmodo and Kotaku were among those pointing out that iTunes labels the game appropriate for children ages four and up, meaning it's appropriate for kids the same age as those killed in last month's Sandy Hook massacre (Gizmodo called the rating "straight up stupid.") "Is now the best time for a National Rifle Association (NRA) 3D shooting game? We’d suggest not," wrote TheAppSide, implying that this game would be acceptable in, I don't know, a week? Six months?

The New York Post probably had the media's strongest reaction to the game's release, blaring in a headline that the title "spits on the graves of Newtown massacre victims." The Post article called out the game for its use of assault weapons like those used in the massacre and for allowing players to shoot at "coffin-shaped" targets (The targets, shown above, look more like highly stylized person-shapes, complete with red highlights for the head and heart. Not that this really makes things better...).

At first glance, Practice Range might look like a galling bit of hypocrisy on the part of the NRA. Since the organization's first press conference a week after the Sandy Hook shootings, the group has tried to shift the focus away from guns and toward societal causes for violence, including violent video games like Bulletstorm, Grand Theft Auto, Mortal Kombat, and Splatterhouse. So why did it just a release a game in which you shoot things with guns? IGN called the game's launch "puzzling" in light of the group's rhetoric against gaming, and Mashable said the game "comes with a degree of irony" for the NRA.

But looked at another way, Practice Range is actually a counterpoint to much of the video game industry. Yes, the game includes guns, but you can only shoot them at inanimate, blood-free targets. What's more, the game is peppered with frequent safety messages like "always keep the gun pointed in a safe direction" and "always keep the gun unloaded until ready to use." The main menu includes Web links to more gun safety resources. The game teaches players to shoot virtual guns, but it also teaches them how to use those virtual guns responsibly.

So Practice Range fits right into the NRA's arguments about video games' insidious effects on our society. "There's nothing wrong with guns in video games per se," the organization seems to be saying; "the problem is the way those guns are used by most of the big-money game industry in service of ultra-violent revenge fantasies. If only the game industry could use its immense influence and power to promote responsible, safe use of guns, as we have with our humble app, the world might be a different place!"

Games and their effects

As an argument, this sounds good, but it doesn't hold up. Games can and do affect people deeply every day, but they can't totally transform someone into a different being. Practice Range won't make a psychotic killer into a responsible gun owner any more than Black Ops 2 can turn a normal, law-abiding citizen into a murderous shooter. Games can have effects, but only if the player is already predisposed to be receptive to those effects. This is probably why violent crime has actually decreased markedly (PDF) since violent games rose to popularity in the early '90s, and why there seems to be no correlation between game sales and real gun violence internationally.

Despite the widespread media outrage over the release of Practice Range, even talking about the game may play right into the NRA's PR plan. That's because you can't talk about a game like this without bringing up the NRA's arguments that violent games and entertainment, rather than guns themselves, are the most important problems leading to real-world violence. That implicitly shifts the terms of the debate and puts the game industry on the defensive.

As Ian Bogost wrote in a recent Atlantic editorial, "The actual use, function, or content of games never has a place in political discussions about games. Instead, games are cogs in someone's favorite discourse machine... Once more, public opinion has been infected with the idea that video games have some predominant and necessary relationship to gun violence, rather than being a diverse and robust mass medium that is used for many different purposes, from leisure to exercise to business to education."

Whether you see Practice Range as outrageous or benign, some segments of the population already draw a permanent and immediate connection between "violent massacre" and "violent video games" in their heads. By giving more attention to that connection, Practice Range might actually be less damaging to the NRA's public image than it seems.

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