We like video games because they’re logical systems. Each action we perform has a result we can see, feel and understand. That’s appealing to us as humans — the fundamental fear in the heart of all of us is that there might be no pattern to anything, no particular reason for anything. Games give us the fantasy of perfect control.

We don’t deal well when terrible things happen and we can’t understand why. We try to find causes, patterns. We try to divine a primary cause, a cocktail of blame. What happened in Newtown is the sort of tragedy made unbearable by the fact that it makes no sense. I am loathe to talk about video games in the wake of something like that. But people will talk about video games; I heard people talking about them today. The day of the tragedy was the gun control minefield discussion. The day after, the appalling state of mental healthcare in America. Today it’s us (and if you are running Jack Thompson quotes today and I ever meet you in person, I am going to pull your card).

After every successive tragedy of this particular kind since Columbine, everyone has wanted to know if the shooter played video games, and it’s outraged us — the impossible idea that they train people to kill. The ludicrous idea that millions of people can play something for entertainment and when just one of those people goes wrong, it’s the video game’s fault.

I dislike the rush to attribute “fault” to any one force in the wake of this tragedy, but that’s what humans do. We want to understand how this happened, what tempest of factors combined precisely to birth this nightmare. In the chaos we target symptoms, we mount our defenses.

Obviously there is no causal relationship between Newtown and video games. But I have played the damn things since I was a very small child and only in the last few years have I, as an adult woman, begun to feel profoundly uncomfortable with their unapologetic celebration of gun violence. I kill things in games every day, and sometimes I even shoot people in the face, but even I have begun to’ve had enough. It feels dark.

Something is wrong with my country.

Any games writing that questions that right to bear virtual arms with joyful impunity is often accused of having some irrelevant political agenda, of ruining the fun, of refusing to accept the all-important fact it’s just a game. Like disassociating ourselves from any intellectual consideration of the content we consume or any emotional response to it is a basic requirement for participation in this community.

I can’t accept that.

The top-grossing games of all time are about marching in a straight line and shooting people. I’ve felt confused and sad about that for a few years now and I feel moreso this week. Our recent Hollywood gold-encrusted televised awards ceremony cheered the boyish joy in “shooting people in the face.” Nobody would say that if the VGAs aired tonight. Because they’d have the good sense to have a fucking think about what that means.

It’s as useless to “blame” video games for any violent act as it is to “blame” any other single factor in a massive socioeconomic ecosystem. Games do not “cause” things; we know that. But the entertainment we create and consume is no more and no less than a reflection of who we are.

I want us to shut our righteous mouths for one second and think about that. It’s the least we can do.