The new release, NRA: Practice Range has angered a number of people who have set up a partition to remove it from the App Store.
NRA: Practice Range is a virtual shooting gallery where players fire at targets by tapping the phone or tablet screen. It offers handguns and rifles for free but upgrading will land you an AK-47 assault rile or an MK-11 sniper rifle.
The game itself is tame requiring the player to fire only at targets, however its the nations concern over gun control and gun violence that has the people in an uproar. The online petition at SingOn.org is criticizing the release of the game with it being just one month after the Sandy Hook shooting.
Apple: The National Rifle Association’s new app “NRA: Practice Range” is an insult to the victims of gun violence, having been launched on the one month anniversary of the Sandy Hook shooting. Out of respect for the victims and to signal Apple’s support for common sense measures to help end gun violence, we call on you to rescind your approval of this shameless new product.
The group that began the petition is called Courage Campaign. It broke its original goal of 2,000 signatures earlier this week and has set a new goal of 4,000; currently it sits at 3,395. With the release of this plea, Apple has changed the description of NRA: Practice Range from ages four and up to those 12 and over for the games “frequent/intense realistic violence.” Calling this a “step in the right direction,” Courage Campaign still wants the app banned altogether and are labeling it “shameless, insensitive, and counterproductive, whether played by a 4-year-old or teenager.”
With the recent interest in the nations views and laws around gun violence and control the app is also seen as hypocritical with the NRA’s attack on video game violence. Weeks after Sandy Hook, NRA President Wayne Lapierre blamed the shootings on such games and called them “callous, corrupt, and corrupting shadow industry that sells, and sows, violence against its own people.”
President Obama is working on funding to study the outcome of video games and violence in the real-world.
For more thoughts on this matter check out the article the-creative-laziness-of-violence-in-video-games.
