You don’t need to invent a tie to gun violence to view the GTA series as particularly amoral and disturbing:

Playing as Trevor, you must select an instrument in turn from the array of sledgehammers, jump leads and pliers, and then perform a series of mini-games to use them.

If your assailant’s heart stops beating while being waterboarded, say, then you can give him an adrenaline shot and carry on.

There’s no way of skipping these sequences and I’ll admit to feeling repulsed when I played through them, Trevor’s matter-of-factness in the face of his victim’s distress adding to the degradation.

…

Trevor launches into a lengthy monologue on the ineffectiveness of torture as a means of procuring information, concluding that torture is just a means for torturers to get their kicks.

Whether that critique of state-sponsored torture and, presumably, American foreign policy post-9/11 justifies what went before is open to conjecture.

…

Given it’s entirely possible to overlook Trevor’s mea culpa, it’s feasible that a large number of people playing the game will miss the point as well - particularly when you must use all of the available torture implements to earn a gold medal on the mission.