After talking about mental health, Fox & Friends hosts link mass shootings to video games and a lack of religion
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From the August 5 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends
PETE HEGSETH (GUEST CO-HOST): You talk about the signs or mental illness. Part of what we've learned is that the shooter who opened fire outside that bar in Dayton was known inside the school where he went for creating or having crafted a hit list against girls in his school. And some of the people he went to school with have reported there were fears that our school might be the kind of place he shoots up. So, when you look at these incidents as completely tragic, you can also look back and it's always 20/20 in hindsight. But what did people know and when could they have said something? In this case it appears he had shown the signs of mental illness quite early.
STEVE DOOCY (CO-HOST): Right. Exactly right. And that suggestion that the [president] -- where we just saw the president and he talked about mental health -- you got to figure that he is going to address that later today from the White House. But, you know, once again, it's like there were these warning signs that something was just wrong with that guy. The guy from Ohio, who wrote out the hit list and then also had a rape list as well.
AINSLEY EARHARDT (CO-HOST): Yes, of the girls.
DOOCY: Suspended from high school.
EARHARDT: Wrote it on the bathroom wall, apparently, and then the school had to go in lock down. The principal was interviewed and said, "All I will say [is] I will not deny that that didn't happen." And one of the kids that he went to school with said he glorified violence. He was an unpleasant person. He was not bullied, he said don't listen to those remarks, he was not bullied. The kid also wrote, on this suspect in Dayton, he wrote on his Twitter feed, "I'm going to hell and I'm not coming back." And he praised Satan.
DOOCY: Yeah.
HEGSETH: You add those impulses with video games, as we had the lieutenant governor of Texas on Fox & Friends yesterday, first shooter games would desensitize folks to the violence. Having been there in violent scenarios, when you understand the carnage and cost of human live, but when you see it through a screen and you don't relate to it in person, it makes it seem like it's more accessible. That, plus any number of other factors.
EARHARDT: There's so many factors. It could be the video games, it could be just not, I mean, maybe not -- I believe you grow up --
HEGSETH: Parenting.
EARHARDT: Parenting, you grow up, you go to church on Sundays. That teaches you, you know, to have fear of God and to have good morals. I mean, there's so many different factors, you don't know. I mean, maybe a child's born with something -- mental illness.
HEGSETH: Yep.
DOOCY: It does come back to that a lot.