Video by Miles Le
Video games and violent entertainment media
There is no evidence that playing video games leads to perpetrating mass violence, and of course playing video games is popular in many other countries that don’t experience even close to the same levels of mass shootings or everyday gun violence as in the United States. But these facts haven’t stopped pro-gun conservative media figures -- or President Donald Trump -- from attempting to scapegoat shooting games and other violent media when faced with yet another horrific incident of gun violence. The discussion after the shootings in El Paso and Dayton were no exception.
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Fox & Friends co-host Pete Hegseth floated that “first-shooter games would desensitize folks to the violence.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 8/5/19]
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Sinclair Broadcast Group’s Sebastian Gorka implied that films featuring “violence and cruelty” could be somehow related to shootings, tweeting that actor Jamie Lee Curtis shouldn’t call for an assault weapons ban because she has acted in violent movies. [Twitter, 8/5/19]
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Right-wing commentator Matt Walsh tweeted about connections between the extremist message board 8chan and video game culture and said that video games “may be one factor of many.” [Twitter, 8/5/19]
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On Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures, host Maria Bartiromo prompted her guest, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), to discuss if “there [is] a conversation to be had” about “video games where they’re using videos of characters with these weapons.” McCarthy responded that he felt video games were “a problem for future generations and others” because they “dehumanize individuals.” [The Daily Beast, 8/4/19]
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On Fox News’ Fox & Friends Weekend, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick suggested that the federal government should “do something about the video game industry” following the El Paso shooting. [Fox News, Fox & Friends Weekend, 8/4/19]
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On Fox News’ The Ingraham Angle the next day, Patrick again pointed to video games and cruel social media comments as factors in an “evil” culture leading to mass shootings. [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 8/5/19]
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On Fox News, former White House press secretary Sean Spicer said, “Something in our society is allowing people to think that’s an OK way to end your life or to take somebody else’s,” asking, “Why are kids getting indoctrinated with video game messages, media, and entertainment that says it’s OK to do this?” [Fox News, Outnumbered, 8/6/19]
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Former NRATV host and current Fox News contributor Dan Bongino told the Fox & Friends hosts guns aren’t the problem because “there is something going on in our culture,” questioning, “Is it social media over social interaction? It is this disconnect? Is it the breakdown of our family? Is it something to do with entertainment choice? I think all of these things should be looked at.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 8/5/19]
Lack of prayer
Conservative media figures also attempted to turn away from a concrete conversation about access to firearms and potential policy changes to instead talk about vague cultural forces -- namely, a supposed decline in prayer and religious connection in public life. Of course, this subject has nothing to do with gun safety (aside from the same GOP figures predictably tweeting about thoughts and prayers after yet another mass shooting).
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Discussing possible causes of the shootings on Fox & Friends, co-host Ainsley Earhardt speculated, “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.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 8/5/19]
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The following day, Earhardt again brought up religion while discussing the Dayton shooting, asserting, “This is what happens when you have someone who doesn't fear the Lord, who doesn't fear God.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 8/6/19]
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On Fox News’ America’s Newsroom, contributor Mike Huckabee decried a supposed “loss of morality” and “disconnecting” from God as the “common denominator” behind mass shootings. [Fox News, America’s Newsroom, 8/5/19]
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Fox News favorite and Liberty University Dean Dave Brat attributed the rise of mass shootings to a lack of “Judeo-Christian tradition” in education and claimed that “we no longer teach kids in K-12 education … that other human beings have a soul.” [Fox News, The Daily Briefing with Dana Perino, 8/5/19]
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National Rifle Association board member Ken Blackwell posted a meme to his Facebook page that read: “The problem is not guns, it’s hearts without God, homes without discipline, schools without prayer, and courtrooms without justice.” [Media Matters, 8/5/19]
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Infowars host and conspiracy theorist Owen Shroyer tweeted that “we see sinister, unspeakable & unnecessary violence happen” because “we all sat by & watched morals decline, God demonized ... while sex, violence & drugs were glorified.” [Twitter, 8/5/19]
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During his Ingraham Angle appearance, Patrick also blamed the shootings in part on the separation of church and state, claiming, “We’ve kicked God out of school.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 8/5/19]
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Fox Nation host Tomi Lahren said, “Guns have been a part of this nation since its founding … so clearly there is something else wrong here.” She went on to claim the U.S. has a “youth mental health crisis likely caused by overmedication, absentee parents, and a culture that glorifies infamy and notoriety above God, family, and community.” [Fox Nation, Final Thoughts, 8/5/19]
Changing ideas of masculinity
Right-wing media also seized on perceived changes in social ideas about masculinity as somehow to blame for mass shooters. While the social isolation of men and boys -- and the forms of violence some perpetrate as a result of this toxic masculinity -- are real issues, that’s not what these conservative media figures talked about. Instead, they focused on outdated stereotypes and lamented the supposed demonization of men.
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On Fox, so-called men’s rights activist Warren Farrell claimed the majority of mass shooters are male because they are “dad-deprived” and “don’t have a male role models to channel their testosterone constructively.” He went on to suggest that fathers tend to be “much tougher on boundary enforcement” which allows boys to be “successful” and “not ashamed of themselves.” [Fox News, The Story with Martha McCallum, 8/5/19]
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The Daily Wire’s Andrew Klavan insisted “the future is always male ... because men do things first” before stating the Dayton and El Paso gunmen “are the wave of the future” unless we “stop demonizing” men. [The Daily Wire, The Andrew Klavan Show, 8/5/19]
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Fox News host Tucker Carlson said “young men” are “the real problem and every one of us knows it,” claiming that “mass shootings are just the final manifestation of the problem.” [Fox News, Tucker Carlson Tonight, 8/5/19]
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Fox News co-host Lisa Kennedy Montgomery said “boys are marginalized in this society” and “told that they are aggressive and more likely to assault people” which is “othering them into isolation.” [Fox News, Outnumbered, 8/6/19]
Abortion
The right-wing media echo chamber also took the opportunity to apply the same nebulous logic of blaming vague cultural or social changes related to religion and gender for mass shootings to cast abortion access as a motivating factor. Anti-choice media figures and activists suggested that widespread access to abortion -- which is a normal part of health care and can in fact be life-saving -- has created a cultural environment more permissive of mass killing. They also distracted from the need for gun violence prevention measures by trying to redirect focus to abortion access.
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Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh blamed abortion access for the mass shootings, saying, “You just cannot have abortion ... and have that not have some impact on the popular perception of the sanctity of life.” [Premiere Radio Networks, The Rush Limbaugh Show, 8/5/19]
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On The Ingraham Angle, Patrick also suggested that “the root cause” of mass shootings is a culture that’s “more anti-flag, more anti-God, more anti-family” and “a culture that no longer values life” because there have been “44 million abortions.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 8/5/19]
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Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, tweeted, “Abortionists are killing children. Shooters are killing strangers. Violent gangs and drug dealers are killing their communities. We are insane if we think we can stop the latter two and ignore the first. Either we promote the protection of innocent life, or we don’t.” [Twitter, 8/5/19]
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Daily Wire writer Ryan Saavedra warned others not to take claims by Democrats “that they care about people seriously” if they support gun safety laws but not anti-choice laws. [Twitter, 8/4/19]
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Anti-abortion activist Bryan Kemper tweeted that people need to “talk about protecting ALL life,” including “the 3,000 innocents killed by #abortion every day,” instead of just people killed by gun violence. [Twitter, 8/6/19]
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The anti-abortion group Operation Rescue put out a press release that offered condolences in the wake of the two mass shootings before pivoting to condemning “the use of violence to advance political causes,” including “the violence of abortion that brutally kills defenseless children in the womb.” [Operation Rescue, 8/5/19]
What about Chicago?
Others responded to the mass shootings by attempting to portray progressives as hypocritical for not discussing everyday gun violence in cities like Chicago, IL. Right-wing media figures have invoked Chicago specifically for years as a way to distract from conversations about actual policy changes and to falsely imply that solutions to reduce gun deaths cannot or should not address both exceptional mass shooting events and forms of everyday gun violence.
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Fox Nation hosts Diamond and Silk tweeted from their joint account that “you never hear Democrats talking about Gun control” following incidents of gun violence in Chicago or Baltimore, MD. [Twitter, 8/5/19]
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Turning Points USA contributor Ashley St. Clair tweeted: “Friendly reminder that 73 people were shot this week alone in Chicago. … Are those innocent lives not important enough for the Democrats?” [Twitter, 8/4/19]
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Fox News host Sean Hannity mentioned on his radio show the violence in cities like Chicago, Baltimore, New York City, and Detroit, MI, and said, “Guns don’t do this.” Instead, he claimed, the shootings happened because there’s an “insane underbelly of violence in society.” He went on to claim that we never heard about urban violence in those cities because “we’re numb to it if it doesn’t advance a political agenda.” [Premiere Radio Networks, The Sean Hannity Show, 8/5/19]
The press
A few right-wing media figures blamed the mainstream press for covering incidents of mass violence, suggesting that others in media might be encouraging mass gun violence incidents by reporting on them.
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Fox’s Greg Gutfeld blamed “the need for infamy, which is empowered by the media as they push the blame on people they hate.” [Fox News, The Five, 8/5/19]
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Pro-gun commentator and former NRATV personality Colion Noir posted a video in response to the El Paso shooting arguing that “mass shooters are in competition with each other, and the media is their promoter.” [YouTube, 8/5/19]
“Gun-free zones”
Conservative media often react to news of a mass shooting by pushing the debunked talking point that specific places where shootings take place may have been less safe because they were so-called “gun-free zones.” This tired rhetoric was minimally used in the aftermath of the El Paso and Dayton mass shootings since both occurred in public locations where civilians are allowed to carry firearms. However, this reality did not stop some in right-wing media from reflexively repeating the “gun-free zone” talking point anyway.
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Discredited gun violence researcher John Lott pushed the “gun-free zone” lie in an August 3 interview with Sinclair Broadcast Group, falsely suggesting that the El Paso shooting took place in an area where “the victims weren’t allowed to defend themselves” because they were prohibited from carrying firearms. [WJLA.com, 8/4/19; Media Matters, 7/8/19]
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While discussing the El Paso shooting on Fox & Friends, Hegseth falsely claimed that the mall and Walmart where the El Paso shooting transpired were both “gun-free zones where guns were banned.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 8/5/19]
Mental health
Predictably, and perhaps most frustratingly, conservative media figures pivoted to shallow discussions about mental health rather than focusing on gun safety measures. There’s abundant research that shows that people living with a mental illness are more likely to be victims rather than perpetrators of violent crimes. Rehashed and debunked talking points about medication and mental health serve only to stigmatize millions of Americans living with mental illness and mislead the public about the most effective solutions for combating gun violence.
Media Matters’ Cydney Hargis documented right-wing figures’ recycled “mental illness” talking points here.
Correction (8/21/19): The piece originally stated that John Lott suggested the locations of both the El Paso and Dayton shootings were “gun-free zones” during an August 4 interview. While the Sinclair station that conducted the interview characterized these comments as pertaining to both shootings, the comments appear to be about only the El Paso shooting. And while the interview was posted to the station's website on August 4, it aired on August 3. The piece has been updated to reflect these changes.
