The NRA’s Crazy Theory: School Shootings Are Caused by Music, Movies and Video Games. Here’s Why They’re Wrong.

Wait:  the NRA had an entire week to craft its response to the Newtown massacre and the best they could could come up with was to blame video games, movies and music?

Yep.  Their position remains “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” Spokesman Wayne LaPierre also insisted that the solution to school shootings is to have armed people the schools.

Other NRA solutions?  A national database of mentally ill people.  (But a national database of gun owners? Unthinkable!)  And a crackdown on depiction of violence in culture.  That means movies, TV, video games and music.  I quote:

Through vicious, violent video games with names like Bulletstorm, Grand Theft Auto, Mortal Kombat and Splatterhouse. And here’s one: it’s called Kindergarten Killers. It’s been online for 10 years. How come
my research department could find it and all of yours either couldn’t or didn’t want anyone to know you had found it?

Then there’s the blood-soaked slasher films like “American Psycho” and “Natural Born Killers” that are aired like propaganda loops on “Splatterdays” and every day, and a thousand music videos that portray life as a joke and murder as a way of life. And then they have the nerve to call it “entertainment.”

We’ve heard this song before.  Yet there is not one single study that says music, movies, TV and video games can be definitively connected to mass shootings.  Not one.

Take a look at this chart from the Washington Post that compares gun-related murders and video game consumption.  If there was a connection, South Korea and the Netherlands would be awash in blood.

Yes, we’ve heard of whackos who have been set off by a particular song or style of music.  But these people were unbalanced to begin with.  Anything might have set them off.  The Son of Sam killer thought he was being ordered to go on his rampage by a dog and we didn’t ban dogs, did we?

The NRA simply wants to deflect the conversation away from the real problem:  why does any citizenry in a democratic society need large magazine weapons capable of firing six bullets a second?  Why does the right to gun ownership have to be absolute?  Is that really what the Second Amendment says?

I grew up in a rural area where guns were a part of life, essential tools for out on the farm  They were used for hunting, protecting livestock and the occasional round of target practice at beer cans.  We had .22s, .303s and a couple of shotguns.  An M-16 didn’t seem necessary when you were out hunting praire chicken.

The NRA is nuts.  Their press conference was surreal and insulting.  (It wasn’t really a press conference because they refused to take questions.)  Let’s hope people begin to marginalize their craziness.