The Right Questions

By: American Decency Staff

Donald Trump is asking the right questions.

In response to the two mass shootings which were committed between August 3 and 4, the president gave remarks expressing sorrow as well as calling for action.

As these types of shootings have tragically grown more common, the focus of the news and commentary media, as well as celebrities and social media virtue signalers (but I repeat myself), seems to have shifted from stories of the actual victims to cheering on one side or the other to score points in the gun-control debate.

It generates a lot more clicks (which translate to ad-space value) to report that Alyssa Milano demands Wal-mart stop selling guns, than it does to report that Alyssa Milano is mourning for the lives lost in these shootings. Reporting on Milano’s activism drives interaction on both the news agencies’ and Milano’s (or any other celebrity’s) pages. It makes her look like a hero to those who agree with her, advances the liberal agenda held by the majority of both Hollywood and news media, and it allows the media to maintain its façade of balance – because they’re not saying that Wal-mart shouldn’t carry guns, they just want you to know that Alyssa Milano said that. Unfortunately, it also fulfills the purpose of the shooter and it carries the insidious idea: if you shoot a bunch of people, the whole country, even Hollywood stars, will know your name.

“There is this element of wanting notoriety in death that you don't have in life," criminologist Jillian Peterson says at NPR.org. "So when one happens and it makes headlines and the names and pictures are everywhere and the whole world is talking about it, that becomes something that other people see as a possibility for themselves."

What’s been lost in the murk of celebrity statements and calls to action is the question that was on everyone’s minds when shootings happened before the Twitter era: what causes people to do this?

Do you remember the analysis of the Columbine shooters? We knew what music they listened to, what games they played, what movies they watched, what books they read. Did listening to Manson make them do this? Was it because they read Nietzche? Because they played Doom?

Now the first and usually last thing we do is check their social media for political affiliation.

In these cases, that pulls the mask of balance off the media even further. The El Paso shooter wanted to kill immigrants, so of course they say President Trump made him do that, because Trump wants a non-porous border.  But the Ohio shooter was an Elizabeth Warren superfan, yet they’re at a loss as to what his motive could have been.

So, as the weekend’s atrocities betray, violence is not married to one particular political agenda.

But the president’s statement got back to that original question: what is motivating these shooters? Guns are the tool, but certainly not the motivator.

The president rightly called for a culture shift, saying, “Cultural change is hard, but each of us can choose to build a culture that celebrates the inherent worth and dignity of every human life. That’s what we have to do.”

As a part of that culture change, he called for the elimination or reduction of violent video games. Now, in my opinion, that wouldn’t do much. For one thing, there’s not much evidence suggesting that violent games inspire mass shootings. If they were a cause of violence, you would expect there to be more violence in nations with higher video game usage than the U.S., but there is no such correlation. In fact there are several game franchises which are based on players running around shooting each other’s characters which raise millions of dollars for children’s hospitals and have thriving online communities which actually support and encourage one another in ways you don’t see often in the broader culture anymore – they are the opposite of a culture of death.

On Twitter recently, a commercial for an upcoming episode of Dr. Phil featuring footage of a kid with a video game addiction was being shared amongst gaming accounts. The child was cussing like a sailor and yelling at his mom, while she complained that he’s played as long as twenty hours a day and often plays and chats with other players much older than himself. The response among gamers, overwhelmingly was, “you’re the mom! Why would you let him do that?” It is parents’ job to make sure kids are staying out of trouble, as much online as off.  That, I think, is where some of the biggest changes need to happen.

A March 2018 Washington Times article quoted psychology expert Peter Langman, “Out of this sample of 56 school shooters, only 10 (18%) grew up in a stable home with both biological parents. In other words, 82% of the sample either grew up in dysfunctional families or without their parents together (for at least part of their lives).”

The same WP article cites Warren Farrell, co-author of The Boy Crisis, “’Today, there’s a purpose void, because you don’t need as many boys in war, and both girls and boys share the potential for being breadwinners’” he said. ‘When that purpose void combines with fatherlessness, boys don’t have a way of being guided to a more nuanced sense of purpose.’”

Boys need a purpose, being told by their culture that they don’t have one, in rare occasions frustrates already troubled boys to the point of lashing out at that culture with violence, particularly when there’s no father to give them guidance.

We don’t just need less video games, we need dads who will show their sons what it means to be a man, and that means we need CHRISTIAN dads, because the Creator is the One who gets to write that definition. Christ is the ultimate example of manhood, not killing out of frustration for being maligned and misunderstood, but laying down His life for those He loved.

Can you imagine how that would change our culture?

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