Kentucky governor blames violent video games, movies, not guns for school shootings

CLOSE The deadly shooting at a Parkland, Fla., high school is prompting renewed calls for more gun control. USA TODAY

Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin, center, offered a statement of support for the victims of the Marshall County High School shooting as family members became emotional behind him. They were at the Children’s Arts Center in Benton, Ky., on Jan. 26, 2018. (Photo: Sam Upshaw Jr., (Louisville) Courier Journal)

COVINGTON, Ky. — It's not the guns, it's the video games.

A day after a former student opened fire at a high school in Parkland, Fla., killing 17 people, Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin called for the nation to consider restrictions on violence in video games and movies, not guns.

"We need to have an honest conversation as to what should and should not be allowed in the United States as it relates to the things being put in the hands of our young people," Bevin said during a stop in Covington on Thursday.

What shouldn't be put in the hands of young people? Violent video games and movies, Bevin said.

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"I'm a big believer in the First Amendment and right to free speech, but there are certain things that are so graphic as it relates to violence, and things that are so pornographic on a whole another front that we allow to pass under the guise of free speech, which arguably are," Bevin said. "But there is zero redemptive value. There is zero upside to any of this being in the public domain, let alone in the minds and hands and homes of our young people."

Bevin is not alone in blaming video games.

U.S. Rep. Brian Mast, a Republican from Palm City, Fla., said in a national radio interview Friday morning that violent movies and video games are "the biggest pusher" of gun violence.

"When you look at Call of Duty, when you look at movies like John Wick, the societal impacts of people being desensitized to killing in ways different than how somebody on the battlefield was desensitized is troubling," said Mast on National Public Radio's Morning Edition.

Mast is an Army veteran who lost both legs in Afghanistan.

As the school shootings mount, so has pressure on politicians to strengthen gun control laws.

Three weeks earlier in Bevin's own state, a 15-year-old student at a high school in western Kentucky shot and killed two people and wounded 16.

Since taking office two years ago, Bevin often has lashed out at calls for gun control in the wake of shootings. "You can't regulate evil," Bevin tweeted in the wake of the Las Vegas shootings.

Why is he convinced that it's video games and not guns? Because when he went to school in New England, students would bring guns in for show-and-tell.

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"Sometimes they'd be in kids' lockers," Bevin said. "Nobody even thought about shooting other people with them. So it's not a gun problem."

Bevin claimed there were more guns per capita 50 to 100 years ago than now. A report commissioned by Congress in 2012 disputed that. The number of firearms per capita in the United States doubled since 1968, going from one firearm for every two people to one firearm for every person, according to the report performed by the Congressional Research Service.

Bevin, however, sees the spree of shootings as a cultural problem, not a firearm problem. And he sees violent entertainment as the root of that cultural problem.

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"Go back before any of this existed," Bevin said. "How many children walked into other schools and slaughtered other children? What more evidence do you need? The people who say there is no evidence are full of crap."

Many leading psychologists and researchers have found no evidence that virtual violence in the media translates into physical violence in the real world.

There are studies that say it does, but most of them are older and outdated, said Stetson University psychology professor Christopher Ferguson, who has studied violence in video games for more than a decade. His own research shows there's no causal connection between school shootings and people who play video games.

The American Psychological Association's 2015 policy statement says exposure to violent video games may make players more aggressive, but there's limited research addressing whether they cause people to commit acts of criminal violence.

“No single risk factor consistently leads a person to act aggressively or violently,” the report states. “Rather, it is the accumulation of risk factors that tends to lead to aggressive or violent behavior. The research reviewed here demonstrates that violent video game use is one such risk factor.”

Bevin wouldn't say what he thinks the threshold should be for too much violence in entertainment.

Contributing: Ali Schmitz, The (Stuart, Fla.) News. Follow Scott Wartman on Twitter: @ScottWartman

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