Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has declared that he believes video games could be a cause of gun violence in America. Speaking to PBS (as spotted by GameSpot), the U.S. health secretary explained that the National Institutes of Health are looking into possible causes for gun violence, during which he named “video games and social media” as likely culprits. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. also believes there’s no connection between HIV and AIDS and that fluoride in the water causes IQ loss.
Blaming video games for real-world violence is about as old as video games themselves. Despite this, no reputable studies have ever shown any link between violent games and significant increases in violent behavior in those who play them, and there has never been a credible example of a school shooting directly influenced by playing a game. The causes of real-world violence are already incredibly well known: socioeconomic inequity, social service inequality, a lack of mental health support, and the widespread availability of guns without appropriate laws to restrict their use, among other things. These, however, are all areas unpopular with right-leaning governments, and as such other scapegoats have always been sought.
“The firearms question is a complex question,” RFK Jr. eventually managed to splutter out when PBS asked whether there was any discussion over access to firearms and children’s mental health. He then went on a deeply disturbing tangent about how school shootings only started in the 1990s, and in his day kids were encouraged to bring guns to school and nothing bad ever happened. This is, of course, entirely untrue. Given RFK steered things to the subject of schools, let’s look at that specifically: School shootings already frighteningly ubiquitous in the 1950s, and by the time RFK was in school in the 1960s, the United States saw 100 school shootings across the decade. The number for the 1990s was 123, so while worse, not enormously so. The horrific shooting at Columbine High School in 1999, where 16 students were murdered, certainly brought a lot of attention to school shootings because of its awful scale. But it wasn’t representative of a change in the decade, and it also wasn’t the start of a new era. In 2000, a still tragic total of six people died in school shootings across the entire year, and in 2001, five. It wouldn’t be until 2007 and the hideous Virginia Tech shootings that anything on that scale was seen again. And after this point, it started to become more common.
In the first decade of the 2000s, the total number of deaths in fact dropped to 87, and it was really from 2010 onward that the rate of school shootings began to rapidly escalate. 263 in the 2010s and already 216 in just the first five years of this decade. Deflecting to the ’90s is not only dishonest, but demonstrative of the Trump government’s (and many previous governments’) lack of interest in properly exploring the issues, at a time when the numbers of school shootings are now doubling every decade.
In the press conference, Kennedy makes a point that the left has been yelling for decades, not least following Michael Moore’s 1999 documentary Bowling for Columbine: that other countries have comparable levels of gun ownership, but where mass shootings are all but non-existent. He even cites that the U.S. has a mass shooting every 23 hours. These are figures Republicans often wish to deny, usually at the behest of the NRA, but Kennedy just comes out and says them. But then, with the crushing inevitability of a man who thinks vaccines cause autism and that Black people have stronger immune systems than white people, he followed it up with the most dangerous words imaginable.
“There are many, many things that happen [incoherent word-sounds] that can explain…one is…dependence on…psychiatric drugs,” said the man in charge of the nation’s health. Psychiatric drugs are, of course, in part a preventative measure against violent acts, and obviously in no way at all a cause. But he continues, “There could be a connection with video games, social media [awkward pause], a number of things, and we are looking at that.” He then switches back and says “we are doing studies now, or initiating studies, that look at the correlation and the connection—the potential connection—between over-medicating our kids and this violence. And these other possible co-founders [sic] as well.”
Of course, few people are going to be surprised at this point that Robert Kennedy would come out with a screed of unscientific, conspiratorial gibberish, but it doesn’t get any less frightening for its frequency. The man who recently said that his department was also looking into the dangers of airplane “chemtrails” is obviously an uninformed, deeply stupid person who has no interest in reality, let alone truth. But he’s also the United States Secretary of Health and Human Services, and as such is a lethal danger to all Americans. That lethality extends to deliberately ignoring the known causes of gun violence, to instead focus on ridiculously irrelevant nonsense, such that there is little to no hope of the situation improving, that situation being the deaths of children in schools at a rate of one school shooting every five days.
It’s very easy for a video games site to look overly defensive when it comes to claims about gaming and violence. However, it is my contention that we are the people who need to be most interested in this possibility, and as such I have followed the discussions and the studies on the subject for the last 25 years. If games are dangerous, I want to be the first person to know. But all rigorous science has shown either no connection, or in fact a (usually very slight) mitigating factor, making some less likely to act violently. (Not enough to get excited about, but enough to suggest the exact opposite is even more unlikely.)
As such, the constant use of “video games” as a scapegoat for issues caused by poverty, inequality, and a lack of mental health support has always been deeply troubling. The more politicians and people in power misdirect, point toward irrelevant factors, the more the real issues prevail, and the more dangerous the situation becomes. Lazily saying “video games” (or “rock-and-roll music” or “video nasties” or whatever the bogeyman du jour might be) is therefore extremely dangerous, even deadly.
What’s even more frightening here is that Kennedy is a man who not only repeats this tiresomely common refrain, but makes it so much worse by actively campaigning against the things that are helping: the provision of psychiatric support to children.
But then Kennedy is simultaneously spreading misinformation about trans healthcare, believes covid was “ethnically targeted” to not infect Ashkenazi Jews and the Chinese, and states that wifi causes “leaky brain.” The man is a dangerous fool in almost every regard.
