The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 311 - Why Mass Shooters Are Always Men

00:00:00.000 Today on the Matt Wall Show, we'll discuss the one commonality between all these mass shootings

00:00:04.200 that isn't discussed nearly enough, and that is that they're all men. I think we need to talk

00:00:08.640 about that. Also, President Trump says video games are part of the problem. Is he right,

00:00:12.860 though? We'll talk about that today on the Matt Wall Show.

00:00:20.180 So this was pretty inspiring. Caroline Rothstein is a feminist on Twitter,

00:00:25.380 and apparently she describes herself as an internationally touring writer, poet,

00:00:30.540 performer, and educator. And I guess this happened on one of her international tours where she was

00:00:34.980 performing and educating. And she tweeted this. She said, saying no thank you, I got it, to the

00:00:40.640 middle-aged white man on the airplane who offered and began to take my suitcase out of the overhead

00:00:45.080 compartment for me was a quickly calculated act of resistance. So she was resisting, resisting,

00:00:51.620 resisting, by declining a polite gesture from a man. Now this obviously, I mean, it goes without

00:01:00.680 saying. This is brave. This is courageous. This is stunning and beautiful. Honestly, I'm always so

00:01:05.800 grateful to feminists for this kind of stuff, because what feminists can do, and they have an

00:01:09.980 incredible knack for this, is they can sort of dig under what appears to be a very routine act of

00:01:14.400 kindness or courtesy, just a normal interaction between people. They can dig under that, and they can

00:01:19.220 discover underneath all of that persecution. They're very good at, they're like persecution

00:01:27.360 treasure hunters, where, you know, they don't even need a, they don't need an X on the map. They don't

00:01:32.520 need a metal detector. They'll find it. You know, you bury persecution under a stack of needles, they'll

00:01:38.600 find it. Like someone's being nice, right? And you and I, as idiots, we think, oh, that person's being

00:01:45.120 nice. But what feminists do, and this is really all they do, this is their whole mission in life, this is

00:01:49.620 their whole thing. They come in and they say, no, that wasn't nice. That was actually bad. Let me explain

00:01:56.560 why. Which is good for me, even as a man, because feminists say that when a man tries to help a woman

00:02:01.740 with her bags, or hold a door open, or whatever, he's really promoting the patriarchy, and he's being

00:02:06.740 patronizing. But the thing is, as a man, there are plenty of times when men have held the door open for

00:02:13.320 me, or if I'm on a plane, and you know, my bag is a few rows up, and I can't reach it. If there's a

00:02:19.140 guy standing there, there's plenty of times where he'll just grab the bag and hand it to me, right?

00:02:22.680 Just, here you go. But, and I always thought, okay, that's just normal courtesy, really normal thing to

00:02:30.080 do. What I'm learning is that that's really an act of dominance. So he's saying, what he's saying

00:02:38.160 audibly is, here, let me grab it for you. But what he's really saying is, back up, you puny weakling

00:02:44.540 with your twig arms. Let a real man handle this. And then he grabs it. Ugh, here you go.

00:02:51.500 See, I never, I have to remember to be offended in the future by that, because I never saw it that

00:02:57.900 way. So I'm so glad that feminists could enlighten me. All right, now, before we move on entirely from

00:03:05.200 the mass shootings over the weekend, I said yesterday that the country will probably have

00:03:08.740 forgotten about it by Thursday. It looks like maybe we need to move that timeline up to Wednesday

00:03:13.180 or today. I don't know. But before we have forgotten, which we always do, I think there's

00:03:18.920 more to be said on the subject. One main point in particular that somehow isn't discussed that often,

00:03:27.900 it's actually pretty amazing when you think about it, that we don't talk more, much, much more about

00:03:34.740 this point that I'm going to raise. And I'm not the first person to raise it, of course, but it should

00:03:40.560 be front and center in our minds. It should be maybe the main thing we talk about in relation to

00:03:46.640 these shootings. And that point is this, that nearly every single mass shooter in the history of the

00:03:54.020 country, and nearly all of the mass shooters who comprise the recent epidemic, the spike in mass

00:04:00.180 shootings over the past decade or so, almost all of them, with very, very, very rare exception,

00:04:07.660 are men. Young men, mostly. Again, with rare exception. The Las Vegas shooter was older,

00:04:15.200 was an older man, but he was older. Almost all of them are young men. And in fact, for this,

00:04:22.440 you could expand the definition of mass shooter to include, you know, drug violence, gang violence,

00:04:30.920 all the stuff that happens in the city, which of course is much more common than this other kind

00:04:34.760 of mass shooting, which itself is far more common than it should be. But you expand it and include

00:04:39.460 that, it's still, it's all young men. Almost all young men. I mean, for the sake of simplicity and

00:04:45.540 argument, I'm just going to say all men, because that's basically what it is. How is it that we

00:04:51.920 aren't focusing intently on that fact? How is it that we're talking about guns and all this other

00:04:56.240 stuff when nearly every mass shooter fits so neatly into the same demographic? Shouldn't we be discussing

00:05:02.580 that? I mean, imagine for a moment that the next, say, four mass shooters were women, all between the

00:05:11.200 ages of 18 and 22. Just imagine that for a second. Now, you can't imagine it because it would never

00:05:15.280 happen. But just imagine that the next four mass shooters are women. Well, after four, probably

00:05:21.780 after two of them, maybe even after one, we would be, it would be a crisis. We would be asking, you

00:05:28.860 know, we'd be saying, what's going on with our girls? How is this happening with our girls? What

00:05:32.420 are we doing that's resulting in girls acting this way? It would be a huge topic of conversation,

00:05:37.780 be the only thing we talked about really in relation to the mass shooting is the fact that these are

00:05:42.560 girls and what's going on with that. But when you have hundreds and hundreds, thousands, again,

00:05:47.440 if you count the mass shootings in the city, which for this, in this case, you should, thousands of

00:05:53.460 boys doing this and all we say is, well, okay, that's all right. I think that's wrong. And I think

00:06:00.680 we need to talk about, I want to talk about the gender factor of this and we will do that. But first,

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00:08:09.520 to learn more. Okay. So almost every mass shooter is a young man. Why is that? What's going on? Um,

00:08:18.420 I think that's a question that we should be asking. Um, well, it won't shock you to learn

00:08:26.700 that the first thing I'm going to point to in explaining why it's always young men doing this

00:08:32.980 is the thing that I mentioned yesterday, fatherlessness, broken homes, a disproportionate

00:08:38.200 number of these boys, especially in the inner city and especially among school shooters specifically,

00:08:42.720 um, don't have dads in the home. And, and even many that do have dads in the home, the dad is

00:08:50.660 emotionally or psychologically absent or worse, you know, or actively abusive. So the dad factor here

00:08:57.360 is unmistakable, but then the question arises, okay, if you, you know, there are just as many girls

00:09:03.920 who stands to reason, there are just as many girls who have, uh, living in fatherless homes as boys.

00:09:09.780 Why does it have this, uh, special impact on boys rather than girls? Why is that? Why are boys more

00:09:20.040 likely to go down this violent path? If their dad, for whatever reason, fails to be present,

00:09:25.740 fails to be active and engaged. Um, it's not enough to just point to fatherlessness and say,

00:09:31.320 well, there's the problem. I think the why really matters. And we need to talk about the why

00:09:36.620 as far as the why there are many, probably countless ways that a boy especially is affected

00:09:45.040 by not having his dad around. But let me point to three of the most obvious ones. Um, first

00:09:52.220 boys, as I'm sure you've noticed have a ton of aggression. Um, they, they have a ton of physical

00:10:01.220 energy. And so they need safe and healthy outlets for that aggression and for that, that, that energy.

00:10:08.280 They need it. Okay. Need. It's an actual need. It's not like it would be best if they had it. Oh,

00:10:13.780 gee, wouldn't it be nice? Um, no, it's an actual, real physical need they have. If the dad's not in

00:10:20.560 the picture, of course, there are things that a mother can do to compensate. It's not like,

00:10:24.640 you know, it's, it's hopeless and there's nothing you can do now. Um, and in fact, especially in,

00:10:29.780 in the cities, this is where, uh, sports become so important, you know, probably millions of,

00:10:36.760 of boys have been saved from a life of, of, uh, you know, of, of drug dealing and gang banging

00:10:42.420 by, uh, getting involved in, in football or basketball, uh, not just as an outlet for their

00:10:48.900 aggression, although it is that also, but then in the bargain, they also get access to, um, a football

00:10:54.640 coach who's going to be a male role model and authoritative, no nonsense, disciplined male role

00:10:59.600 model, which is indispensable, but there's still no replacing the advantage of having that male role

00:11:06.460 model actually in the home. And there are things that a father can do when it comes to giving their,

00:11:12.600 their son an outlet for energy and aggression that a mother, uh, can't do, or, or probably won't do,

00:11:18.760 uh, or that a son isn't going to look to the mother to do. Right. So for instance, um,

00:11:26.060 I wrestle with my boys all the time. It was one of the main things that I think a father needs to

00:11:30.860 do with his young boys is just kind of horse around with them, you know, rough housing and

00:11:35.780 things. Well, I'm able to do less of it now after the Achilles injury. So I've had to take a break

00:11:39.980 from it. Um, although sometimes my sons will still come in and just jump on it. Even when I, even when

00:11:44.580 I was laid up on the couch and I was in a cast like a day after surgery, my son ran up and just,

00:11:50.180 and basically just pile drive me. Um, because you know, that's, that's how he sees me. There's,

00:11:56.740 there's even, they even wrote a whole book on it. Hop on pop. I mean, it's an entire book

00:12:00.140 about, um, you know, uh, physically abusing your father. So, but I think that this is,

00:12:07.640 this is an all seriousness, something that, um, that fathers should need to be doing with their

00:12:15.320 sons to give them that outlet for aggression. My oldest son, well, I like, as I just mentioned,

00:12:22.200 but especially when I'm, when I'm able to walk, he'll just out of nowhere, sometimes just come

00:12:26.300 leaping from the couch or somewhere onto my back, like a spider monkey. And they just start

00:12:30.860 punching me in the shoulder. Now a boy isn't going to do that with his mom and probably shouldn't.

00:12:38.900 That's what fathers are for. Now the trouble comes in and this could happen even with a father

00:12:43.880 around. Like I said, just because a father is there doesn't mean that he's actually there,

00:12:47.360 but the trouble comes in when that energy and aggression is stifled. And unfortunately these

00:12:52.740 days, there are many ways we have gotten, we have innovated many ways to stifle that masculine

00:12:59.600 energy that boys have. Uh, well, for, for one thing, the pharmaceutical industry is, you know,

00:13:05.100 they make billions doing this so you can always drug them. You can shove chemicals into their bodies,

00:13:10.500 into their mouths, chemically lobotomize them, sedate them essentially, so that they're less

00:13:16.760 of a handful. And that's, and that's, look, I'm not saying that every single boy who's on some kind

00:13:23.300 of psychotropic drug is, uh, there may be cases where it's necessary or the right thing to do.

00:13:30.020 I can't, I'm not going to rule that out. I couldn't rule that out. But I think in so many cases,

00:13:34.980 in so many cases, this stuff is used just as a, as sedation, um, because the energy is, it's a hassle

00:13:44.200 to deal with, especially in school, but even at the home. And so parents say, look, I just, I don't

00:13:49.580 feel, I can't deal with this. I don't feel like dealing with it. The other form of sedation more

00:13:54.880 common is TV and video games and phones, the internet. Um, the problem is that, you know, boys

00:14:01.880 are so rambunctious, so energetic and sedating them with TV and video games is so easy. And so

00:14:09.300 on the surface, seemingly harmless that many parents resort to this, um, method way more often than they

00:14:17.540 should. I mean, we, we all, as parents, look, we've all, we've all had days at least where we rely on

00:14:23.280 the TV way more than we should. I've had days like that where you just have days where like, I just don't

00:14:27.740 feel like dealing with it. Just, just watch TV. Um, and every once in a while you have a day like

00:14:32.240 that, it's fine. Because I also believe as parents, you know, you need to be able to survive

00:14:37.420 psychologically and sometimes give yourself a break and you can't beat yourself up over that.

00:14:42.340 But when it becomes a way of life and this is all your kid does, uh, and becomes dependent upon it,

00:14:49.980 well, now that's, that's, that's a real issue because all of, especially for boys, all of that

00:14:55.760 energy and that aggression, that doesn't go away just because they're sitting there with a blank face,

00:15:01.580 a blank expression, staring at a TV, almost drooling, like, like they've been lobotomized.

00:15:07.040 Um, just because they're doing that, that doesn't mean that they've really been calmed down and that

00:15:11.860 energy has gone away. Uh, the energy is bottled up or converted into something else. And that's the

00:15:18.240 thing about energy. A physicist will tell you, you know, this is a different kind of energy they're

00:15:21.300 talking about, but, uh, they'll, this, the principle still holds energy doesn't go away. It doesn't

00:15:25.820 leave. It's there forever. It's just, it's converted into something else. Well, the male energy, I feel

00:15:33.340 like I'm sounding like Marianne Williamson. Now the, the energy of that connects all people next thing

00:15:39.220 you know, I'll be suggesting healing crystals as a solution. Um, but, but no, a boy's energy also

00:15:45.560 doesn't go away. It's stifled, it's bottled up and eventually it's converted into something else,

00:15:50.880 into emotional aggression, defiance, backtalk or worse. So that's where I think of a father comes

00:15:58.620 in giving that outlet for aggression. And, uh, and, and last thing I'll say about that, I keep saying

00:16:04.620 aggression, aggression in and of itself is not a bad thing. It's just what you do with it is the

00:16:13.920 question. And this is the other thing that we do in our society where we treat aggression as in and

00:16:19.440 of itself a bad thing. And if it's, if it's in and of itself a bad thing, then that means that there

00:16:24.200 is something fundamentally wrong with all of our boys because they all have that in them.

00:16:31.000 And if we're saying there's something that aggression is, is just wrong in every context,

00:16:35.240 what we're saying to our boys is there's something wrong with you. And so we're going to drug you or

00:16:39.780 we're going to put you in front of a TV until we, until that's been drained out of you or stifled

00:16:45.320 so much that we can't detect it anymore. And boys pick up on that also. So while we're sedating

00:16:50.980 them, while we are not giving them healthy outlets for their aggression, we're also telling them

00:16:54.960 there's something wrong with you. There's something wrong with you. There's something wrong with you.

00:16:58.140 And it seeps in after a while. The other thing that a father does, I think for a son is facilitate

00:17:03.480 risk-taking. And I think this, this is a, uh, an aspect that is, is not talk, talked about hardly

00:17:09.820 at all, but you know, kids want to take risks, boys and girls, but again, especially boys, you

00:17:16.520 know, boys want to, are especially inclined to take physical risks and where a father can come in is,

00:17:23.220 is helping to facilitate that risk-taking to show kids, their sons, how to take those physical risks

00:17:29.740 in a, in a, in a, you know, sort of controlled and safe environment. The other day I took, I was out

00:17:34.240 with my son and I let him, you know, very normal thing. I let him climb a tree, climbed it all the

00:17:39.040 way pretty much to the top. Now that's a risk. Okay. He's up, he's up, you know, 20 feet in the air.

00:17:44.820 If he were to fall from there, he could get very, very hurt. So it is definitely a risk, but I was

00:17:50.960 there. I saw the tree. I could see the limbs that he was on. I was kind of coaching him through. I'll grab

00:17:54.580 that limb. I could see that the limbs were sturdy. Okay. Um, I was also standing there. If he did fall,

00:17:59.140 I'd be able to catch him. Uh, so it's a control, it's a risk, but it's a controlled risk. And you

00:18:05.880 might say, well, why take any risks at all? If there's any chance that he falls and, and, you know,

00:18:09.660 breaks his leg or worse, why do it at all? Well, because this, first of all, I can't imagine,

00:18:14.880 you know, my son having a boyhood where that doesn't involve climbing trees. I just can't imagine

00:18:20.040 that. It is in fact worth the risk. Um, and also I know that if, if I'm not allowing him to take some

00:18:28.440 risks and if he doesn't feel comfortable taking risks around me, or if he's not even going to ask

00:18:35.680 me anymore, Hey daddy, can I do this or that? Because he knows I'm going to say no every time

00:18:39.660 to anything that's remotely risked. Well then, uh, he's not going to stop taking risks. He's just

00:18:45.540 going to take them when I'm not in view. That's what's going to happen. Or he'll stop taking risks

00:18:52.300 and then it will come out later. And that's where drug abuse, you know, alcohol, partying and

00:18:59.020 everything. I mean, these, these teenage boys that go out in their, in their, you know, parents' cars

00:19:04.800 and race down the street at 90 miles per hour. That is, that is uncontrolled, unsafe, unfacilitated

00:19:12.800 risk-taking. And that's the kind of risk-taking where people die. So, so that's where fathers come

00:19:20.300 in. And then finally, of course, and this kind of sums it up, this is the underlying thing that, um,

00:19:26.580 beyond, you know, healthy outlets of aggression, beyond risk-taking included in that, but also

00:19:32.960 beyond it, boys need their dads to show them what men do, what a man is, what the point of a man is,

00:19:43.520 what men are for. They, they need that example from their dad. I think what we've ended up with,

00:19:50.300 is, um, a situation where there are millions of boys out there who've never been shown how to be

00:19:58.080 men, don't know what a man is for, feel like their masculinity is a disease, have been drugged into,

00:20:06.900 uh, into, you know, non-existence almost, have spent cumulatively years of their life,

00:20:15.200 of their lives staring at screens, have never learned how to interact with people on a human-to-human

00:20:20.880 basis, have never learned how to take healthy risks, um, have never learned how to stick up for

00:20:26.680 themselves, how to defend themselves, other things like that, that, that dads are for. You know,

00:20:31.500 teaching your son how to throw a punch, that's something a dad should be doing, how to defend

00:20:35.820 themselves, encouraging them. You know, the dad is supposed to be the one, if your kid gets into a

00:20:40.120 fight at school, the dad is supposed to be the one that says, okay, who's, who, who took the first

00:20:43.480 swing? And if you find out that, oh, he swung at you first, you defended yourself, that's okay,

00:20:48.620 you're not in trouble with me. I mean, that's what a dad's supposed to be there for.

00:20:54.360 When, when all boys have is a sort of feminine influence. Now, not, not all women are like this,

00:20:59.520 but a mom is more likely to say, oh, you still don't, you still don't hit back. The mom is more

00:21:04.920 likely to, because she's, you know, she's, she's the feminine influence. She's more focused on the

00:21:11.800 fact that her son is hurting. He's got the black eye. That's what she's focused on. Where as the

00:21:17.280 father, you're, you know, you're worried about his physical pain, but you're, that's not the main

00:21:20.720 thing you're focused on. You want to know, did he swing first? Did you win? You know, that's going

00:21:24.320 to be one of your questions. Boy needs that also. He can't just have the feminine influence.

00:21:29.780 It's not healthy. All right. Now, so I think that's, that's part of it, but, and I have to

00:21:40.800 stipulate this. I shouldn't have to stipulate it, but I'm not, look, you could have a boy who grows

00:21:45.060 up with, there are many boys, many millions who grow up with no father in the house. They play a

00:21:51.500 lot of video games. They watch a lot of TV. They're on the drugs and they don't grow up to become mass

00:21:56.040 shooters. Okay. That's the vast majority of boys in that category are not going to grow up to become

00:22:00.240 mass shooters. Of course, because for that, for that extra dramatic step of becoming a killer,

00:22:07.600 um, there's, there's going to be a lot more needed, but boys are still being put at a disadvantage,

00:22:14.140 even if they don't end up, uh, as, as mass killers there, they are still going to end up

00:22:21.260 taking unhealthy risks in some form. They're still going to end up finding unhealthy, uh,

00:22:27.460 outlets for their aggression in some form. They're still going to end up confused about

00:22:31.440 who they are. And that is in some way going to come out. Okay. Now here's the point where, um,

00:22:41.320 I think probably most of the people listening or watching right now, you, you would probably agree

00:22:46.400 with most of what I just said. Here's the part where I lose a lot of you. All right. Um,

00:22:53.020 because I can never quit when I'm ahead. I want to, for a few minutes, home in on something that I

00:22:59.800 mentioned tangentially the past couple of days. I just mentioned it today and mentioned it yesterday.

00:23:05.140 And that is the video games specifically. Now it's my contention that media, our obsession with media,

00:23:12.260 the saturation of media has a harmful effect on ourselves and on our children. And, um, when we

00:23:23.360 raise our kids to be obsessed with all forms of media and they spend their lives staring at screens

00:23:27.680 that has a certain effect on them. They are influenced by that. They are influenced by what

00:23:32.320 they see on the screen. They are influenced by the media they consume. I don't think that video

00:23:38.600 games are an exception to that rule. I don't think they're special. Okay. Now I also don't think

00:23:45.580 that they're the sole culprit. I don't think that they're a special case. I just don't think they're

00:23:50.120 an exception. So I'm making the statement about media in general, media influences people. If you,

00:23:56.620 if, if a kid is raised on this stuff, if it's all he does, that's going to hurt him. It's going to

00:24:00.600 influence them in a bad way. That's my point. And yeah, are video games part of that? Of course they are.

00:24:05.660 And they're a part that, that should be discussed. The problem is that we, we, we've got all these

00:24:12.000 boys and young men obsessed with media, obsessed with the screen. And we all agree that that's a

00:24:15.820 problem. I, you know, you're not going to find very many people say, ah, yeah, whatever. Just let

00:24:18.720 them watch as much as I want. Um, but a lot of people, because they themselves enjoy watching video

00:24:25.480 games and they take the games very seriously and they're very defensive and protective about it.

00:24:31.900 Um, so a lot of those people, they want, they, they do want video games to be an exception

00:24:37.500 so that we can talk about the ill effects of media. We can talk about the influence of, of, uh, TV and

00:24:43.240 movies and the internet and all that, but we can't talk about the very form of media that many kids

00:24:48.900 spend hours a day consuming. So what you have are a lot of gamers. I talk to these people all the time.

00:24:56.040 Anytime this subject comes up, their attitude appears to be sure. Any, yeah, I agree. Kids

00:25:01.760 are consuming too much media. I agree. It influences them. Um, but that one form of media that many

00:25:07.820 young boys spend out, spend the most of their time consuming, you know, that, that you'll leave

00:25:12.060 alone. That's a sacred cow. We don't talk about that. We don't mention that that's fine. That's

00:25:16.280 harmless. Let's focus on all these other forms of media. Even if, even if the kids are using that less

00:25:21.520 where, where video games become this untouchable thing, it's, it's, it's absurd. I mean, it's

00:25:29.640 childish. It's unreasonable. The attitude that a lot of people have is that you, with video games,

00:25:38.660 you cannot criticize them at all. I'm not exaggerating. That is clearly the attitude a lot

00:25:44.760 of gamers have. They, they will not listen to any criticism. None. It's, it's, it's again,

00:25:52.440 unreasonable. I look, yeah, I don't, you could say it's easy for me to say. I don't play video

00:25:56.020 games. That's right. I am on the internet a lot. I make my living on the internet. I am an internet

00:26:02.160 personality. Uh, I'm, I'm afraid to say, yet I criticize the internet all the time. I did an entire

00:26:07.880 show on it yesterday where it was one of the, it was one of the main things I pointed to as a

00:26:12.480 potential, um, uh, culprit in, in, you know, in, in, in creating an environment where you have mass

00:26:17.380 shooters. Yet I'm on the internet and I, it's, it's my job to be on the internet. So I am, you know,

00:26:22.820 just because I use something and it's important to me in many ways, it's important to me. It's,

00:26:28.980 I mean, my, my family depends on it. That doesn't mean I'm going, I'm going to suggest that it should

00:26:32.780 be immune from criticism. All I'm asking is if you're a gamer, I mean, stop pretending just because

00:26:37.480 you like it, that we, that there's no criticism that could possibly be offered of it. It's, it's,

00:26:43.100 it's not fair. And what you're doing is you're, you're shutting down the potential to have a very

00:26:48.560 worthwhile and valuable conversation. If, when you have kids spending hours of debt a day doing

00:26:55.660 anything, we should look at what that thing is and inspect what the, um, influences of it might be.

00:27:05.300 I mean, of course we should do that. President Trump yesterday pointed a finger, not the finger,

00:27:11.600 not all of the fingers. He pointed one little finger at, uh, at video games very briefly.

00:27:16.520 He's gotten a ton of blowback for it, even from his fans. This, this is, this is what a sacred cow

00:27:21.060 video games are that president Trump famously, uh, I mean, he's the one who said he could shoot

00:27:26.480 someone on fifth Avenue and his, and his fans would still like him. That's probably true. You know,

00:27:31.020 he can say whatever he wants and his, his, his most hardcore supporters are going to go in line

00:27:36.060 with him. Yesterday. I saw people who I've never, ever, ever seen criticize Trump over anything.

00:27:43.940 All of a sudden now they've turned on him because of video games. That's the one thing he's not,

00:27:48.820 that's where they draw the line. You can say anything else you want. If you touch video games,

00:27:53.060 uh, now we've got issues. So here's what Trump had to say. Watch this.

00:27:57.100 We must recognize that the internet has provided a dangerous avenue to radicalize,

00:28:04.540 disturb minds and perform demented acts. We must shine light on the dark recesses of the internet

00:28:12.820 and stop mass murders before they start. The internet likewise is used for human trafficking,

00:28:20.740 illegal drug distribution, and so many other heinous crimes. The perils of the internet and social media

00:28:29.340 cannot be ignored and they will not be ignored. We must stop the glorification of violence in our

00:28:37.940 society. This includes the gruesome and grisly video games that are now commonplace. It is too easy

00:28:46.220 today for troubled youth to surround themselves with a culture that celebrates violence. We must stop

00:28:54.240 or substantially reduce this and it has to begin immediately. Okay, what's his point? Well, just that

00:29:02.360 kids are influenced by what they see. If they spend hours a day playing violent video games, they'll

00:29:06.860 probably be influenced by that. Will it cause them to commit a shooting? No. Will it make them? No.

00:29:13.480 Will it hijack their brains and turn them into, you know, hypnotize them where their eyes become

00:29:18.540 little squiggly circles and, you know, like in the cartoons? No. No one is suggesting that. It's just

00:29:24.340 an influence. One influence of many, but an important one to look at. Gamers, what gamers like to do is

00:29:32.340 they like to straw man this argument. They say things like, hey, I played Super Mario World when I was a

00:29:36.500 kid and, you know, it didn't make me eat shrooms and jump into drainage pipes. Okay, obviously. Hey,

00:29:43.380 come on. Don't, don't waste my time. And please, if you're watching this right now, you're listening,

00:29:48.260 please don't waste my time with that kind of stuff in the comments. Nobody is saying that. That's not,

00:29:54.140 you know that nobody is saying that. You know that's a straw man. Of course no one is arguing that there is

00:29:59.720 that direct of a correlation between playing video games and, and, you know, committing violence or

00:30:05.540 reckless acts. It's, it's not a one-to-one connection, but let me ask you, if your kid was

00:30:13.260 watching Peppa the pig and Peppa all of a sudden pulled out a bong, okay, and started ripping bong

00:30:20.580 hits, would you, how would you feel about that? Would you, would you like it? Would you be fine with it?

00:30:27.100 Would you say, ah, it doesn't matter. What does she got? What, just because she sees that she's

00:30:31.880 going to run out and find a drug dealer and get some weed? No, of course that's not what's going

00:30:37.000 to happen, but you probably wouldn't be a fan of Peppa the pig doing, ripping bong hits or, or Mickey

00:30:44.400 Mouse shooting heroin. You probably wouldn't be a fan of that because you realize that even though

00:30:50.380 it's, it's, it's not going to directly right this minute, turn your kid into a heroin addict or a

00:30:55.940 Godhead, it will influence them. It will have the effect of, especially over time, okay, if all

00:31:02.780 cartoon characters started acting this way, if they all became druggies, it's going to have the

00:31:06.120 effect of influencing, desensitizing, normalizing these things. And so you know that we all understand

00:31:13.740 that. We all understand that. Have you noticed that teens today don't smoke cigarettes like they

00:31:19.380 used to? Now they smoke other things because as I've said before, I think, I mean, it's kind of a

00:31:23.880 losing battle. It's just, they're going to find something, whether it's vaping, but, um, they

00:31:29.020 don't smoke cigarettes anymore, nearly as much as they used to. Have you also noticed that characters

00:31:34.740 on TV don't smoke cigarettes like they used to? I mean, if you go back and you watch TV shows from

00:31:40.460 the fifties and sixties, everybody smokes cigarettes. Every character is smoking all the time. Um, they

00:31:46.320 don't anymore nearly as much and kids don't smoke as much. Is you think that's a coincidence? Is that

00:31:51.800 some kind of like, there's, Oh, well, you know, I mean, who knows? There's no correlation. No, it's not a

00:31:56.780 coincidence. And it's not as though any kid had ever said, Oh, I saw this particular character smoking

00:32:02.460 cigarettes. So I am going to run out and get a cigarette. No, it's just over time when your

00:32:07.380 environment is saturated with these kinds of images, it just has an effect of desensitizing,

00:32:13.200 normalizing, or even making whatever the activity is seem cool. Okay. Um, and, and the cigarette

00:32:20.400 companies knew that that's why for, for a long time, they were paying these, uh, TV shows to have

00:32:26.340 the character smoke. The marketing industry in general has made billions of dollars on the premise

00:32:34.900 that kids are influenced by media. People are influenced by the stuff they see on screen. Kids

00:32:41.660 or not. You know, if that wasn't true, the marketing industry wouldn't exist.

00:32:49.120 And instead, rather, it doesn't just exist. It runs our lives because we're being marketed to so

00:32:56.300 much. I'm not singling video games out. I'm just saying they aren't an exception. They are an

00:33:03.600 influence too. Okay. I'm doing the opposite of singling them out. It's the gamers. Some of them,

00:33:08.340 many of them who want to single out video games as a form of media that somehow has no influence at

00:33:14.120 all. No detrimental effect. None. It's ridiculous. Or at least it's a fantastic claim. See,

00:33:21.140 we, um, we know from our experience as, as human beings and from common sense that media affects

00:33:27.420 people. It influences people. Um, it drives people certain directions. It normalizes it.

00:33:33.260 We know all of that. No, but no person in the right mind denies that as a general principle.

00:33:38.840 Now, if you claim that video games are somehow an exception to that rule, even though it's a form

00:33:45.920 of media that kids are consuming hours a day and not only consuming, but actually participating in,

00:33:51.080 I mean, they have, they have a more direct participatory relationship with the media that

00:33:55.260 they're consuming as video games. If you're telling me that that form of media somehow is an exception

00:33:59.480 completely from this, that is a fantastic claim and you need fantastic, extraordinary evidence to

00:34:06.400 prove it. If you don't have it, then we're going to revert back to the rather safe and logical

00:34:12.700 assumption that yes, it is influencing kids to some extent, to some degree, in some way. Now, um,

00:34:20.440 uh, you know, what you will find, uh, in fact, is that a lot of, uh, defenders of video games

00:34:30.520 will actually claim that they can prove that, that video games don't influence kids and don't

00:34:36.980 have any link at all to violence. They, I mean, you'll see this claim. I'm sure there are people

00:34:40.520 making this claim right now, as we speak in the comment section that are saying, no, it's been

00:34:44.440 debunked. It's been proven. There's no link, no link. I've heard this so many times. I've heard

00:34:49.440 studies, studies have disproven the link. I've even heard people say, I've heard people say that

00:34:56.060 every study, I've seen this claim many times, every study done has disproven the link. That's

00:35:01.580 what I've heard. It's nonsense. It is total nonsense. If you're making that claim, you don't

00:35:06.920 know what you're talking about. And you know that you don't know what you're talking about

00:35:09.740 because you know, you've done no research. Because if you have done any research, you would know how

00:35:14.420 ridiculous that claim is. It's not true. It just isn't. I'm sorry. Um, it is true that some studies,

00:35:22.260 some have failed to establish a link between aggressive behavior and video games. That is

00:35:28.040 not the same thing as proving that there is no link. Failing to establish a link is not the same

00:35:34.940 as disproving the link. There's a very clear distinction there. There are many things in life

00:35:41.000 that are probably linked, that probably have some relationship, but you also probably won't be

00:35:47.840 able to prove the link. We just know it intuitively. Okay. Um, now if you actually read some of these

00:35:55.600 studies and I've read them, okay, people send me studies. I've read all the studies. I actually read

00:36:00.300 this. I don't just look at it. I read the studies, read the methodology, read the results, read the

00:36:05.020 conclusions. What you're going to find is that these studies disproving the link, they're, they're all,

00:36:11.160 they're all laughable. They're not just, they're, they're not just illegitimate. They're,

00:36:16.100 they're actually laughable. If you read the methodology, there's one of the, um, uh, uh,

00:36:22.400 one, one study that, uh, was sent to me and is touted as, as, you know, maybe the most, um,

00:36:28.760 conclusive and, and, and sort of far reaching, uh, study that's been done on it. Well, and it failed

00:36:35.540 to establish a link, didn't disprove. Now the scientists who do these studies, they would never

00:36:39.520 actually themselves claim that they've disproven anything, uh, because they're, they're going to be a

00:36:43.500 lot more careful in their wording. It's the media in their headlines. It will say link disproven,

00:36:48.320 even though that's not what happened. But, um, in this one particular study, just as an example,

00:36:51.640 uh, it, it relied on self-reported data from gamers themselves and their parents. And what you're

00:37:01.100 going to find is many of these studies are relying on self-reported data from one of those groups,

00:37:05.560 either the gamers or the parents or both. This study was both. Okay. So gamers basically are asked,

00:37:13.500 whether they are violent or have violent thoughts. And then, and then, uh, and then the parents are

00:37:18.740 asked whether their kids are violence. Do you see the problem here? You're asking gamers to go

00:37:23.420 against their own interests, to criticize themselves and admit to a negative thing about

00:37:28.420 themselves and about their favorite hobby. Shockingly, they don't do it. I mean, wow,

00:37:34.360 debunked. Whoa, science folks. Amazing. Can you believe that people who love a certain hobby

00:37:40.920 aren't necessarily eager to admit that it has any influence, uh, negative influence on them,

00:37:45.660 on them at all? Amazing. I just, I can't believe it. Well, there you go. Matter is settled folks.

00:37:52.400 Or you're asking parents to admit that their own kids are violent and that their own parenting is

00:37:58.560 flawed. You're asking parents to admit, yeah, I let my kid play violent video games all the time. And,

00:38:02.620 you know, honestly, I'm seeing a lot of aggression in him, but I'm letting him do it anyway.

00:38:05.180 Parents aren't going to admit that. Parents are famously, um, uh, infamously hesitant to, to

00:38:13.140 admit that their kids have any flaws or that their parenting is flawed. Ask any teacher about this

00:38:19.000 and they'll tell you. Ask any teacher how, how eager parents are to, uh, fess up or even to acknowledge,

00:38:26.360 to accept that their kids have, uh, have any flaws. So, I mean, if this is the kind of study that

00:38:31.760 you think proves anything, it's, it's, it's, uh, come on, come on. Um, I've also seen studies that

00:38:39.640 attempt to video, vindicate video games by drawing a one-to-one comparison between the crime rate in

00:38:45.060 a particular area and the video games that have been sold in that area. You know, I saw one study

00:38:49.980 that showed, oh, did you know that, you know, when a certain video game goes on sale, uh, you know,

00:38:54.700 not only is there less crime in the air, but, but, or not only is there, is, is there not an increase in

00:38:59.420 crime, but there's less crime. Well, yeah, because ever, because all the kids are home playing the

00:39:03.780 video game for right now, but no one is claiming that it's a one-to-one direct link. No one is

00:39:10.000 saying that kids are playing the video games and they're putting the video game down and going out

00:39:14.080 like a zombie and killing each other because of what they just saw. Nobody is saying that you're

00:39:18.880 disproving a claim that nobody on earth has made. Um, another study had kids play video games

00:39:26.800 and then they came in and you looked at a brain scan to analyze their empathy as if empathy can

00:39:33.820 be measured in a brain scan. Like you can just look at someone's up. Well, okay. They have 80%

00:39:38.980 empathy. Empathy is looking good, folks. I saw it in the brain scan. Okay. If any scientist claims

00:39:45.060 that they can conclusively determine the link between your neurological activity and your empathy,

00:39:50.480 they're lying because they know they can't. It's what it's, it's one of the great mysteries

00:39:55.700 in science right now is the nature of consciousness. Um, and as again, as if there's this direct link,

00:40:03.880 as if, as if your, your empathy, which you can't measure, but even if you could, as if your, your

00:40:08.700 empathy dwindles at direct proportion to the amount of time you spend playing violent video games.

00:40:13.720 No one is saying that. Okay. It's just, I think what we discover is that studies are insufficient.

00:40:23.120 Okay. You, you, you, when you're trying to analyze why people do something, especially why they commit

00:40:31.000 an act of, of egregious evil, you're not going to be able to just do a study and say, well, there it is

00:40:38.000 solved it. People are much more complicated than that. And, and, and what motivates people to act

00:40:44.860 the way they act is, is a much more complex question. Okay. There are so many things that

00:40:51.480 you do on a daily basis. So many choices that you make, which hopefully don't include killing people,

00:40:55.960 but you make a million choices in a day. All of those choices have been influenced by any number

00:41:01.880 of factors. And we can use our intuition and our common sense to kind of figure out what some of

00:41:06.820 those factors might be, but, but you could never, there's, there's no survey you could fill out

00:41:12.520 that would spell it out like a pie chart with exact mathematical values. It just does, people don't

00:41:18.220 work that way, which is why. Okay. I am not going to try to prove my point by, by gesturing towards

00:41:26.920 the studies that have found a link between aggression and, uh, and video games. And those studies have been

00:41:32.600 done. There are many studies that have found the American Academy of Pediatrics, which

00:41:36.800 I think is a, you know, a pretty good authority when it comes to, to these sorts of issues.

00:41:41.020 Uh, the American Academy of Pediatrics, they, according to them, according to their report,

00:41:45.800 there have been 3,500 studies done about the effects of violent media on kids, including video

00:41:52.900 games. And all but 18 of them have found a link. Okay. So this claim that there are no studies is,

00:42:00.320 it's just such a ridiculous lie. It could not be more 3,500. That isn't none. That's

00:42:06.700 3,500. Um, and they found that all but 18 found a link. Okay. And, and not all those studies were

00:42:13.300 focusing on video games. Some of them were. Um, but the, the point is we have a, you know, it,

00:42:17.880 it appears based on all these studies that violent media does influence people and it influences kids.

00:42:24.920 That's, that's, that's what it appears, but I'm not even, that's, you know, I'm, I'm not going to try

00:42:29.580 to win by saying I have more studies than you do, even though I do. Um, but that's, that's not my

00:42:34.660 point. Uh, it's just, this is, it's, it's a basic insight of human nature that people are influenced by

00:42:43.500 the images they spend hours a day consuming. Here's the real point. Okay. The real problem or potential

00:42:53.100 problem, um, with video games, it isn't, we're focusing on the violence. It isn't really the

00:43:00.340 violence. I do think the violence in video games, uh, like, like violence in movies and like violence

00:43:04.900 on TV and like violence in YouTube videos and, and, and all that. I do think that has a desensitizing

00:43:10.560 effect. Of course it does. Obviously it does. The human mind is something that can be conditioned

00:43:16.180 certain ways. This is, this is, this is, this is a, again, a fact of human nature. And if you're

00:43:22.240 exposed to certain images a lot, even if the images are fake, you become desensitized to those images

00:43:29.120 and concepts. This is one of the reasons why kids are very much damaged psychologically by their early

00:43:37.200 exposure to pornography. Yeah, it's, uh, it's, it's, it's not happening in the real world. Okay. But,

00:43:43.160 um, kids psychologically respond to exposure to graphic pornography in a similar way

00:43:51.220 that they respond to sexual abuse. What you're going to find psychologically in a sexual abuse

00:43:57.720 victim is something very similar to what you find in a, you know, say a 10 year old kid has been

00:44:01.520 exposed to graphic pornography. Um, it's not the same thing exactly, but it has a similar effect

00:44:09.060 on you psychologically because that's just how we are. I mean, we, we look at images on a screen

00:44:14.480 and we internalize them. That's the whole reason why, um, we enjoy watching movies in the first place.

00:44:22.020 Okay. Why do you even like watching a movie? You know that it's fake. You know that they're just

00:44:26.460 pretending yet in the moment when you sort of, um, uh, hand yourself over to the, to this, you kind of

00:44:35.720 give yourself to this, to the story that's being told. Um, and you kind of get lost in it and you do

00:44:42.340 in a way sort of forget that it's fake. That's the only way you can enjoy it. Right? So that shows

00:44:48.260 again that, that, uh, images have a, have a real effect on us. Um, but aside from that, the real issue

00:44:55.700 potentially with video games is that they are isolating. They breed isolation. Forget about the

00:45:02.360 vinyls. I don't, I don't care. A kid never plays any violent video games. Forget about that.

00:45:06.680 The fact is when you have kids, rather than running around outside, rather than interacting

00:45:11.340 on a person to person basis, rather than, um, you know, rather than going out and, and, and like we

00:45:17.420 talked about taking risks and getting their aggression out and climbing trees and going on

00:45:20.760 adventures, rather than that, they're inside experiencing life in virtual reality. That is

00:45:25.680 unhealthy. That is not a recipe for raising a well-adjusted person. So the real danger of video

00:45:32.080 games is that a kid obsessed with them will be isolated alone inside cut off. That's the real

00:45:39.760 danger. And in that case, it, it, it doesn't even matter if they're violent. Just like if you have

00:45:44.660 a kid who plays video games sparingly and every once in a while plays a violent video game, I I'm

00:45:50.060 sure it probably has no effect, basically no effect, a negligible effect. Um, on the other hand, if you

00:45:56.260 have a kid who never plays violent video games, but he plays seven hours of video games a day and never

00:46:00.420 goes outside, he's going to be destroyed by that the same way he would be. If he just watched seven

00:46:05.820 hours of TV a day, or if he just stared at his phone for seven hours a day, which a lot of people

00:46:09.120 do, a lot of us are being destroyed by this, uh, mutated by it psychologically, emotionally, spiritually.

00:46:16.800 Um, now you know, there are people try to vindicate video games by, by pointing out that, um, video

00:46:27.080 games are very popular in Asia, yet mass shootings don't happen. They're true enough. And if I or

00:46:32.400 anyone else was claiming that video games directly cause violence in a one-to-one relationship,

00:46:38.360 which I'm not, but if I was making that point, then yeah, the point about Asia would blow my case

00:46:44.080 out of the water. And you're right. Absolutely. But actually what I'm claiming is that video games

00:46:50.220 are a form of media, number one, and media, number two influences human behavior. And also number three,

00:46:56.940 video games breed isolation and can be unhealthy in large doses. That's my claim. Okay. And as it

00:47:03.100 happens in Asia, people literally play video games for days on end until they keel over dead. They play

00:47:10.220 video games to death. They starve themselves while playing video games in Asia. And this is not just

00:47:15.540 one case. This is a trend over there. Uh, what you have in Asia and a lot of these Asian countries,

00:47:21.580 um, especially in the urban centers, uh, you have a young generation that has retreated from human life

00:47:29.820 almost completely. And now they, they live their lives in virtual reality through video games and

00:47:36.180 computer games. And somehow what somehow you're saying that proves that video games aren't harmful.

00:47:41.980 I mean, pointing to Asia as proof that video games aren't harmful is like pointing to Ireland

00:47:48.000 or Russia as proof that alcohol is no big deal. That's the worst place you could possibly look.

00:47:54.500 That's it. That's exactly. People say, what about Asia? Yeah, that's my point. Exactly. Look at what's

00:48:00.380 happening with the youth over there. Look at what happened with the young generations. Like they're not even,

00:48:03.600 they've just collapsed into, they've, they've rejected reality. They just, they live every,

00:48:10.680 when you've got people going to these internet cafes and playing video games for 36 hours,

00:48:16.240 that shows that video games influence people and they can influence it in a negative way.

00:48:22.780 They breed isolation or they can, um, and being overexposed to them has, has negative consequences.

00:48:28.620 Now, in order for a mass shooting to be one of the potential, um, things that can be linked in some

00:48:40.900 way with video games in order for, you need a lot of other ingredients. Okay. It's not just going to

00:48:45.200 be video games. Um, so a mass shooter who, who, who spent hours a day playing violent video games,

00:48:50.260 what I'm saying is I don't think those facts are unrelated. And I think the claim that they're

00:48:54.600 unrelated is absurd on its face and not even worth taking seriously. And I have a hard time believing

00:49:01.040 that anyone actually believes that it's completely unrelated, but it's obviously not anywhere close

00:49:06.500 to the only factor. And there were so many other things that had to go into it, but the video games

00:49:11.800 didn't help certainly. And, um, and they probably did in, in, in some small way help to push

00:49:19.460 towards this result. But there were a lot of other things. I mentioned fatherlessness. Okay. That's

00:49:25.040 for a lot of these, uh, cases, the fatherlessness was a much bigger effect, but they all compound.

00:49:31.080 I talked yesterday about the, about the snowball effect and it's just one thing after another,

00:49:35.560 after another, after another, and eventually you have an avalanche. Um, are video games part of

00:49:40.540 the avalanche? Yes. Is internet part? Yes. TV violence in movies. Yes, yes, yes. Fatherlessness.

00:49:47.400 That's a huge part. Uh, lack of spiritual grounding, huge part problems in education,

00:49:52.400 another big one, all of this stuff. All I'm saying to you is don't try to absolve video games

00:49:58.040 completely. And, and, you know, agree with me on all of these factors, but then try to pretend

00:50:02.380 that video games somehow are, are, uh, an exception. It just, it's not only laughably ridiculous, but it,

00:50:11.380 we are stopping ourselves from making small improvements. And the thing about video games,

00:50:19.300 people always say, well, okay, even if all this is true, what are we going to do about it?

00:50:23.260 Well, with something like video games or internet usage, uh, with a lot of these things, I don't know

00:50:28.300 what we can do. Um, uh, and I certainly, I'm not looking to the government to solve the problem,

00:50:32.820 but something like video games, if we could acknowledge this is an issue, then there are

00:50:37.340 things like, well, parents could do more to regulate their own kids video game consumption.

00:50:43.240 I mean, just something like that. There's a solution. There's, there's one small solution

00:50:47.160 that will help in some small way, uh, towards solving the overall problem. So, you know,

00:50:54.580 but if we're not allowed to talk about this, that is one small step that you are preventing us from

00:51:00.440 taking. And I kind of resent that. All right. Um, that was longer, that was a longer video game

00:51:09.240 thing than I thought, but we will, uh, we'll leave it there. And thanks everybody for watching.

00:51:12.440 Uh, Godspeed.

00:51:14.800 If you prefer facts over feelings, if you aren't offended by the brutal truth, if you can still

00:51:33.300 laugh at the nuttiness filling our national news cycle, well tune on into the Ben Shapiro show where

00:51:37.920 you'll get a whole lot of that and much more. We'll see you there.

The Matt Walsh Show - August 06, 2019

Ep. 311 - Why Mass Shooters Are Always Men

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