Like a dog gnawing on a particularly tasty bone, the US government is once again trying to link violent videogames to violence in the real world. In a press conference following the release of the Make Our Children Healthy Again report conducted by the Make America Healthy Again commission—MAHA, of course—US secretary of health and human services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said the ongoing scourge of gun violence in the country could be the result of many factors, including videogames.
Kennedy said the “sudden onset of violence” began in the 1990s, which he apparently finds inexplicable because “we had lots of guns when we were kids” and this sort of thing never happened.
“We had comparably the same number of guns. Nobody was doing that,” Kennedy said. “We had gun clubs at my school. Kids brought guns to school and were encouraged to do so, and nobody was walking into schools and shooting people.”
He also acknowledged that this sort of thing generally doesn’t happen in other countries: Switzerland, for example, has lots of guns, but “the last mass shooting they had was 23 years ago,” Kennedy said. “We’re having mass shootings every 23 hours.”
You almost feel like he’s close—so close!—to putting the pieces together, right? Or at least maybe getting them all flipped right-side up on the table. But no: He roars past any semblance of a reasonable conclusion like a minivan blasting down the highway with a rotting whale’s head strapped to the roof.
“There are many, many things that could explain this,” Kennedy continued. “One is the dependence on psychiatric drugs, which is, in our country, is unlike any other country in the world. It could be—there could be connections with videogames, with social media, or a number of things, and we are looking at that at NIH [National Institutes of Health]. We’re initiating studies to look at the correlation and the connection, potential connection, between over-medicating our kids and this violence, and these other possible co-founders as well.”
Watch On
This sort of talk is nothing new. While studies have repeatedly failed to find significant links between gaming and violent behavior, politicians of all stripes have made hay with the possibility. US president Donald Trump did so at least twice during his first administration, but the Obama administration did the same in 2013 in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012.
What makes the rhetoric a little more unusual in this case is that it seems downright mundane when compared to various other positions Kennedy holds, which include baseless fearmongering about life-saving vaccines and support for unpasteurized milk despite a demonstrably food poisoning risk. Kennedy said in the press conference, for instance, that “over 99% of vaccine injuries go unreported” and effectively accused the CDC of covering it up.
The MAHA report itself doesn’t mention videogames specifically, but it does make a couple references to “screen time,” including a promise that “the Surgeon General will launch an education and awareness initiative on the effect of screens on children and the actions being taken by states to limit screen time at school.” The US, for the record, currently does not have a surgeon general: Trump’s original nomination was withdrawn ahead of his senate confirmation hearing following complaints from Laura Loomer, a far-right influencer best known for handcuffing herself to one of Twitter’s doors in 2018; his current pick, wellness influencer Dr. Casey Means, has yet to be confirmed.
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