ANALYSIS: Do video games, mental illness drive US massacres?

Date created : 06/08/2019 - 04:49  GMT/ZULU

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by Rachel Rubin and Biodun Iginla, France24 News Analysts

President Donald Trump on Monday tied mass shootings that left 31 dead in two US cities over the weekend to hate, violent video games and mental illness.

But with 255 mass shooting events counted so far this year in the United States, according to the Gun Violence Archive, analysts say those factors don't explain all the violence.

Not all mass shooters show signs of mental health problems, or play violent video games, or have political grudges. But one factor is omnipresent: the ease of acquiring guns.

- Violent video games -

"We must stop the glorification of violence in our society. This includes the gruesome and grisly video games that are now commonplace," Trump said.

It's true that some recent mass shooters played violent video games obsessively.

Adam Lanza, who killed 26 schoolchildren and school employees at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in 2012, spent hours a day playing some of the most violent video games, including one called "School Shooting."

Nikolas Cruz, who killed 17 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida in 2018, reportedly played violent video games up to 15 hours a day.

But Chris Ferguson, a psychology professor at Stetson University who has studied the issue, says there is no causal link with real attacks.

Hundreds of millions of people around the world play first-person shooter games such as "Fortnite" and "Call of Duty," and do not turn into mass murderers.

"Violent video games do not contribute to mass shootings, not in whole, not in part," said Ferguson.

"It's probably actively causing harm to the extent it distracts people from real causes of violence," he said on Twitter.

The American Psychological Association has found a link between violent games and films and increased aggression among children, but says it is only one risk factor.

- Mental illness -

Trump also tied shootings to "mentally disturbed individuals" who should not have access to firearms.

"Mental illness and hatred pull the trigger -- not the gun," he said.

There is a link in some cases.

Marine Corps veteran Ian David Long, 28, who killed 12 at a country music bar in California in November last year, was believed to have post-traumatic stress disorder.

Twenty-four-year-old Connor Betts, who killed nine on Sunday at a bar in Ohio, reportedly showed dangerous tendencies while in high school.

And Cruz, the Florida high school attacker, had a history of mental health problems.

"On the face of it, somebody that goes out and massacres a bunch of strangers, that's not the act of a healthy mind," Jeffrey Swanson, a professor in psychiatry at Duke University School of Medicine, told us at France24. 

Yet, he said, there are 10 million Americans with serious mental illnesses "and the overwhelming majority of them do not engage in violent behavior."

Most mass shooters, he said, "do not have the serious identifiable mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, that impairs the brain's ability to reason or see reality, or bipolar disorder."

- Divisive politics and the internet -

Some attacks are also linked to divisive politics, which play out online, especially on the 8chan website.

Like two earlier mass murderers, the man who killed 22 at a Walmart in Texas on Saturday, identified in media reports as 21-year-old Patrick Crusius, released a "manifesto" on 8chan attacking the "Hispanic invasion" from Mexico, echoing Trump's own political rhetoric.

According to journalist Robert Evans, writing on of Bellingcat, 8chan has turned mass shootings into a video-game-like competition, where body counts are referred to as "high scores."

"The act of massacring innocents has been gamified," he wrote on Sunday.

- Availability of guns -

Still, one common thread in all the attacks is the ease of obtaining weapons and high-capacity magazines.

Stephen Paddock, who massacred 58 people and wounded hundreds attending a concert in Las Vegas in 2017, was not apparently mentally ill, ideologically motivated, or a video gamer. He launched his attack using two dozen weapons, mostly AR-15-type assault rifles.

Robert Bowers, who killed 11 people at a Pennsylvania synagogue last October, carried four guns in his attack and legally owned 21.

And Betts had an assault rifle he ordered online from Texas, equipped with a 100-round drum magazine.

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Florida woman charged with threatening Sandy Hook parent

Thur Dec 8, 2016 | 10H:10  GMT/UTC/ZULU TIME

by Kathy DiNuzzo and Biodun Iginla, BBC News and Reuters, Tampa

A Florida woman accused of making death threats to the parent of a child killed at Sandy Hook Elementary school because she believes the 2012 shooting rampage was a hoax has been indicted on federal charges, prosecutors said on Wednesday.

Lucy Richards, 57, was arrested earlier this week on four counts of transmitting threats via interstate commerce, Wifredo Ferrer, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, said in a written statement.

Richards, of Tampa, faces a maximum of five years in prison on each count if convicted at trial, though federal sentencing guidelines typically call for less time.

Wifredo and George Piro, special agent in charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Miami field office, said Richards is accused of making the threats because she believes the massacre at Sandy Hook was a hoax and never took place.

The parent who was threatened lives in South Florida, according to prosecutors.

Radio and web-streaming host Alex Jones, a right-wing conspiracy theorist, has said the Sandy Hook shooting was a “hoax” involving child actors.

Adam Lanza, 20, opened fire at Sandy Hook in Newtown, Connecticut on Dec. 14, 2012, killing 20 first graders and six staff members before taking his own life. Lanza had killed his mother at their home before embarking on the shooting rampage.

The town subsequently demolished both the school and Lanza's home.

Schools helped Lanza's mom 'appease' him, according to agency

Nov 21, 4:37 PM EST

 

By Kathy DiNuzzo and Biodun Iginla, BBC News Website

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HARTFORD, Conn.  -- Adam Lanza's parents and educators contributed to his social isolation in the years before he carried out the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre by accommodating - and not confronting - his difficulties engaging with the world, according to a state report issued Friday.

The Office of the Child Advocate, which investigated Lanza's upbringing to glean lessons for preventing future tragedies, concluded that Lanza's parents, education team and others missed signs of how deeply troubled he was and opportunities to steer him toward more appropriate treatment.

Lanza killed his mother then shot his way into the Newtown school on Dec. 14, 2012, and gunned down 20 children and six educators before committing suicide.

Lanza's obsessions with firearms, death and mass shootings have been documented by police files, and investigators previously concluded the motive for the shootings may never be known.

In exploring what could have been done differently, the new report honed in on his mother, Nancy Lanza, who backed her son's resistance to medication and from the 10th grade on kept him at home, where he was surrounded by an arsenal of firearms and spent long hours playing violent video games.

"Mrs. Lanza's approach to try and help him was to actually shelter him and protect him and pull him further away from the world, and that in turn turned out to be a very tragic mistake," said Julian Ford, one of the report's authors, at a news conference.

The authors said Lanza's parents tried to obtain help for him in variety of ways, but they did not know which path to take and appeared not to grasp the depth and severity of his disabilities. His parents were divorced, and Lanza had not seen his father for two years. After 2008, his parents did not appear to seek any mental health treatment for him, and there was no sustained input from a mental health provider after 2006, according to the report.

The one provider that seemed to understand the gravity of his condition, the Yale Child Study Center, evaluated him in 2006 and called for rigorous daily therapy and medication for conditions including anxiety. At the time, a Yale psychiatrist warned there was risk to creating a "prosthetic environment which spares him having to encounter other students or to work to overcome his social difficulties," according to the report.

The day after the evaluation, Nancy Lanza told the doctor by email that her son would not agree to any sort of medication and that he had been angered by the doctor's line of questioning. The Yale recommendations went largely unheeded.

In the eighth grade, Lanza was placed on "homebound" status, though he later returned before finishing high school through a combination of independent study, tutoring and college classes. Along the way, the report said, there was no indication that the Newtown school system or the pediatrician coordinated with service providers regarding Lanza's mental health needs, according to the report, which referred to Lanza as "AL."

"Records indicate that the school system cared about AL's success but also unwittingly enabled Mrs. Lanza's preference to accommodate and appease AL through the educational plan's lack of attention to social-emotional support, failure to provide related services, and agreement to AL's plan of independent study and early graduation at age 17," wrote the report's authors.

Joseph Erardi Jr., the superintendent of schools for Newtown, said the report will have great meaning if "there is one school leader, one district, one mental health provider or one set of parents who reads this work and can prevent such a heinous crime."

The report also provocatively asks whether a family that was not white or as affluent as the Lanzas would have been given the same leeway to manage treatment for their troubled child.

"Is the community more reluctant to intervene and more likely to provide deference to the parental judgment and decision-making of white, affluent parents than those caregivers who are poor or minority?" the report said.

Despite disturbing, violence-laced writings that came to the attention of teachers, investigators say there is no evidence Lanza displayed tendencies for violence or aggression.