Guns don’t kill people, Prozac and virtual reality kill people.
In the aftermath of the deadliest school shooting since Sandy Hook, Fox News hosts and analysts alike took to the air to address the “real dynamic and core issue” behind an AR-15-armed former student who took 17 lives.
Asked by “Fox & Friends” hosts Brian Kilmeade and Ainsley Earhardt why we shouldn’t jump to conclusions and focus on gun control during Thursday morning’s episode, contributor Tammy Bruce said it’s actually about “the human condition.”
There’s facts of the matter here on the ground,” Bruce says in video picked up by Media Matters. “As an example, 70 percent, 70 percent of Americans are on at least one prescription drug. The most prescribed drugs, of course, are antidepressants and opioids.”
Bruce, whose background is in political science according to her website’s biography, goes on to suggest a connection between these types of medication, “the availability of the extraordinarily violent imagery since September 11th” and acts of violence, citing that “how adults respond to these drugs are different than how young people do.”
Moving the discussion along, Kilmeade asks, “And what about virtual reality? Those glasses that put you in a battle, put you at war?”
Bruce acknowledges this only to say “we’re not addressing how culture has changed” while also dismissing talks of gun control, the self-proclaimed “Second Amendment advocate” deeming them “important to many people” but ultimately an “immediate reaction.”
“It’s also a political one,” she says.
Hitting back on her co-host’s point of virtual reality, Earhardt not only brings up the debunked notion that video game violence normalizes real-world carnage among players, but also Eagles fans.
“We saw the violence after the Super Bowl,” she says. “These are fans that won and they’re vandalizing Philadelphia because it’s normal to do this now.”
Meanwhile, analyst Andrew Napolitano’s appearance on that very same episode of “Fox & Friends” avoided debating how pills and “Super Mario Odyssey” have turned children into killing machines and instead dove straight into how educators should be given guns and undergo extensive training.
“My suggestion is the Israeli model. Not all the teachers are armed but all the teachers – the culture is different, I know that,” Napolitano tells co-host Steve Doocy.
Explaining how nearly all adults in Israel have some military background thanks to participation in the Israeli Defense Forces, Napolitano admits though, “You can’t just carry a gun. You have to practice with it every week.”
On the topic of assault rifles, the network’s senior judicial analyst admits there’s been an unmistakable trend in massacres in which the shooters have used an AR-15, but that’s no reason for alarm as long as your local Dennis the Menace or Bart Simpson just so happen to be around.
“Yes, it’s a very powerful weapon. I know this weapon,” he says. “It’s the civilian version of an M-16. It’s very, very powerful.
“But you could stop a person with an AR-16 with a slingshot if you know how to use it.”
“Sure,” says Doocy.
