Navy Yard shooter was mentally ill and addicted to violent video games

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Navy Yard shooter was mentally ill and addicted to violent video games. Just like the last two mass shootings (Sandy Hook and Aurora). And it happened in a gun-free zone, also like the last two mass shootings. So liberals will stop talking about gun control and start talking about mental illness and video games, right? Right?

This post was last modified on September 17, 2013

J.P. Travis: Born and raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1976 graduate of University of Michigan, father, grandfather, husband, founder and CEO of Travelyn Publishing (http://www.travelynpublishing.com/), and passionate anti-government believer in individual liberty.

View Comments (62)

  • I don't care what Savage has to say, violent video games are NOT responsible for this guy being a nutter. For those of you in doubt, check out the episode of Penn & Teller's BULLSHIT titled, "VIDEO GAMES."

    • I don't believe the video games cause this behavior, but they do give a person already predisposed to this behavior a feeling of it not being a bad thing.

      • No but they give habits.

        Sure they don´t get actual training but they´ll do their shooting better than non-gamers.

        • What about ex-military with PTSD? Couldn't they also be influenced to commit such acts, and they would have more combat training then gamers?

          • If that were true then where were all the mass shootings committed by veterans of wars before the advent of SSRIs and other types of anti-depressants? It's the drugs and deinstitutionalization. Those are the two constants in all of these shootings except Fort Hood.

          • Sorry to change topics on a serious thread, but after I got off the floor after seeing GoldBrick ask a serious Q, got a feeling the Packer fans (MD? know there are a few) are gonna be giving me the business in about 3 hours or so. Hope not but... You doing any NFL today?

          • I know, he actually made a post without any of his (ab)normal nonsense! I think someone hacked his account!

          • Yeah, I will but also have to go to Las Vegas tomorrow so I have obligatory non football activities to do with wife and daughter.

          • Not to hijack a thread but just saw something I've never seen in all the years watching fball. Packers called for holding, offense walked off, Bengals declined, made it 4th & 7. Offense walked back out to go for it, Bengals got to change their mind and accept the penalty, made it 3rd & 17. Still smh.

          • Wow, Bengals 14-0 9:08 left in first. Will they revert and crush my heart AGAIN? ;) Swack DinghyHarry while you're in Vegas.

      • Anything rubbed continuously develops a callous. Rub on your sensibilities long enough - say 16 hours at a stretch - and your sensibilities become calloused. Hard to believe a person who spends hours blowing people away in private is going to hold human life in the same respect as someone who spends his time gardening.

  • He be livin da Post-american Dream, as Jamie Foxx the cross-dresser and down-low brotha stated...

    BTW, by White people they mean you, not just rich CEOs.

    • If you start wearing Depends so you don't have to interrupt IHTM browsing with bathroom breaks, you might be an addict. If someone yells, "Fire!" and the fire department is pounding on your door but you won't leave IHTM, you might be an addict. If you have Keith Olbermann's face taped all over your walls so you can throw IHTM-labeled darts at him all day long, you're fine - that's not addiction. That's rational.

    • Speaks to the mental condition of the player. Other than that its crap, since not every gamer becomes a lunatic shooter.

    • When there's a rash of drunk driving accidents it's rational to look at whether alcohol use is causing accidents. Replace cars with guns and alcohol with violent video games and you have the same situation with these mass shootings. Correlation isn't causation but most people in the first example would use common sense and say alcohol is more likely the problem than cars - for some reason in the second example liberals automatically point to the guns and ignore the violent video games. I don't get it.

      If you read the linked article, he wasn't just a casual player of violent video games - he was addicted, playing for 16 hours at a time.

      • Except that you can show a link between alcohol usage and impaired driving 100% of the time - with millions of people playing violent video games, you would expect millions of violent outbursts. There aren't. There are no studies that have found conclusive evidence of a link - before video games it was music, and before music it was movies. It's all bunk. And the liberals DON'T ignore video games... Hilary was on a tear during her senate tenure to curb or ban them - AGAIN on baseless claims and false studies.

        16 hours a day may sound like a lot, and it certainly is, but it isn't indicative of an addition. It's indicative of some level of laziness. I won't argue that he WASN'T an addict, I will simply state that video games + laziness + lots of time on your hands = lots of time spent playing video. I've had a few weekends where I burned through a couple 12+ hour sessions of Civ, and I am no more addicted than the next person, nor am I prepared to lead a country into glory (not when Ghandi is constantly threatening me with nuclear attack at least).

        • I do remember when Hill and Tipper were also trying to ban the Rock Music in the 80's and Twisted Sister insinuated that Tipper had a dirty mind, right to Al Gore on the floor.

          • Same here, in this clip, Dee Snyder talks about it...

            http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veoYcsH7Wrs

            ...funny to look back at the morally offended Al Gore considering he has made a huge sum of money lying & deceiving the public over junk science & trading on his political status. He also likes "happy ending" massages as well, at least when traveling to Oregon. The word hypocrite comes to mind.

        • You would be making valid points if you didn't say "100%" in the first sentence. You're implying that we know alcohol use causes accidents every time, which is unadulterated baloney. Studies show alcohol impairing reaction time but since accidents require much more than a difference in reaction time measured in milliseconds, the notion that alcohol use always causes accidents is popular farce. Blind drunks who pass out and cross the centerline cause accidents - the rest of the statistics they use are exactly what you are complaining about: correlation not causation. Same with cellphones. If someone has a drink and gets in an accident or happens to be talking on their cellphone when they get in an accident, the powers-that-be throw that statistic into the "caused" category even though the alcohol and the cellphone probably had nothing to do with the accident. Then MADD or the cellphone haters trot out those statistics and inform us that we need to lower the alcohol limit and ban cellphones. It's bad science all the way around.

          • Except we are talking about correlation and causation, which means we are talking about accidents. You used a rhetorical technique to introduce a strawman - I am ignoring the strawman and correcting the impression you were trying to make. The statistics used to prove that alcohol causes accidents use the same technique - they prove that alcohol impairs reaction time, then use that as justification to lump every accident involving somebody who had a drink into the "caused by alcohol" category. It's become utterly ridiculous, with citizens being prosecuted for drunk driving regardless of who actually caused the accident.

            Back to the main point: what I'm saying is that sloppy thinking is sloppy thinking whether it involves bogus statistics about alcohol, cellphones, or guns. The answer is to insist upon disciplined thinking. That answer will suggest that video games are a more likely cause than guns for a series of mass shootings by video game addicts, just like alcohol is a more likely cause for a series of drunk driving accidents than cars.

            And yes, I'm still using the word "addict." 16 hours on a violent video game says to me there is something wrong with the man. 16 hours on a violent video game is pretty much the definition of addiction. 16 hours on a violent video game would make Mother Theresa start killing orphans.

          • The video game usage is likely a symptom of a larger problem not the problem in and of itself. IMO, that's why the video game argument is as stupid as the gun control argument.

          • Oh for fuck's sake - you go off on a rant about drunk driving and accuse ME of using a strawman?

            I need to learn to stop arguing on the internet. You believe what you want and aren't willing to change your mind. You've declared something an addiction without knowledge of the media, the person, or the field.

            Here, have an ad hominem attack: you have the proper credentials and mindset to write stories for MSNBC.

    • I'm with you there.
      A large percentage of people own firearms, a large percentage of people play violent video games. There must be some overlap, however MOST of those people don't pull crap like this.

      • It could be that BECAUSE he had a mental disease and problems he naturally gravitated towards those games, not that the games affected his mindset, so yeah it is very easy to find a correlation but it is not at least 100% so. Like already said there is overlap but not to the point where someone can say that it is a factual statement that all violent video game users have predisposition to be violent.

        • its not even factual to suggest that most or even a measurably significant chunk of these gamers will end up violent.. I'd say 90% of the gamers i personally know play ridiculously violent games (even my wife)

          That said, i won't let my kids play games that reward you for being criminal (lookin at you GTA!!).. That's a bit much for even me.

      • Wow, I half-expected an argument on this. Forgot I was dealing with rational people...

        It is a correlation vs. causation issue. Crazy people can get guns and play violent games, as well as eat food, own dogs, and drive Hondas. the gun control logic is knee-jerk - you can use the same illogical argument to begin demanding a ban on bacon and donuts for causing obes..it...y... oh, right...

      • It is a microscopic Venn Diagram that illustrates the overlap between gun owners/violent video gamers and mass shooters.

  • Okay so what about the supposed other two shooters?

    This guy is weird to me I think there is more to this story. Maybe manipulation I don't know. I just want to know why are these people allowed these clearances? It almost seems like someone purposely placed this guy in play.

    • To be fair, a secret clearance is no big deal. Every officer in the military gets one with his commission. The media is making more of that point than necessary. The fact he was crazy and on meds is the story. Now, if he had a top secret clearance, then we'd have the need for a discussion about background check problems. When I got my TS in 1987, I received calls from all sorts of people from my past wanting to known what I was up to.

      • The point is that he shouldn't have had one once his mental issues were discovered. They should have been revoked and he shouldn't be working there anymore.

        • I understand your point and it is a good one but he had access to virtually nothing sensitive and that is likely why it was never rescinded. In other words, no one bothered.

          That does make one pause and ask himself how many other risks are out there with high clearances that shouldn't be.

          • That is what I am talking about! You are not saying anything different than myself. People are not doing their jobs and failure to do their jobs is in essence what makes a lot of these situations possible. If someone has a mental problem regardless of they having sensitive access or not, they shouldn't have it period.

  • Only the federal government would give someone as mentally ill as this guy a secret security clearance. But lets crank out some more ultra-violent video games, he can use them as therapy.

  • Libturds just love to mainstream the mentally ill, they think that a hug and a teddy bear will make everything just fine. I said it before there are people that need to be in an institution (Crowley is one) and get some forced treatment. This guy was one, instead our goobermint decides to let him onto a naval base because they decided he wasn't a threat..some shrink somewhere at the VA needs to be arrested and jailed for being responsible for this. Instead the gun control batshit crazy politicians and that English Turd on CNN are making noises about gun control..never about mental illness, mainly because libturds are mentally ill and feel a kinship to crazies like this.

  • DAMN IT!
    I want to see the medical reports of all the mass shooters in the last 10 years, I want to know what kind of pharmaceuticals they were on.

    God do I hate the "don't hesitate, medicate" mindset of today.

  • This guy couldn't even wait for the new GTA 5. Maybe if he took out his issues on others in the game, maybe he wouldn't need to act out like he did by killing a dozen people. that said, it looks like various law enforcement folks & the courts should have kicked him in the ass instead of kissing it. They could have put a stop to this clown by punishing him for the crimes he committed prior to this shooting.

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