Mass shootings: over the past few years they have become as regular in America as Star Wars movies.

And just like Star Wars movies, people have started paying less and less attention. But this weekend
something happened:

“The nation mourns the victims of 2 shooting massacres just 13 hours apart. The massacres in El Paso,
Texas and Dayton, Ohio happened in startling proximity for a country already too familiar with gun
violence. 29 people were killed in the 2 shooting rampages just 13 hours apart”.

Yes, in the span of 2 days, 13 hours in fact, 84 people were shot and currently 31 people have been
killed in 2 deadly mass shootings. And like even though most of America have gotten used to dealing
with mass shootings, having them happen back to back have forced people to take notice. In fact this
weekends tragedy’s gotten so much attention that president Trump couldn’t respond with his usual
“sad” tweet: instead, he had to come out and give a formal address to the nation this morning where he
condemned white supremacy and domestic terrorism. Unfortunately, he also offered condolences to the
people of Toledo, which is not one of the cities that had a mass shooting. So that was basically the mass
shooting equivalent of saying the wrong’s person name in bed.

But these two tragedies didn’t happen in a vacuum, they’re part of a rise in mass shootings in recent
years. And now, news anchors, pundits, politicians alike, they’re all out to figure out the root cause of
what has become a national epidemic. And they’ve been pinning the blame on lot of different things,
starting with the internet.

“(In) another controversial website “8chan” extremists seem to have found a home. At least 3 mass
shootings this year alone have been announced on the site: the dark corners of the internet where these
people breed hate and division… the perils of the internet and social media cannot be ignored and they
will not be ignored. We must recognize that the internet has provided a danger’s avenue to radicalize
disturbed minds and perform demented acts”.

Yes, many people including the president are saying that the internet is to blame for radicalizing these
domestic terrorists because giving them a community and a platform is helping them share their ideas
the same way the internet is giving a platform to people who eat laundry detergent, alright? Yeah, back
in the day you could only share your feelings with the people at poison control. Now, you have a
community. So now some people are saying we need to tighten regulation of the internet and I’ll be
honest with you, I’m all for it. Yeah, specially after I got cat fished last week. I thought I was talking to
a lonely middle-aged man who needed my social security number. Turns out it was some beautiful
woman who wanted to date me: what the hell?

I get what these people are saying though, the internet is a powerful tool that can be used to radicalize
one of the mass shooters, you know? Maybe that’s why we don’t have a mass shooting in Africa. Our
internet is shit and the power keeps cutting. Yeah, right now there’s some guy in Nigeria who’s like: “I
want to be radicalized but this Wi-Fi is so slow. You’re so lucky this video is buffering, uh? You’re so
lucky, I’ll just have to stick to sending e-mails. Dear sir, I’ve lost some money”.

Now, while some people argue that this epidemic is being caused by the internet, another argument is
that it’s something more precise because everybody uses the internet in America but most of these
shooters are young white men. And what do young white men all have in common? Video games.

“The idea of these video games that dehumanize individuals to have a game of shooting individuals
and others. I’ve always felt this is a problem for future generations and others. Four shooter games
were des________________ folks to the violence... When you see it through the screen and you don’t
relate to it in person, it makes it seem like it’s more accessible... What’s changed in this country? We’ve
always had guns, we’ve always had evil, but what’s changed that we see this rash of shooting. And I
see a video game industry that teaches young people to kill”.

Ok, on the surface that seems like a pretty good argument: America has always had guns, America has
always had evil, but mass shootings have only taken off over the past, what, 20 years, and what has
been new in the past 20 years? Violence in video games. Although by that logic, anything that’s been
invented in the last 20 years could have contributed to mass shootings, like crocks were invented over
the last 20 years and I know they inspire anger in me. Here’s another thing, here’s another thing,
though: if video games are responsible for shootings, how do you explain countries like South Korea or
Japan. They play the same games at a higher rate than the US, but neither of these countries have a
mass shooting epidemic. The worst thing Japan is dealing with right now is a karaoke epidemic. The
only thing getting murdered there is Mariah Carey’s songs. So, some people blame the internet and
other say it’s video games.

But for many, if the president was to find the real cause of what’s happening, he should go and look in
the bathroom mirror: “the 21-year-old white male said the attack was in response to the Hispanic
invasion of Texas, adding that his ideology predates president Trump and that blaming the president
would be the equivalency of fake news… This is language the president has used since his campaign
began. A lot of people have taken issue with the explosive rhetoric he has used. Rhetoric that mirrors
this creed written by the El paso murderer… Just three months ago, this scene at a rally in Panama City
Beach, Florida; president Trump at first laughing when a supporter in the crowd suggested shooting
immigrants… But how do you stop these people? Shoot them! You can’t… No…. That’s only in the
panhandle you can get away with that stuff.

Yeah, it might have been a joke in that rally, but clearly there are people out there who could take the
president’s words seriously. I know it’s crazy to take Trump’s words seriously but some people do. In
fact, as we’ve learned, the mass shooter in El Paso left behind a manifesto that included the same
phrases Trump uses everyday: fake news, immigrants’ invasions. Like the only reason you know that it
wasn’t written by Trump is because the grammar was correct. And here’s the thing, here’s the thing,
although there is a chance Donald Trump has ____________racist mass shooters, we also cannot say
that he is the overall cause because there were racist mass shooters before Donald Trump. It’s the same
way you cannot blame stuffed crust pizzas for the obesity epidemic in America: you can admit that
adding a pizza to the edge of a pizza is not gonna help people lose weight, but it’s not the cause.

But the thing we’re hearing the most after these mass shootings is that the real cause is all in the head.
“Mental health is a large contributor to any type of violence or shooting violence… There’s so many
different factors you don’t know. I mean maybe a child’s born with some, you know, mental illness...
This was a sick person, the person at Dayton was a sick person, no politician is to blame for that. You
cannot be a white supremacist and be normal in the head, these are sick people”.

Now, again, this argument sound completely logical: if someone kills a group of random strangers, he
must be mentally ill. But that’s now necessarily true. In fact, a majority of mass shooters have no
history of mental illness, which is a scary thought because it means mass shooters are killing because
they want to not because something went wrong in their brain. So, what causes mass shootings? Is it
the internet, is it video games, is it Trump, is it mental illness? You know, what’s sad and frustrating
about America is that after every mass shooting, law makers wanna identify the one thing that causes
all mass shootings and if they can’t agree on what that thing is, nothing gets done. But the truth is,
when it comes to any individual shooting, the cause could be any one of those factors, if not more.

But there’s one thing that every mass shooting has in common: whatever motivated it has to be
combined with a gun.