{"id":318047,"date":"2019-08-05T16:06:00","date_gmt":"2019-08-05T20:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/?p=318047"},"modified":"2019-08-06T15:56:31","modified_gmt":"2019-08-06T19:56:31","slug":"callers-weigh-in-on-the-causes-of-mass-shootings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2019\/08\/05\/callers-weigh-in-on-the-causes-of-mass-shootings\/","title":{"rendered":"Callers Weigh In on the Causes of Mass Shootings"},"content":{"rendered":"

RUSH: Let me go to the phones because I know a lot of you want to weigh in on this.\u00a0 We\u2019ll start in Rancho Santa Fe, California.\u00a0 This is Peter.\u00a0 Great to have you, sir.\u00a0 Hi.<\/p>\n

\"\"CALLER:\u00a0 Hello, Rush.\u00a0 I think President Trump should call for a 9\/11-style commission to study mass shootings in America, and in particular why so many of these perpetrators are in their twenties and thirties.\u00a0 The mainstream media and the Democrat presidential candidates, as you know, are focusing their analysis of the events on what I would call the two bogeymen: The NRA and the Second Amendment.\u00a0 But I\u2019m over 65.\u00a0 The NRA and the Second Amendment existed when I was in my twenties and thirties, yet there were no mass shootings.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Well, a 9\/11-style commission will be able to study the influence of all of the following — and I\u2019ll say it parenthetically — that (crosstalk) years.<\/p>\n

RUSH:\u00a0 Wait a minute.\u00a0 Not to play… Well, yeah.\u00a0 Do you believe everything the 9\/11 commission reported about 9\/11?<\/p>\n

CALLER:\u00a0 No.\u00a0 But it gets… What it will allow the president to do is deflect the criticism that\u2019s coming in at him, and let\u2019s let a group of nonpoliticians look at the breakdown of the family structure and look at the rise in secularism —<\/p>\n

RUSH:\u00a0 Where are you gonna find \u2019em?<\/p>\n

CALLER:\u00a0 — look at violence in the movies.<\/p>\n

RUSH:\u00a0 Where you gonna find \u2019em?\u00a0 Once you appoint \u2019em, they become political.<\/p>\n

CALLER:\u00a0 I don\u2019t disagree with that, but at least we can have the dialogue.\u00a0 Violence in video games.\u00a0 You talked about it this morning.\u00a0 The role of social media in these killers\u2019 behavior.<\/p>\n

RUSH:\u00a0 Yeah, but I haven\u2019t even got warmed up on that.<\/p>\n

CALLER:\u00a0 Oh, I know you haven\u2019t.<\/p>\n

RUSH:\u00a0 This is gonna extend all the way to the presidential race.\u00a0 I think it\u2019s already underway.<\/p>\n

CALLER:\u00a0 I agree.<\/p>\n

RUSH:\u00a0 I understand. So what I hear you saying is you want the criticism somehow sent somewhere else rather than Trump. See, this is — and I understand this.\u00a0 We\u2019re all sick of this!\u00a0 We\u2019re stick and tired of every time this happens, people that we believe in being blamed for it or ourselves.\u00a0 We\u2019re sick of it.\u00a0 None of us pulled the trigger, none of us want these things to happen, and yet we turn on the media and that\u2019s what we hear — and we\u2019re fed up with it.\u00a0 I understand you want to deflect the criticism.\u00a0 That\u2019s not gonna happen.\u00a0 There has to be a different way of dealing with the criticism \u2019cause it\u2019s never gonna end, and the politicization of it is never gonna end.<\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH:\u00a0 Here\u2019s Antoinette, Greensboro, North Carolina.\u00a0 Back at it we are on the Rush Limbaugh program.\u00a0 Hiya, Antoinette.\u00a0 Great to have you here.<\/p>\n

CALLER:\u00a0 Mega dittos, Rush, from a happy-to-be-female conservative.<\/p>\n

\"\"RUSH:\u00a0 Thank you.<\/p>\n

CALLER: (giggles) Happy to talk to you.\u00a0 I actually have two points, if you don\u2019t mind.\u00a0 Several years back my son — who has always been sort of odd man out, didn\u2019t feel like he fit in — just sort of started staying away from the people at his school and stuff and just hanging out in his room and starting to play games on the internet. He kept his room dark so he could see the games well. Then he started getting into role-playing, which are games that have characters and you take on that character and the characteristics.\u00a0 And they have this thing, too — if parents aren\u2019t aware — of first-person shooter games.<\/p>\n

RUSH:\u00a0 Right.\u00a0 How old is your son we\u2019re talking about?<\/p>\n

CALLER:\u00a0 Well, at that time he was 18 through 22.<\/p>\n

RUSH:\u00a0 Okay.<\/p>\n

CALLER:\u00a0 He started playing all these games online. First-person shooter games are a genre where they take on weapons of all sorts — guns, primarily — and they combat each other online.\u00a0 There\u2019s bunches and bunches of characters.\u00a0 Online. You don\u2019t know these people, but you\u2019re there to shoot them.\u00a0 A lot of people think these little anime video games, because they\u2019re cartoon looking…? They\u2019re not. They\u2019re very explicitly sexual and dark videos, a lot of fighting, a lot of sexual content, if any parent would spend the time to just look through some of these things or do some of the investigating.\u00a0 So my son started just staying in his room —<\/p>\n

RUSH:\u00a0 Wait a minute.\u00a0 But your son didn\u2019t become a mass shooter?<\/p>\n

CALLER:\u00a0 No, my son didn\u2019t become a mass shooter.\u00a0 But I\u2019m gonna tell you why.\u00a0 At one point he had gotten to where I found out — because one of his friends did tell me — he was contemplating suicide.\u00a0 He just felt so alone, as you said. Isolated.\u00a0 But then he started making so-called friends on the internet and doing all these character roles and everything, and I finally said, “Okay, look.\u00a0 You cannot stay in this dark room all day long after school and play video games with people you don\u2019t know and not come out.”<\/p>\n

So I finally kind of put my foot down and made a plan for him to come out and to be with people at our church — which we actually had a really, really cool youth director.\u00a0 But if you think about it, it\u2019s not only video games. What is out there for young people to view that\u2019s healthy, fun, make them laugh?\u00a0 You got 13 Reasons Why, which is suicidal. You\u2019ve got Euphoria, which is a new HBO sexual teen… (laughs) I mean totally —<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

RUSH:\u00a0 Well, let\u2019s not race through these things here.\u00a0 Euphoria is an HBO show about sex and drugs for 13- to 15-year-olds, and it\u2019s portrayed as a great life!\u00a0 That\u2019s why it\u2019s called Euphoria.\u00a0 13 Reasons Why is a Netflix show that\u2019s gonna be entering season 3 soon.\u00a0 In 13 Reasons Why, the lead character committed suicide — and the 13 reasons why are essentially 13 people in high school who mistreated her.\u00a0 And the series is about her relationships with each of these people and how she set them up to all be blamed when she took her life.<\/p>\n

And it was a top five Netflix show.\u00a0 It rivals Stranger Things.\u00a0 Now, Stranger Things is its own young persons\u2019 show about… I tried to watch season 1, and I guess I was blessed by the fact that I don\u2019t have kids and I didn\u2019t get it.\u00a0 I got tired of it after two episodes.\u00a0 I just don\u2019t… I don\u2019t have a lot of fun watching 9- and 10-year-olds running around, learning about life. Don\u2019t take that the wrong way. On a TV show.\u00a0 On a TV show.\u00a0 I just… So I don\u2019t… My point is, I don\u2019t know what Stranger Things is all about, other than it\u2019s a “mixed-mash” horror show, too.\u00a0 Right?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a monster in it somewhere.\u00a0 But 13 Reasons Why, there were all kinds of parent petitions and requests of Netflix, “Hey, change this! Do something.\u00a0 This is romanticizing suicide.\u00a0 This is justifying it.\u00a0 This is the wrong message that needs to be sent.”\u00a0 Now, I remember back in the eighties and nineties Algore\u2019s wife, Tipper — and who did she partner with?\u00a0 What Republican\u2019s wife did she partner with?<\/p>\n

But they testified before a congressional committee on the dangers of video games and rock music lyrics and dangerous television shows, and they were laughed at and mocked out of the place. People were making fun of them. “You think rock music lyrics are inspiring this kind of bad behavior and these TV shows?” They were told to get real. (interruption) Susan Baker.\u00a0 That\u2019s right.\u00a0 James A. Baker\u2019s wife.\u00a0 Mrs. James Baker and Tipper Gore.\u00a0 They were trying to make the case that this stuff is poisonous, that it cannot help but have a destructive impact on people.<\/p>\n

But the entertainment industry came alive and basically portrayed both of them as a couple of fuddy-duddy old-fashioned Victorians who wanted to impose their morality on everyone — which is what always happens, by the way.\u00a0 Whenever anybody objects to the sewer that pop culture has become, they\u2019re always charged with being these out-o-touch, old-fashioned sticks in the mud that want to deny people a good time — and then they\u2019re called Reagan-supporting conservatives.<\/p>\n

So then people get the idea that what conservatism really is, is a dull and boring life where you may never get into any trouble, but you don\u2019t have any fun, and you never have any sex.\u00a0 And you never have any aborti… Uh, babies, and you never have any abortions, and all of that.\u00a0 And it\u2019s why there is less and less objection to this now, because the people who have objected in the past have been pilloried.<\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH:\u00a0 We\u2019re gonna stick with the phones here to Lisa in Fort Wayne, Indiana.\u00a0 Great to have you, Lisa.\u00a0 Hi.<\/p>\n

CALLER:\u00a0 Hi, Rush.\u00a0 It\u2019s a pleasure to speak with you.\u00a0 Mega dittos from Fort Wayne.\u00a0 Rush, I just wanted to speak to your point about social media and the influence it\u2019s having on our society and culture.\u00a0 I think there\u2019s a layer even deeper to that.\u00a0 Foundationally, I think it\u2019s the removal of God in our society and culture, which has created this notion that there\u2019s no value in life. The sanctity of life is completely gone.\u00a0 So along with the no sanctity of life, you have a group of people growing up with a lack of identity. They don\u2019t know where to look for their identity, and so they turn to social media.<\/p>\n

And then with social media, you have the bullying. You have people that are glorifying the lives they want everybody to think they have.\u00a0 And it\u2019s a building block thing that\u2019s happening. All leading to the rise and increase of suicides that has taken place in our country. All leading to the rise of these mass shootings and killings that are going on.\u00a0 The foundational problem is we have removed God from our culture, from our society.\u00a0 We\u2019ve made it wrong to have faith.\u00a0 We\u2019ve made it wrong to believe that there\u2019s a higher power above ourselves.<\/p>\n

RUSH:\u00a0 Well, not entirely.\u00a0 There are a lot of people who believe in “a higher power” but who do not believe in God.<\/p>\n

CALLER:\u00a0 That\u2019s true.<\/p>\n

RUSH:\u00a0 This is —<\/p>\n

CALLER: (crosstalk)<\/p>\n

RUSH: No, no.\u00a0 It\u2019s one of the tricks that the left has artfully played on people — and I\u2019m not talking about Gaia or trees or climate change.\u00a0 Look, I think your point is right on the money.\u00a0 I think the absence of God — which, what does it mean?\u00a0 If there\u2019s no God in somebody\u2019s life, there\u2019s no meaning to any of this. There\u2019s no purpose to it. There\u2019s no limit.<\/p>\n

CALLER:\u00a0 Exactly.<\/p>\n

RUSH: There\u2019s no limit on behavior.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Exactly.\u00a0 Not for their own life and not for the life of anyone else.\u00a0 There\u2019s just no regard for life.<\/p>\n

\"\"RUSH:\u00a0 Well, there certainly is less regard for it, and with the extreme cases of it, yeah. No regard for it whatsoever.\u00a0 But you see Now, we can\u2019t escape politics here, because there is a particular political ideology which requires that there is no God.\u00a0 The ideology replaces the god — and the ideology can be whatever that movement, liberalism, wants it to be.\u00a0 It can be government.\u00a0 It can be a particular movement.\u00a0 But mostly it is whatever the left wants to happen is the god.<\/p>\n

And if the left is then seen as totally tolerant — that you can do whatever you want in the name of freedom — you\u2019re gonna end up having a life of no meaning whatsoever.\u00a0 It\u2019s really tough to explain to people who have never been raised with the concept of God in their lives what they\u2019re missing.\u00a0 It\u2019s a very challenging conversation.\u00a0 You look at people who have been raised with God in their lives, raised with a religious value system. They may not know the Bible. They may not be conversant in various aspects of theology.<\/p>\n

But the one thing that they understand is that there is something beyond this that\u2019s attainable.\u00a0 Now, the nonbelievers say this is one of the biggest tricks that\u2019s ever been played on people. To tell \u2019em that there\u2019s a heaven, tell \u2019em that there\u2019s a God. and then it tell \u2019em that you have to behave in a certain way to attain that.\u00a0 Well, no, behavior has nothing to do with it.\u00a0 Belief does.\u00a0 This is the first big myth that people sell. To destroy religion, they have tried to say, “What you have to do to get to heaven\u2019s impossible!<\/p>\n

“You have to live a perfect life, and I can\u2019t do that.” That\u2019s a myth.\u00a0 That\u2019s not what it says.\u00a0 To get to heaven, you believe in Jesus — seriously, seriously believe and accept Jesus Christ — \u2019cause nobody can live a sin-free life.\u00a0 It\u2019s not possible! By virtue of our creation, it isn\u2019t possible.\u00a0 So that cannot be the test.\u00a0 But the left has come along and convinced nonbelievers and the ignorant that it is!\u00a0 Now, the left thinks that religion, organized religion, is one of the biggest tricks ever played on humanity.<\/p>\n

They think it\u2019s a brilliant trick because it was used to keep societies and groups of people in check.\u00a0 They think that whoever the original authors of the ancient religions were — the three religions, the religions of Abraham: Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. There are differences, obviously. But the belief that there is eternal life is what causes people either consciously or subconsciously to conform to a mode of behavior that is considered normal and within normal boundaries. The left believes whoever concocted this is brilliant, because they created a myth that has forced mass behavior on people for millennia.<\/p>\n

And they think it\u2019s all a lie, because they can\u2019t prove it.\u00a0 I mean, they can look all over the world. They can look at anything, and they can tell themselves, “Hey, it\u2019s just a coincidence all this happens!”\u00a0 Other people look at it and say (chuckles), “This cannot be a coincidence.\u00a0 This cannot be happenstance.\u00a0 This simply cannot be the result of some giant explosion that randomly resulted in all this.\u00a0 This is a grand design!”\u00a0 So if you have this partisan split over things like this, this where Lisa\u2019s exactly right.<\/p>\n

If you happen to think that there\u2019s nothing larger than yourself, if there\u2019s nothing more important in your life than you, if you haven\u2019t ever been exposed to do idea that there is a greater meaning… If people don\u2019t have meaning in their lives, all you have to do to get meaning in your life is to try to understand that there\u2019s more to your life than what you do each and every day.\u00a0 But this requires immersion into some religions or belief systems that a lot of people simply have not been exposed to.<\/p>\n

\"\"Precisely because, as Lisa says, God has been taken out of culture. God\u2019s been taken out of a lot of the fabric of American life. And the left doesn\u2019t like God because God is the ultimate authority, and there is no ultimate authority but them.\u00a0 Why do you think that in communism, there\u2019s no God?\u00a0 There cannot possibly be God.\u00a0 Communism… What are the ChiComs doing right now?<\/a>\u00a0 They\u2019re tracking down every religious group and bringing \u2019em into camps.\u00a0 The ChiComs actually have concentration camps.<\/p>\n

Oh, speaking of that, what effect do you think it\u2019s gonna have on people when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the rest of these little urchins run around telling these young people the United States has German-like concentration camps on the border?\u00a0 What is that gonna do to an already unstable, malleable mind?\u00a0 Well, the ChiComs are actually doing it! Try being a Muslim in China.\u00a0 Try being a Jew in China.\u00a0 Try being any religion.\u00a0 They hunt you down, and you are sent off to a reeducation camp, and many people never leave them.<\/p>\n

There is only one god in communism, and it\u2019s the state, and anything else — anything that tells people that there\u2019s something greater than the state — is the ultimate threat.\u00a0 And it has to be eliminated, has to be wiped out, and it has to be disproved.\u00a0 So young kids in communism are constantly in school, shown “proof” that there is no God. “Well, why don\u2019t they start mass shootin\u2019 everybody, Rush?”\u00a0 Well, because no. They have their own belief system.\u00a0 They\u2019ve been told that the state is God.\u00a0 They\u2019ve got their fear.<\/p>\n

Everything in life is attainable but from the state.\u00a0 So they have to behave, they have to conform, they have to do whatever.\u00a0 They\u2019re turned into automatons, while they have nothing.\u00a0 It\u2019s really hideous.\u00a0 And what they have in common is that they are all scared to death of people having freedom and liberty.\u00a0 And you go to our First Amendment and our Bill of Rights, and you find out why we\u2019re different, why we\u2019re exceptional.<\/p>\n

Freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of association.\u00a0 Those are all things that constitute a great opposition force to totalitarians.<\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: Here is John in Waco, Texas. It\u2019s great to have you on the program, John. Hi.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Hi, Rush. A couple of things. I deal a lot with people who are harm to self or harm to others. There are two stats that really jump out at me. Number one, 4% of mass shooters have a documentable mental health issue, which means, yeah, we can focus on mental health all day long, but that\u2019s not —<\/p>\n

RUSH: Wait, wait, wait. Is that right? ‘Cause that means 96 of mass shooters don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

CALLER: They don\u2019t have a documentable one. So if the emphasis that I\u2019m hearing is that we need to do more about mental health —<\/p>\n

RUSH: Oh. Yeah.<\/p>\n

CALLER: — we\u2019re missing the boat. Twenty-two percent of Millennials — and here\u2019s where I think the problem is — feel isolated and that they have no friends. And those are two of the primary indicators of potential violence in mass shootings.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Bingo. My point in the first hour. That\u2019s precisely what I think all of these shooters have in common is this feeling of isolation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

CALLER: And social media, it\u2019s not just the content, it\u2019s the fact that that\u2019s all they\u2019re doing, and they don\u2019t have any personal friends, they don\u2019t have any personal contacts, and people aren\u2019t communicating to the right authorities that this kid\u2019s in trouble. And that\u2019s the solution, is letting people know what to look for, what signs and then communicate that something\u2019s going on to somebody to get help.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Okay. Well, how would that manifest itself? So you\u2019re in school, this kid supposedly has a hit list, he\u2019s isolated, he\u2019s despondent but obviously tries to cover that up with an attitude of cockiness and, you know, false placed confidence. What do you do? Where do you take the kid for help? Who\u2019s qualified?<\/p>\n

CALLER: Okay. Just a case that just surfaced in Lubbock, Texas, mass shooter, potential, had all the ammo, had everything, his grandmother noticed that something was just not right and she reported it to the authorities, and he\u2019s in custody now, and there is no mass shooting. And that\u2019s exactly what has to happen.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Well, the same thing happened at Marjorie Douglas Stoneman high school. That guy was reported two or three times and nobody did anything about him.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Yeah. You gotta do something.<\/p>\n

RUSH: The point\u2019s being made that way, too, in that situation.<\/p>\n

\"\"CALLER: Absolutely.<\/p>\n

RUSH: All right. So your real point is that social media is all they do, that\u2019s the extent of their —<\/p>\n

CALLER: Yeah.<\/p>\n

RUSH: — social interaction. And of course what happens there is not healthy in any number of ways, and so they\u2019re alone, and they\u2019re feeling isolated, unaccepted, whatever isolated means to them.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Yes. And about a quarter of them will say, “I don\u2019t have any friends at all.” And now we\u2019re moving into two of the factors that up the ante for potential violence.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Okay. I understand all that, but, but it\u2019s important to note that of all the people, all the Millennials, for example, that would qualify under the characteristics you have described, the percentage of them that go pick up a gun and mass kill people is so still infinitesimally small as a measure of the whole database that it\u2019s tough to make a correlation. Otherwise they would all be doing this, and they\u2019re not.<\/p>\n

So there still is something more. I\u2019m not disagreeing with what you\u2019re saying, but there\u2019s still something — Could it be that there are just people who are evil? No more complicated than that. Could that maybe be?<\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: Erin in Detroit.\u00a0 Great to have you, Erin.\u00a0 Welcome.<\/p>\n

CALLER:\u00a0 Rush, I\u2019m so happy to talk to you.\u00a0 I am a Millennial.\u00a0 Longtime listener.\u00a0 I am in the video game industry, and I wanted to talk about people\u2019s qualms with video games and talking about how they influence people to kill.\u00a0 And I\u2019d have to agree with that.\u00a0 I\u2019d have to say that video games do not influence people to kill, no more than guns influence people to kill, or that money influences people to commit crimes.<\/p>\n

RUSH:\u00a0 You know, since you\u2019re in the video game industry, I need to share something with you.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Yeah?<\/p>\n

RUSH: I guess this is in the early nineties. There was… I had a friend. I\u2019m a gonna name any names.\u00a0 Doesn\u2019t matter.\u00a0 At the time, this friend wrote for the Wall Street Journal, and said, “You\u2019re missing one of the biggest potential disrupters in America.” I said, “What is it?”\u00a0 The video game industry!\u00a0 Video games!” At the time, it was just Pong and stuff.<\/p>\n

CALLER:\u00a0 Yeah.<\/p>\n

RUSH:\u00a0 “Video games are destroying kids.\u00a0 They\u2019re doing nothing but sitting at consoles and playing these games — and as these games get more violent, we\u2019ve got a problem coming like you can\u2019t believe.” I listened to him and I took it all in and I never forgot it.\u00a0 But I tell you, for as many kids… This is my own take.\u00a0 For as many people as are playing video games and as many people as are out there watching the Avenger movies, there aren\u2019t that many of \u2019em shooting up the country.\u00a0 It\u2019s such a small number that I wonder.<\/p>\n

CALLER: I know.<\/p>\n

RUSH: It\u2019s too convenient an excuse.<\/p>\n

CALLER:\u00a0 It is an excuse.\u00a0 I was telling Snerdley that it\u2019s hard to hear people blame people like me for creating these works of art.\u00a0 I am an artist, and just like people blame you… Like, I was very young when it happened. I\u2019m only 28. People blamed you for the Monica Lewinsky dress.\u00a0 It\u2019s hard to have people blame us, say that blood is on our hands for just doing art.<\/p>\n

RUSH:\u00a0 Wait a minute.\u00a0 That\u2019s a new one.\u00a0 They blamed me for the dress?<\/p>\n

CALLER: (giggles)<\/p>\n

RUSH:\u00a0 I knew they blamed me for the Oklahoma City bombing.\u00a0 They blamed me for the Monica Lewinsky dress?\u00a0 That\u2019s cool!\u00a0 I didn\u2019t know that.<\/p>\n

CALLER: I remember hearing about that. I was really little, though, so I could be wrong.<\/p>\n

RUSH: No, no. You\u2019re not wrong. You\u2019re a woman on this program. It\u2019s impossible for you to be wrong.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Okay. Well, thank you. I\u2019m gonna tell people about that.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Are you a designer of these games?<\/p>\n

\"\"CALLER: I\u2019m an artist. I\u2019m not gonna go too into detail because I could lose my job —<\/p>\n

RUSH: No, no.<\/p>\n

CALLER: I\u2019m the only conservative that works on games.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Okay. You\u2019re an artist. Would you be considered part of the design unit?<\/p>\n

CALLER: Yes, sir.<\/p>\n

RUSH: That\u2019s awesome.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Oh, thank you. Well, I also wanted to say this kid made a choice, it\u2019s a horrible choice but when I was a kid I had a friend tell me that actions have consequences and consequences unfortunately sometimes have names and faces. And people aren\u2019t even in the ground and we\u2019re pointing fingers and we need to give these families time to bury their loved ones before we place blame, before we politicize it. And it\u2019s a horrible situation, but video games, movies, guns, people kill people. People kill people.<\/p>\n

RUSH: You know what? That is an interesting thing, interesting point, Erin. Not so much that we don\u2019t give the families time, but try to imagine being a parent of one of these kids that does this, and what if — I\u2019m just gonna make up some possible scenarios. What if you recognize this, but didn\u2019t take it seriously enough, then it happens? What if —<\/p>\n

CALLER: I\u2019d feel horrible.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Well, what if you didn\u2019t see it at all? What if you are totally, as a parent, taken aback? I don\u2019t know if that\u2019s possible. I don\u2019t know how indicative kids like this are at home. I don\u2019t know how much fear they inspire in their parents. Regardless, the parents have just got to be devastated on any number of levels here and the last thing they\u2019re thinking about is the political aspect of this.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Yeah.<\/p>\n

RUSH: They are embarrassed, they\u2019re shaken, they\u2019re destroyed over the fact, what their kid did and what happened to their kid has got to be incalculable.<\/p>\n

CALLER: I mean, I know that we need to help the situation, but we need to give these people time to grieve on all sides. Pointing the finger is not helping.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Erin, are you kidding, the media, people — (laughing) No, no. People are expected to grieve on camera now. The media will show up on your doorstep and want in your house while you grieve. And they\u2019ll want to know if you or your son supported Trump while you\u2019re grieving. Erin, thank you so much.<\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: Here is Andrea in Saginaw, Michigan. Great to have you with us today. Hi.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Hi, Rush. First of all, I just want to say I hope you don\u2019t stay depressed because we\u2019re all here with you.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Well, I don\u2019t mean despondent depressed. I mean, look, this stuff does not make you happy. This stuff does not —<\/p>\n

CALLER: No.<\/p>\n

RUSH: It does not inspire yuks and grins. That\u2019s all I mean.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Yeah. No. I was actually sickened by a lot of the TV media about El Paso. They\u2019re trying so hard to get the mayor to blame somebody for it.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Dayton too. Absolutely.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Yeah. Yeah. So funny I came on after Erin. But the Endgame movies, the big, bad evil guy who was actually the bad guy, his main reason for doing things was a lot of what you read in that manifesto was about basically killing half of the population.<\/p>\n

RUSH: You know, I have never seen an Avengers movie.<\/p>\n

\"\"CALLER: Well, that was —<\/p>\n

RUSH: I read about \u2019em because the tech blogs are Millennial little guys that have never had to grow up. They still play with rockets and stuff.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Right.<\/p>\n

RUSH: And they just love the Avengers. The biggest thing in their life to date has been Avengers: Endgame when it came out. I\u2019ve never seen one of \u2019em. I think I tried to watch one with Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man, whatever it was. I couldn\u2019t — not my cup of tea. But I know people are devoted to them. So you think this kid, the shooter might have been affected by that? Is that what you\u2019re saying?<\/p>\n

CALLER: I don\u2019t know if he was affected, but he might have gotten the idea for his reasoning. I\u2019m not gonna say the movie caused him to do it because I know better than that.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Yeah.<\/p>\n

CALLER: But literature\u2019s been blamed for all of that for a long time.<\/p>\n

RUSH: But does it give you any pause whatsoever when the things these people say sound just like a Democrat Party debate? It does me. I mean, they\u2019re scaring people to death in the Democrat Party. The whole notion of dystopian apocalypse is straight ahead of us. It\u2019s got to be affecting people to some degree.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RUSH: None of us pulled the trigger, none of us want these things to happen, and yet we turn on the media and that's what we hear — and we're fed up with it.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":318065,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[12,1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nCallers Weigh In on the Causes of Mass Shootings - The Rush Limbaugh Show<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2019\/08\/05\/callers-weigh-in-on-the-causes-of-mass-shootings\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"Callers Weigh In on the Causes of Mass Shootings - The Rush Limbaugh Show\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"RUSH: None of us pulled the trigger, none of us want these things to happen, and yet we turn on the media and that's what we hear -- and we're fed up with it.\u00a0\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/APP-041819-Rush-Dittohead-Nation-Ponder.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"George Prayias\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"24 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/\",\"name\":\"The Rush Limbaugh Show\",\"description\":\"Excellence In Broadcasting\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2019\/08\/05\/callers-weigh-in-on-the-causes-of-mass-shootings\/#primaryimage\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/APP-041819-Rush-Dittohead-Nation-Ponder.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/APP-041819-Rush-Dittohead-Nation-Ponder.jpg\",\"width\":640,\"height\":360},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2019\/08\/05\/callers-weigh-in-on-the-causes-of-mass-shootings\/#webpage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2019\/08\/05\/callers-weigh-in-on-the-causes-of-mass-shootings\/\",\"name\":\"Callers Weigh In on the Causes of Mass Shootings - 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