School shootings: Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin blames violent video games and shows, not guns

It's not the guns, it's the video games.

A day after a former student opened fire at a high school in Parkland, Florida, killing 17 people, Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin called for the nation to consider restrictions on violence in video games and movies, not guns.

"We need to have an honest conversation as to what should and should not be allowed in the United States as it relates to the things being put in the hands of our young people," Bevin told The Enquirer during a stop in Covington on Thursday.

What shouldn't be put in the hands of young people? Violent video games and movies, Bevin said.

"I'm a big believer in the First Amendment and right to free speech, but there are certain things that are so graphic as it relates to violence, and things that are so pornographic on a whole another front that we allow to pass under the guise of free speech, which arguably are," Bevin said. "But there is zero redemptive value. There is zero upside to any of this being in the public domain, let alone in the minds and hands and homes of our young people."

As the school shootings mount, so has pressure on politicians to strengthen gun control laws.

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Three weeks earlier in Bevin's own state, a 15-year-old student at a high school in western Kentucky shot and killed two people and wounded 16.

Since taking office two years ago, Bevin has often lashed out at calls for gun control in the wake of shootings. "You can't regulate evil," Bevin tweeted in the wake of the Las Vegas shootings.

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Why's he convinced that it's video games and not guns? Because when he went to school in New England, students would bring guns in for show-and-tell.

"Sometimes they'd be in kids' lockers," Bevin said. "Nobody even thought about shooting other people with them. So it's not a gun problem."

Bevin claimed there were more guns per capita 50-100 years ago than now. A report commissioned by Congress in 2012 disputed that. The number of firearms per capita in the United States doubled since 1968, going from one firearm for every two people to one firearm for every person, according to the report performed by the Congressional Research Service.

Bevin, however, sees the spree of shootings as a cultural problem, not a firearm problem. And he sees violent entertainment as the root of that cultural problem.

"Go back before any of this existed," Bevin said. "How many children walked into other schools and slaughtered other children? What more evidence do you need? The people who say there is no evidence are full of crap."

Bevin wouldn't say what he thinks the threshold should be for too much violence in entertainment.

"Let's start a conversation," Bevin said.