This video I found is from a post titled We Need Gender Control, Not Gun Control wherein Dr. Will Courtenay describes several fallacious points regarding men, boys and gun violence. My synopsis is given below.

0:00 to 39 seconds

He starts off by stating:

“We need to seriously start thinking about some of the gendered messages we give our kids… and not just kids, also men.”

He then talks about how the gendered messages the media sends to men and boys encourage men and boys to be violent, and that men and boys learn that violence is an effective way to get what they want.

2:00 onward:

Here he says:

We know that boys spend four times as much time playing video games as girls do and those are the messages that they’re getting when they watch and play those video games, we also know from some very sophisticated research now that boys who play those video games, particularly interactive video games, that those boys are more likely to engage in risky and dangerous behavior. … We know from national data that boys are more likely to go without needed mental health treatment, that is a fact, and thats the fact that we really need to address as a country if we’re going to try to stop the kinds of violence that we’re seeing boys perpetrate. … We really have to look at gender, all of the talk invariably turns to gun control and stricter gun control laws, and that’s an important discussion to have, but we’re not asking the most important question, which is, why is it that men and boys kill with guns? and y’now any effective answer to the problem of gun violence needs to begin with the question about gender, about boys and men, otherwise we’re never going to figure out why it is that boys and men kill?

Sheesh, where to begin with this. Let’s start with wider societies favorite scapegoat, the diabolical media and it’s equally pervasive cousin, the video game industry.

we know that boys spend four times as much time playing video games as girls do, and those are the messages that theyre getting when they watch and play those video games, we also know from some very sophisticated research now that boys who play those video games, particularly interactive video games, that those boys are more likely to engage in risky and dangerous behavior

Over and over we hear this fear mongering threat narrative of video games corrupting our innocent youth, and over and over again it is shown to be categorically untrue. This post titled Study finds no evidence violent video games make children aggressive is only the most recent offering of study after study showing that violent video games do not translate to violent children, including of course in regard to the boys that overwhelmingly play them, the article states:

Playing violent video games is no more likely to be damaging to young children’s behaviour than those considered harmless, an Oxford University study suggests.

Research involving British primary schoolchildren found that the length of time young people spend playing games, rather than their content, could have an effect on their behaviour or school performance – and even then only slightly so.

But it concluded that fears that a generation of young people are growing up with their development impaired by exposure to violent video games are no more likely to be borne out than previous “moral panics” over television and other media

Despite uptight moral outrage evangelists on every side of the political spectrum, a foray into the world of Doom, or Call of Duty, or Halo etc. will definitively not result in an apocalyptic army of testosterone crazed adolescents going on shooting sprees… life unfolds, every day, with a statistically trivial amount of mass shootings occurring in real life, despite a daily, online virtual mass first person shooter slaughter taking place that would make the invasion of normandy seem like a walk in the park by comparison. Video games categorically do not cause increased violence and I’d love to see these supposed “sophisticated studies” that Courtenay claims to show otherwise.

We know from national data that boys are more likely to go without needed mental health treatment, that is a fact, and that’s the fact that we really need to address as a country if we’re going to try to stop the kinds of violence that we’re seeing boys perpetrate.

This is likely partially true, it wouldn’t surprise me at all to learn that boys are more likely to go without mental health treatment, and yes we need to talk about it, no argument there. I suspect however that talking about these issues with the likes of Courtenay and the band of women that seem to be gobbling up his misandrous statements would devolve fairly quickly into a pathologizing of everything male. I wonder if Courtenay would ever work up the nerve to tell these same women about how women are more likely than men to kill their young children, perhaps a pow wow about the problem of female violence is needed now? Nah, that wont sell his books after all. I stumbled recently on an article titled When a Man Asks for Help, He’s Considered a Less Competent Leader, Study Says, lets have a read.

No man is an island, entire to himself, but he’d better act like one anyway if he wants to be considered a leader, new research says. A team of scholars led by Prof. Ashleigh Shelby Rosette, of Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, performed two experiments to reach that conclusion. Their ultimate takeaway: Of course men have to ask for help when they lead, but they’d better be careful about it.

First they gave questionnaires to 144 lucky business school students who participated in “leadership ventures” that included ski-sledding in Anarctica, climbing a volcano in Ecuador, and taking a safari across the plains of Africa. Each group had a leader of the day every day. Half the questionnaires asked about how competent those daily leaders were; the others asked how much they asked for help. The results showed that male leaders who asked for help were considered less competent than ones who didn’t, but female leaders who asked for help suffered no such loss of respect.

Is it any wonder why men reach out less in regards to securing help in combatting mental illness? You won’t hear about any of this from Courtenay, because unfortunately in our society it’s much easier to blame irrelevant intangible factors like video games or the media or whatever the current en vogue moral panic is, instead of asking the uncomfortable question;

Do we, as a society, expect men to withstand much more pressure than women before they can ask for help? If we subjected women to the same pressures as men, would you not see an increase in female violence when more women inevitably crack under the pressure?

We really have to look at gender, all of the talk invariably turns to gun control and stricter gun control laws, and thats an important discussion to have, but we’re not asking the most important question, which is, why is it that men and boys kill with guns? and y’now any effective answer to the problem of gun violence needs to begin with the question about gender about boys and men, otherwise we’re never going to figure out why it is that boys and men kill?

Ahh and here we see the proposed solution, punish those penis-having violence prone monsters by selectively infringing on their second amendment rights…and theirs only. Now, this post isn’t intended to tell you what to think about gun control, but it does intend to highlight how gun control is often used in targeted ways to demonize certain demographics, in this case, men and boys. It’s amazing how Courtenay starts off this discussion by talking about the negative messages our society sends to men and boys, while he ends the discussion by implying that we need to be extra careful about the male sex having access to firearms. What type of message does that send? it sounds a lot to me like you’re telling boys that they are more likely to be killers by virtue of their genitals alone, that wont leave a lasting impression on boys… right?

The truth is, no matter where you stand on the issue of gun control, you should be very very afraid when society starts raising the question of whether or not they need to be especially concerned about this or that demographic specifically owning guns. Before 1967 the state of California was an open carry state, armed black panthers exercising that right put a quick end to that however, paving the way for the signing of the Mulford act by then governor of California Ronald Reagan…

I’d love to hear what the modern day gipper worshiping tea party has to say about their dear leader blaspheming the constitution with his gubernatorial gun grabbing, but let’s not pretend for a second that it is only those on right-wing that do this, lest we forget when lefty social justice warrior Andrea Grimes tweeted the following.



Thats right take all the guns from evil whitey, all in the name of equality… or something.

The most worrying development regarding this issue I’ve seen comes from this article however, titled Restraining Orders, But For Guns. Here are the relevant bits:

Jared Loughner’s parents knew he could be dangerous. In the months before his shooting rampage in a Tucson parking lot, they took away his shotgun. They disabled his car at night. They advised him to seek mental health care. But none of those actions stopped Loughner from purchasing a handgun and taking a taxicab to an event where Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was speaking. He opened fire, killing six people and injuring 13 others, including Giffords.

“The parents identified this risk, and—my goodness—they were taking some really bold steps to try to prevent what happened, but it wasn’t enough,” said Shannon Frattaroli, a gun violence prevention researcher at Johns Hopkins University. “They didn’t have enough tools at their disposal to prevent that new purchase.”

Frattaroli is a coauthor on a new paper in the journal Behavioral Sciences & the Law, which advocates for a new option for parents like Loughner’s: gun violence restraining orders (GVRO). Like a domestic violence restraining order, GVROs give families an option to petition a court when they fear the actions of a loved one.

In September 2014, California became the first state to establish a GVRO system. When the law comes into effect in 2016, immediate family members and domestic partners will be able to petition courts to have guns removed from those they fear may act in violence, and prohibit them from purchasing firearms for the length of the restraining order. Law enforcement officers also will be able to request GVROs. Initial restraining orders will last up to 21 days, but can be extended to one year.

To be fair, the proposal seems to be steered at allowing relatives to file one of these “gun violence restraining orders” in order to prevent their mentally ill relatives from having access to firearms, but we need to ask ourselves whether or not it’s a great idea to allow ones relatives to unilaterally petition the government to remove your second amendment rights.



When the law comes into effect in 2016, immediate family members and domestic partners will be able to petition courts to have guns removed from those they fear may act in violence, and prohibit them from purchasing firearms for the length of the restraining order.

Family members and “Domestic partners”? hmm, how long before women use this against men who own firearms to legally disarm them by filing a GVRO, using it to help her acquire custody in the family courts? do women not do this already with regular restraining orders? Why wouldn’t they add this to their list of options for disenfranchising men via the state? the most disturbing part is this:

Gun-rights advocates are worried about due-process rights and vagueties in the law. GRVOs will be decided ex parte, meaning the person who stands accused does not need to be involved in the proceedings. A person can have his or her firearms taken away before getting the chance to contest the order.

Just..wow, ask yourself the question, can jilted ex wife or your baby’s mother use this law unfairly and maliciously against you? I’ll let you dwell on that for a while.