This year, there has been, on average, one school shooting a week where someone was hurt or killed in America. According to a Washington Post analysis, the number of people killed in American schools in 2018 is “nearly double” the number of people who have been killed while serving in the military. There is nowhere else in the world, barring war zones, where kids have to worry about dying in their classrooms.

And yet, instead of taking steps to implement commonsense gun control, many politicians are taking to the media to explain, yet again, that guns aren’t actually the cause of gun violence. No, the real cause of mass shootings, the Texas lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, explained on Saturday, is doors. “There are too many entrances and too many exits to our over 8,000 campuses in Texas,” Patrick said. “There aren’t enough people to put a guard in every entrance and exit.” Patrick’s call for “door control” was quickly mocked. Indeed, former government ethics director Walter Shaub pointed out that “Texas has stricter regulations for doors than it does for guns”.

And it’s not just doors that are the problem, according to some lawmakers. Over the years, American politicians have blamed gun violence on just about anything that isn’t a gun …

Abortions

This is another Patrick special. Speaking to ABC’S This Week on Sunday, Patrick cited abortion as one reason disenfranchised kids were shooting up schools. Patrick said: “We have 50 million abortions. We have families that are broken apart, no fathers at home … And we stand here and we wonder why this happens to certain students.”

Backpacks

After the Parkland shooting, Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school put in place a transparent backpack policy: students weren’t allowed to use rucksacks unless they were clear.

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Decline in family values

In 2013, PoliceOne, a news site aimed at law enforcement officers, conducted a survey about gun control among about 15,000 verified law enforcement professionals. Thirty-eight per cent of respondents believed that a “decline in parenting and family values” was the biggest cause of gun violence in the US. Only 4.4% thought that guns being too prevalent and easy to obtain was the real problem.

Marilyn Manson



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Forget guns, it’s Marilyn Manson that’s the problem. Photograph: Christian Palma/AP

In 1999, controversial singer Marilyn Manson was partly blamed for the Columbine high school shooting which left 15 people dead. It was thought that the shooters were fans of Manson’s and were inspired by his lyrics.

Mental health

The argument that mass shootings are caused by mental illness is wheeled out after every attack perpetrated by a white person. (If a brown person is involved then mental illness obviously has nothing to do with it, it’s terrorism.) While mental health probably plays a role in many shootings, it should be said that there is clear evidence that most mentally ill people do not go around shooting other people. According to a 2015 research paper on mental illness and gun violence, “the large majority of people with serious mental illnesses are never violent”. Further, mental health issues are not unique to America; the epidemic of gun violence is, however.

People

As we all know, guns don’t kill people, people kill people.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest How about we ban idiots and guns? Just a thought. Photograph: Julie Dermansky/The Guardian

Ritalin



On Sunday, Oliver North, the incoming NRA president, blamed the Santa Fe shooting on “young boys [who] have been on Ritalin since they were in kindergarten”. America’s prescription pill habit is a real problem that warrants discussion. However, you can’t shoot people with Ritalin last time I checked.

Schools

On Friday, Jonathan Stickland, a Texas state representative tweeted that he’s been “hearing from many parents they’re scared to send their kids to school. We need to give them as many different choices as possible.”

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Video games

Video games are a favourite scapegoat for shootings. And unlike guns, politicians seem very keen to do something about videogame control. Following February’s Parkland shooting, Trump invited video game executives to the White House to discuss how exposure to violent video games desensitized children. And after the Sandy Hook attack, Barack Obama said: “Congress should fund research into the effects that violent video games have on young minds.”

Women

“Texas school shooter killed girl who turned down his advances and embarrassed him in class, her mother says,” reported the LA Times over the weekend, in response to the Santa Fe school shooting. The LA Times wasn’t alone in insinuating that, if only women were just a little bit nicer to guys who are harassing them, then nobody would get killed. Jordan Peterson recently told the New York Times that there is a very easy way to stop so-called incels from violently murdering people. “He was angry at God because women were rejecting him,” Peterson said in reference to the Toronto man who killed 10 people with a van in April. “The cure for that is enforced monogamy.” Now, the Toronto killer used a van, not a gun, but give it time and we’ll see Republicans explain how “the redistribution of sex” is a better way to solve gun violence than doing something about the distribution of guns.