Maine Sportsman’s Alliance head blames ‘R-rated movies’ for mass shootings

Joining a chorus of Republicans in suggesting similar causes for last weekend’s mass shootings — one of which was carried out by a white nationalist targeting Latinx people in El Paso — the director of Maine’s biggest gun lobby placed the blame on movies and video games.

“If you watch a Hollywood movie, an R-rated movie, it’s likely you’re going to see mass killings during that movie,” David Trahan, executive director of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine, said in a radio interview on the conservative WVOM morning show on Monday. “The very same actors who are in those movies will then go home to Hollywood, and call for gun control.”

“That hypocrisy is so stunning,” continued Trahan, a former Republican legislator state lawmaker who served four terms in the Maine House and two terms in the Senate. “If we’re going to address this, we have to do it from the foundation of what’s causing the shootings, not just look at the weapon and say we’ve got to take them away. Because we can have that debate for another 20 years, you’re not taking the Second Amendment away. So, let’s have a broader discussion. Let’s just not make it all about guns.”

It is believed that both shootings were carried out by semi-automatic rifles with high-capacity magazines, all of which appeared to be bought legally.

Trahan called in to answer the question posed by WVOM co-host Ric Tyler to his show’s audience, “Can anything be done to stem mass shootings?”

During the interview, Tyler, who last week invited known white supremacist Tom Kawcyznski on to the show to express his views, also failed Monday to mention the explicitly white nationalist motives of the 21-year-old El Paso shooter. Before going on his rampage, Patrick Crusius posted a hate-filled manifesto on the platform 8chan ranting against immigrants, “race mixing” and the so-called Hispanic “invasion.” The latter is a description used frequently by mainstream right-wing commentators and Republicans including President Donald Trump and former Congressman Bruce Poliquin.



Experts who study mass shootings have noted that what sets the United States apart from other countries without a high and increasing rate of these kinds of massacres is both easier access to high-powered firearms and a normalization of white supremacist extremist beliefs.

“When you have politicians using language like invasion and infestation, it reinforces extremist beliefs in a way that makes them more legitimate,” Cynthia Miller-Idriss, a professor of education and sociology at the American University, and a senior fellow at the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right, told The Guardian.

According to the FBI, of the 850 most current domestic terrorism cases, 40 percent involve racially-motivated violent extremism, a majority of those cases involve white supremacists.

Rather than discuss these known details, Tyler asked Trahan about video games. “When active [first-person] shooter video games were on the rise, we saw a corresponding increase in this type of violence,” he claimed. “How can it be ignored?”

Trahan responded, “Well, it is being ignored. I know of a personal incident. I knew a young man, his name was Matthew, growing up. He was absolutely obsessed with with violent movies, with Friday the 13th–type movies, he went on to murder his family and burn his house down. And he’s now in prison. That there’s certainly individuals, I believe, who are susceptible to violence.”

Trahan then shared his belief that the recent mass shootings are a result of mental illness, ignoring ideological motives.

“It’s because we dumped our mental health facilities,” he said. “My point to this whole thing is that I don’t believe an inanimate object is driving people into insanity and into mass violence. There’s other things that are driving it. And let’s take a look at all of it,” he said.

This year, the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine, under Trahan’s leadership, lobbied against the passage of a “red flag” law that now allows police to temporarily confiscate guns from people considered by medical professionals to be a danger to themselves or others. Trahan told WVOM listeners that the group supported alternative measures that they believe would stem mass shootings. One of those proposals, which Trahan described as “incentive-based,” not “penalty-based,” would create a sales tax exemption on gun safes.

A young girl looks on as she attends a vigil for the victims of the recent mass shootings in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio, in Grand Army Plaza on August 5, 2019 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. (Photo by Drew Angerer | Getty Images)