Guns good. Games bad. That’s the general sentiment expressed by speakers at the National Rifle Association, which held its annual meeting in Texas on Friday.
One speaker in particular, Fox News host Jeanine Pirro, cited violent video games and Hollywood movies as the spark that sets off mass murderers, according to Raw Story. She also told the audience of NRA members that alleged Boston bomber, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, has more rights than lawful gun owners. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the two Boston bombing suspects, died attempting to evade law enforcement.
Pirro’s reasoning is that Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick refused to release Tsarnaev’s confidential financial information on the basis of privacy while a newspaper in New York published a database of gun owners in two New York counties. The publication’s editors claimed it was providing information in the wake of the mass shooting at a school in Newtown, Connecticut.
“How dare you compare me to a nut-job on the lunatic fringe in desperate need of medication doing nothing but watching Hollywood’s blood-soaked movies and playing the liberal Hollywood’s violent video games for days at a time,” she said. The NRA audience applauded the line.
Pirro was referencing Newtown shooter Adam Lanza. Following his Dec. 14 attack, a former plumber of the Lanza family claimed Adam would stay locked up in the basement playing games like Call of Duty for hours at a time. This quickly painted a picture of an angry young man fueled by violent games that many gun apologists and others latched on to.
Lanza’s mother had a collection of guns that he used in the attacks. Classmates also suggested that Lanza suffered from Asperger’s syndrome, which is a variation of autism. Investigators never confirmed that diagnosis.