America is reeling after a tragic weekend in which two mass shootings took the lives of 31 people.

Despite the obvious similarities between the hundreds of mass shootings over the past five years and manifestos from the killers that point directly to what and who inspired them, President Donald Trump and Republican lawmakers have repeatedly tried to find dozens of other causes to explain what is painfully obvious to most Americans: white supremacy and lack of gun control. 

The #MassacreMitch hashtag went viral this weekend because many said Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was partially responsible for the deaths. In February, McConnell blocked a bill passed in the House of Representatives that would have required anyone buying a gun to undergo a full background check.

As dozens of news outlets have noted, most Republican senators have a heavy financial incentive to fight any and all attempts to regulate gun sales in the U.S. 

Trump and some GOP leaders have reluctantly mentioned white nationalism and white supremacy as part of the impetus for the shootings. But in the same note, they have also floated tons of other reasons in an effort to skirt responsibility for the danger of the 45th president's racist rhetoric. We've compiled a list of the scapegoats Trump and his acolytes have used for the reasoning behind the mass shootings other than the glaringly obvious: white supremacy. 

1. Video Games

Since the Columbine shootings, Republicans have used "violent" video games as a scapegoat for the constant stream of mass shootings, and on Monday they continued to cite it.

During a speech at the White House on Monday, Trump said video games were part of the problem.

"We must stop the glorification of violence in our society. This includes the gruesome and grisly video games that are now commonplace. It is too easy today for troubled youth to surround themselves with a culture that celebrates violence," he told reporters. 

Texas GOP Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick told Fox News: "We've always had guns and we've always had evil, but what's changed when we see this rash of shootings? And I see a video game industry that teaches young people to kill."

Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy made similar comments in a Fox News interview on Sunday.


"But the idea of these video games that dehumanize individuals to have a game of shooting individuals and others — I've always felt that is a problem for future generations and others. We've watched from studies shown before of what it does to individuals. When you look at these photos of how it took place, you can see the actions within video games and others," McCarthy told Fox.

This explanation has been repeatedly been debunked by scientists, researchers, lawyers and even the Supreme Court. There is little if any correlation between video game usage and mass shootings, with some studies even showing that people who did play were less likely to commit these kinds of crimes.

In the Supreme Court case Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, the nation's highest justices said there was no evidence to prove any links between video games and violence. 

In a 2018 CNN interview, Moms Demand Action founder Shannon Watts said plainly that it was ridiculous to use video games as a reason for America's gun issues.

"Americans play the same video games, watch the same TV shows and experience mental illness at the same rates as our peers in other high-income nations. What separates America is our weak gun laws and unacceptable rates of gun violence. Americans want action on gun safety, not video games," she said.

2. Mental Illness

One of the go-to talking points after every mass shooting is mental health. Politicians now use it as a catch-all to explain dozens of horrific acts but make little mention of any concrete efforts to help people medically.

"This is also a mental illness problem. These are people that are very, very seriously mentally ill," Trump said from an airport before flying back to Washington D.C.

At his press conference on Monday, Trump said: “mental illness and hatred pull the trigger, not the gun.”

Leading Republican Senator Lindsey Graham mentioned mental health immediately in a series of tweets on Sunday and said the country may need "Red Flag" laws which would allow courts to temporarily stop certain people from buying guns.

For years, doctors have disputed the idea that mental illness was the primary factor behind mass shootings, pointing to the fact that almost no mass shootings are committed by women, who suffer from mental illness just as much as men.

The American Psychiatric Association released a statement on Monday slamming lawmakers and reporters for repeatedly claiming mental illness was the cause for most mass shootings.

"Mental health programs are severely underfunded in this country and access to needed care is challenging for individuals and families. It is important to note that the overwhelming majority of people with mental illness are not violent and far more likely to be victims of violent crime than perpetrators of violence," the statement said.

"Rhetoric that argues otherwise will further stigmatize and interfere with people accessing needed treatment," the APA continued. "Individuals can also be emboldened to act violently by the public discourse and divisive rhetoric." 

3. The Media, The Internet and Social Media

One of Trump's first tweets about the mass shootings this weekend placed some of the blame on "the media," which he said was the cause of division in the country.

In his speech on Monday, Trump made sure to tone down the rhetoric against the media but said the climate on social media would only push more people to commit more mass shootings.

The comments were extraordinarily tone-deaf to many who said that Trump is the main reason why discussion online has become so toxic.

In the last two weeks, Trump told four congresswomen of color to leave the country, joyfully tweeted about a congressman's house being robbed, threatened the prime minister of Sweden and repeatedly referred to the crisis at border as an "infestation" and "invasion." 

Much of this language was directly referenced in the manifesto sent out by the shooter in El Paso.

4. Lack Of Religion

Multiple Republican Congress members said the country's lack of Christianity was why there were so many mass shootings. 

During his Fox interview on Sunday, Texas Lieutenant Governor Patrick said the lack of prayer in public schools was one of the main factors behind mass shootings.

"[It's] Sunday morning when most of your viewers, half of the country, are getting ready to go to church and yet tomorrow we won't even let our kids pray in our schools. We have to look at ourselves as a nation, there are many factors that go into these shootings, many factors," Patrick said on Fox & Friends Sunday morning. "And it's not time to politicize it."

In Ohio, Middletown's Republican state representative Candice Keller wrote a lengthy Facebook post that included prayer and lack of religion as reasons behind the spate of mass shootings.

She said mass shootings were prompted by a "culture which totally ignores the importance of God and church (until they elect a President)."

5. Obama, "Drag Queen Advocates" and Colin Kaepernick

Keller's Facebook post became major news and even prompted calls from other Ohio Republicans for her to resign.

In her post, she said the blame belongs with former President Barack Obama, video games, members of the LGBTQ community, Colin Kaepernick and "open borders."

She included dozens of other patently offensive statements about the root causes of mass shootings, and local Ohio conservatives denounced her claims. The post was either removed from Facebook or deleted by Keller herself. 

Even the hard-right conservative sheriff of Keller's county, Richard Jones, slammed Keller for what she said in an interview with The Washington Post. 

“It’s an embarrassment. It’s shameful. It does not reflect our party, our community, or the people who are hurting right now,” Jones told The Washington Post on Monday. “She only left out people who look like her.” 

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