Black cites violent films, porn as ‘root causes’ for school shootings

U.S. Rep. Diane Black (R-Gallatin) speaks at a Republican event in Nashville on May 7, 2018. (Erik Schelzig, Tennessee Journal)

Violent movies and pornography are causes for school shootings, Republican gubernatorial candidate Diane Black told ministers last week.

“Pornography. It’s available. It’s available on the shelf when you walk in the grocery store. Yeah, you have to reach up to get it, but there’s pornography there,” Black said according to an audio recording  obtained by the Huffington Post. “All of this is available without parental guidance, and I think that is a big part of the root cause that we see so many young people that have mental illness caught in these places.”

 The congresswoman from Gallatin was speaking to ministers at Safe Harbor in Clarksville.  She said the “deterioration of the family” and and the lack of a good support system was causing children go go astray.

“What do they say about idle hands?” she said. “The devil’s workshop.”

Here is a full transcript of Black’s comments:

“Why is that happening? Why do we see kids being so violent? What’s out there? What makes them do that? Because, as a nurse, I go back to root cause. And I think it’s a couple things. I think it’s deterioration of the family. They don’t have the good support system, so they’re looking for something. And where are they looking areas — what do they say about idle hands? The devil’s workshop.

“So they’re looking for something maybe on the internet, maybe with a small group of friends, and they’re going in the wrong direction. Violent movies.  I mean today, I still cannot watch one of those violent movies where people are getting blown up. Because I’m not desensitized to that. I didn’t watch that when I was a kid.

“And now my grandchildren that are 15 and 16, they go watch those kind of movies, and I call my daughter. I am really concerned that they’re watching those movies and it doesn’t even make them go ooh. For me, I watch them, my husband wants me to sit down and watch some of those blow ’em up movies and I’m like I can’t do it. Because I’m so sensitized to that, because that’s not what I saw when I was a kid.

“Pornography. It’s available. It’s available on the shelf when you walk in the grocery store. Yeah, you have to reach up to get it, but there’s pornography there. All of this is available without parental guidance, and I think that is a big part of the root cause that we see so many young people that have mental illness caught in these places.

“Every one of those school shootings, and I’ve read the details on them, go back to looking at that child and their friends can actually pinpoint a time when they saw the change in their behavior. This last young man, when it first came out the story was nobody saw anything that was evident there. And the more they dug into it, the more they interviewed kids, they said, yeah, we saw him where he wouldn’t sit with us at the lunch table. Then we saw where he wasn’t coming to school. Then we saw where he was wearing a long trench coat in hot weather. Those were all signs. Those were signs that something’s going on.

“So I believe mental illness is something we have got to address, we’ve got to address the family, we’ve got to find ways that even if we have a pregnancy where we don’t have both of the parents married, they still understand they’re a parent and what that mom was carrying is the most important thing they’ll ever even realize.”