GOP lawmaker: Mass shootings are result of children being taught theory of evolution
State Rep. Gary Hopper believes teaching children the theory of evolution results in a “hopelessness” that is one of the primary factors motivating teenagers to commit mass shootings.
In Hopper’s telling of evolutionary theory – which he recounted during an episode of his online talk show, “Rock, Paper, Hand Grenades” – “there was nothing, and out of some freak accident, everything.” The earth “just happened to be exactly in the right location for life to be created there,“ he said. “Life was an inadvertent accident.”
“If you are a child raised in a situation and you’re depressed, you could look at that particular piece of information and conclude that we are no better or worse than any other parasite on the planet,” Hopper said. “And if you follow the logic of the science in school today, not only are you a parasite on the planet, you are destroying the host that you are born on.”
“So that’s one variable. Hopelessness. No point. You have no point in your life,” Hopper concluded.
‘A problem that has many facets’
The eight-term Republican from Weare acknowledged there is no single factor responsible for mass shootings. “It’s a problem that has many facets,” he said.
Hopper identified three additional factors that, in his mind, lead to mass shootings: boys without a father figure in the home, the use of psychotropic drugs and media glorification of the shooters.
“40 percent of boys are raised without a biological role model in the home,” Hopper claimed. “When a boy is looking up to somebody for guidance, they’re not there – and mom doesn’t do.”
(A 2016 report based on statistics compiled by the U.S. Census Bureau indicates Hopper’s estimate is high. Researchers found that 69 percent of children under age 18 live with two parents and another 4 percent live only with their father. A study by psychologist Peter Langman, PhD, who has conducted extensive research on school shooters, did find that only 10 of the 56 school shooters he studied, 18 percent, grew up in a stable home with both biological parents.)
The third factor that Hopper blamed for mass shootings is the use of psychiatric medication. “Over 75 percent of the kids involved in mass shootings either were, or are, on psychotropic drugs,” he claimed.
“If you look at the psychotropic drugs, one of the warnings always is suicidal ideation,” he said. “If you have a tendency to want to commit suicide on a drug, it only stands to reason that some people want to do homicide on a drug because it’s basically a different side of the coin.”
(Another study by Langman concluded the “belief that psychiatric medications cause school shootings is not supported at either the societal or the individual level.” He added, “The concern about adverse effects of psychiatric medications is a legitimate concern and worthy of ongoing research. This concern, however, is not well served by assumptions, misinformation, and innuendo in the place of facts.”)
Finally, Hopper blamed the media attention that school shooters receive. “Most boys desire to be superheroes,” he said. “It’s just a predominantly male trait that we have this desire to be heroes or to do something profound in our lives.”
“The flip side of that is to be a supervillain. Any teenager that shoots up a school in today’s society becomes a supervillain. They’re all over the media, all over the world. Everybody knows their name, what they look like, what they did,” he continued. “They become a supervillain in a matter of a few minutes with a few guns.”
The guns ‘are not really that relevant’
“If we address those four things,” Hopper asserted, “I think we would go a long way to going back to where we were in the 70s, when you didn’t hear about school shootings.”
Hopper, the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary committee, rejected any suggestion that the easy availability of lethal, military-style weapons is a contributing factor.
“I used to take my gun on the bus to school because I was on the shooting team,” he said. “The guns, the instruments of destruction, are not really that relevant. They could have used pressure cooker bombs or whatever they wanted to do.”