When a national tragedy occurs, everyone has a quick take on it. While some are reasonable and thoughtful, others are confusing and may have nothing to do with what actually happened.
Here are a few reactions to the tragic school shooting on Wednesday in Parkland, Florida, that you may have missed:
No. 1: This is why we need abortions
Actress and former model Rebecca Griffin chose to use the death of 17 students and school staff to further her stance on abortion.
“Woman puts baby up for adoption, he grows up to be a violent young man who will spend the rest of his life in prison for a mass murder. Tell me more about how abortions are wrong,” Griffin tweeted Thursday.
Woman puts baby up for adoption, he grows up to be a violent young man who will spend the rest of his life in priso… https://t.co/u0USUWW6oo— Rebecca is high risk 🍀 🏀 (@Rebecca is high risk 🍀 🏀)1518729007.0
After fierce backlash, Griffin would go on to blame readers for failing to properly comprehend her tweet and saying that her point was based on research showing that mental health issues are genetic, and therefore, the unfit parents of shooter Nikolas Cruz, who gave him up for adoption, are to blame for it.
She also repeatedly tweeted a link to a research paper that claimed to offer evidence that legal abortion leads to a decrease in crime.
No. 2: Video games are the real problem
Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin said a “culture of death that is celebrated” is the problem that leads to mass shootings:
There are video games that, yes, are listed for mature audiences, but kids play them and everybody knows it, and there’s nothing to prevent the child from playing them. They celebrate the slaughtering of people. There are games that literally replicate and give people the ability to score points for doing the very same thing that these students are doing inside of schools, where you get extra points for finishing someone off who’s lying there begging for their life.
Bevin didn’t call for a ban on violent video games, but questioned why games like that needed to exist. “This is a cultural problem,” he said.
No. 3: Boys are broken and masculinity is toxic
Actor and comedian Michael Ian Black blamed a culture of “caveman” masculinity that has created broken boys who are prone to expressing themselves through violence.
“Deeper even than the gun problem is this: boys are broken,” Black tweeted Wednesday. “Until we fix men, we need to fix the gun problem.
“The last 50 years redefined womanhood: women were taught they can be anything. No commensurate movement for men who are still generally locked into the same rigid, outdated model of masculinity and its killing us,” he said.
