Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has vowed to get to the bottom of whether there is a connection between video games and mass shootings in America.
On Tuesday, amid calls for his resignation, Kennedy and the Make America Healthy Again Commission held an hour-long event to discuss the committee’s report on children’s health. During the proceedings, Kennedy discussed the topic of mass shootings.
“Switzerland has a comparable number of guns as we do, and the last mass shooting they had was 23 years ago,” said Kennedy, 71. “We have a mass shooting every 23 hours.”
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“There are many things that happened in the 1990’s that could explain these,” he added. “One is the dependence on psychiatric drugs... there could be connections with video games and social media.”
Kennedy concluded by noting the NIH is “initiating studies” that “look at the correlation and connection between overmedicating our kids and this violence, and these other possible co-founders.”
American politicians and anti-video game activists have attempted to paint video games as a cause for gun violence for decades, but experts have asserted there is no correlation between video games and mass shootings.
In 2019, the American Psychological Association published a report from psychology professor Patrick Markey, PhD, that described video games as a “red herring” to distract from other potential causes of mass shootings. Markey’s study also discovered that “video games” are talked about as a potential cause for shootings more often when the perpetrator behind a recent mass shooting is white.
Kennedy’s comparison between Switzerland’s gun rates and the United States’ is a familiar talking point for pro-gun activists like the NRA. Roughly 3-in-10 citizens in both Switzerland and the United States own guns, and Switzerland has a much lower rate of gun-related crime. As a result, pro-gun activists have long pointed to Switzerland as a way to refute the idea that the proliferation of guns leads to mass violence.
The claims have led to significant research investigating why Switzerland’s gun-related crime rate is so much lower than the United States. A study published by Science Direct in August of 2024 suggested a myriad of factors could explain the discrepancy in the two nations’ crime rates. For example, Switzerland has significantly stricter barriers to gun ownership than the United States, and only ex-military personnel in Switzerland are allowed to keep their gun in the house.
Switzerland also has access to psychiatric medicine, video games, and social media.
The HHS declined to expand on Secretary Kennedy’s comments.
