THE LINK BETWEEN VIDEO GAMES AND MASS SHOOTINGS

       After the mass murder of at least 21 people in El Paso, Texas on August 4, 2019 and another 10 (including the shooter) in Dayton, Ohio the next day I looked for a possible link between violent video games and shootings. Video games were not directly encoded but the axis term VIOLENT GAME is shown at its minimum skip in Torah with VIDEO parallel to it at twice its skip. At the same skip as the axis term are THREAT and SHOOTER. Crossing the axis term in the open text is DO NOT CHEAT YOUR NEIGHBOR which could include Don't cheat anyone out of their life. Without counting the last phase because it was not found in an a priori manner, the matrix was found against odds of about 820 to 1.

EFFORTS TO BLAME PRESIDENT TRUMP. The Democrats immediately began to blame President Trump for the shootings in El Paso and Dayton. In the case of the El Paso shooter, he texted:  

"My ideology has not changed for several years," and "My opinions on automation, immigration, and the rest predate Trump and his campaign for president. I [sic] putting this here because some people will blame the President or certain presidential candidates for the attack. This is not the case. I know that the media will probably call me a white supremacist anyway and blame Trump's rhetoric."

In Dayton the shooter (Betts) clearly backed Elizabeth Warren for President, though he had kind things to say about Kamala Harris and Bernie Sanders. Betts described himself as left wing and Socialist. He also called himself a Satanist. I looked for mention of Satan on the matrix and could not find it. However I find that a very high proportion of the matrices that I find centering around tremendous evil have Obama at the same skip as the axis term. That includes the axis term ATOMIC HOLOCAUST. After 22 years of Codes research, while it may not be popular to say, Obama appears to fulfill the role that most people associate with Satan. There is so much evil encoded with this man that he has his own Table of Contents. See http://arkcode.com/cgi/wp/?page_id=45.

The mass murder of people in Dayton by a Democratic Socialist is reminscent of the attempt to murder the Republican Congressional Baseball Team in June, 2017. That included the horrendous wounding of U.S. House Majority Whip Steve Scalise.n

FIGURE 2: SURPRISE!  THE DAYTON, OHIO SHOOTER IS ENCODED AT THE SAME SKIP AS OBAMA. But why? Just read his tweets and it becomes obvious. Connor Betts, the Dayton, Ohio mass shooter, was a self-described “leftist,” who wrote that he would happily vote for Democrat Elizabeth Warren, praised Satan, was upset about the 2016 presidential election results, and added, “I want socialism, and i’ll not wait for the idiots to finally come round to understanding.”

FIGURE 3 - THE EL PASO SHOOTER. It isn’t just the Dayton shooter who is encoded. Figure 3 shows that the El Paso shooter (Patrick Crusius) can be found in the Code, but in a troubling way. Most often in the Code axis terms have 8 letters. That's true for CONNOR BETTS. But to write Patrick Crusius in Hebrew takes at least 12 letters, and names that long are almost impossible to find at an ELS in Torah. CRUSIUS, as spelled in the Hebrew edition of the Israeli newspaper HaAretz is the axis term on Figure 3. Because it is only seven letters I decided to look for his first name as a separate a priori term.  It was very close to CRUSIUS. In fact the two names touch each other and that's with the best spelling of PATRICK. PATRICK was found on the matrix at an ELS on the 225-letter matrix against odds of about 1,355 to 1. No extra credit was allowed for the fact that the names touch.

       With all these killings of late, as I often (but not always) remember to do, I looked for IN THE END OF DAYS. Now, it's true that I can't prove that we are in the End of Days, but this phrase (found 4 times in Torah) plays a major role in both Jewish and Christian eschatology. To my surprise, it's not only in the open text on the matrix, but it's also sharing letters with both PATRICK and CRUSIUS. But what does this have to do with violent video games? Well, as is shown on Figure 3, it turns out that there is a violent video game with the name END OF DAYS: SURVIVOR. I don't know if Crusius ever played it, but I would be amazed if he didn't play something like it. The game involves shooting massive numbers of zombies. IN THE END OF DAYS was on the matrix against odds of about 339 to 1.

       Although it does not appear that either shooter was working for another country clearly the Russians interfered in our last election with the desire to cause division in our nation. As such I sought the Russians along with Korea, Iran and China. RUSSIAN and a transliteration of KOREA are on the matrix. RUSSIAN is on the matrix at a special case skip - that of the axis term - against odds of about 169 to 1, sort of. Sort of? At first I coiuldn't see it. But then I saw it right before me - as four of the seven letters of CRUSIUS which is spelled qof RESH VAV SAMECH YUD vav samach. KOREA was on the matrix against odds of about 11.9 to 1. Perhaps it's on the matrix because in the End of Days we would have problems Russia and North Korea. We have sanctions in place against both nations.

       SHOOTER is on the matrix, but not at a special case skip (+/- 1 or the absolute skip of the axis term). It had about a 70% chance to be found somewhere on the matrix, however it should be noted that SHOOTER intersects and shares a letter vav with CRUSIUS. Overall Figure 3 was found against odds of about 439,417,044 to 1.This is extremely significant. Why did the Encoder make such effort. Knowing His Mind is not easy, but it may be that this shooting will play a more important role in history than other shootings. Why?

       With respect to the Dayton shooting it looks like the shooter was a left-wing nut with a previous history of mass threats. The news media seems to be ignoring the fact that he backed Elizabeth Warren for President. But the shooting in El Paso may foreshadow something much more ominous. Both events were clearly mass murder and both deserve the death penalty for the shooter. Connor Betts already paid that price in Dayton. It is likey that Patrick Crusius will do likwise. However with Crusius it is necessary to explain why he should be executed. First we need to remember that on October 29, 2018 President Trump tweeted:

Many Gang Members and some very bad people are mixed into thve Caravan heading to our Southern Border. Please go back, you will not be admitted into the United States unless you go through the legal process. This is an invasion of our Country and our Military is waiting for you!

        Did the U.S. military fire any shots to stop the invaders? No. Hundreds of thousands of migrants crashed through our border.

       Nineteen minutes before the first 911 call alerted the authorities to a mass shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Tex., a hate-filled, anti-immigrant manifesto appeared online. It spoke of a “Hispanic invasion of Texas.” It detailed a plan to separate America into territories by race. It warned that white people were being replaced by foreigners. The desire to stop an invasion is praise worthy, however the desire to separate America into territories by race is not. When Israel was reestablished in 1948 border settlements (kibbutzim) were set up to defend the borders from hostile Arab armies. The settlers helped the nascent Israeli army. But Crusius was not set up on the border to shoot at an invading army. He was at Walmart because he was lost and looking for something to eat. When he opened fire he did not discriminate between American citizens and foreigners. He opened fire inside the United States against American citizens. For this he deserves to die. But the longer it takes to complete the border wall, the more incidents like this are likely to reoccur. When Israel built its border wall that wall saved not only Israelis, but also Arab kids that wanted to get inside Israel to blow themselves up in order to kill Jews. President Trump is right in pointing to Israel for how to handle this situation. If there is political blame to go around it starts with those who oppose the wall and who want open borders - which means the death of America. Faced with that threat, if the U.S. military is not empowered with a way to save the nation we will likely see vigilante armies arise to fight a fight that is more in line with traditional American values.

 Now let's discuss, and where appropriate, criticize the following article which appeared in the New York Times on February 23, 2018.

DO VIDEO GAMES LEAD TO MASS SHOOTINGS. RESEARCHERS SAY NO.

By Maya Salam and Liam Stack .

My comments will appear in dark blue italic fonts. Some of them will be about one of my sons who will be referred to as "Junior."  We have a standing fight about his use of video games as nearly the soul source of entertainment and social "interaction."

       Movies are “so violent,” Mr. Trump said at a meeting on school safety on Feb. 22, a week after the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where, the authorities say, a former student, Nikolas Cruz, killed 17 people with a semiautomatic rifle. A neighbor of Mr. Cruz’s told The Miami Herald that he played video games, often violent ones, for up to 15 hours a day.

       “We have to look at the internet because a lot of bad things are happening to young kids and young minds and their minds are being formed,” Mr. Trump said at the gathering of lawmakers at the White House, “and we have to do something about maybe what they’re seeing and how they’re seeing it. And also video games. I’m hearing more and more people say the level of violence on video games is really shaping young people’s thoughts.”

I agree with the President. When Junior was very young (age 4) he was frightened by evil intentions portrayed by Scar in the Lion King. So too for evil characters in other movies. But when he got hooked on Pokémon and Yugioh cards, and related videos up through Star Wars and other war games he changed. I was not just seeing changes in my own son. With respect to the Pokémon cards at the time I was teaching in a middle school in West Palm Beach.  With the games came mass thefts and frequent related fist fights. The war games did not make him a killer. He is a brilliant scientist and mathematician. But it did affect him in terms of destroying empathy for others, and that in turn is likely to leave him single.

       “And then you go the further step and that’s the movies,” he added. “You see these movies, they’re so violent, and yet a kid is able to see the movie if sex isn’t involved, but killing is involved.”

Here I have two thoughts. In an effort to get away from his video games we generally take him to a movie every Sunday. Yes, there is violence in many of them though our preference is for science fiction or humor. We would never choose to see horror films. Where there are killings portrayed in films at least Junior is not the one pulling the trigger.

The argument became a common refrain after Columbine. 

       Mr. Trump is far from the first leader to argue that violence in video games or movies can lead to violence in the real world.

       A similar claim was made in the 1940s, when Mayor Fiorello La Guardia of New York argued that pinball — which was illegal in the city for over 30 years — was “dominated by interests heavily tainted with criminality.”

        I don't see this as a worthwhile analogy. Pinball doesn't adavocate murder or help anyone to prepare to do it.

       The argument that video games and other forms of violent media could be to blame for mass shootings became common after the Columbine massacre in 1999, when two students shot and killed 13 people at Columbine High School outside Denver.

       Bill Clinton, then the president, ordered an investigation into advertising practices used to sell violent entertainment.

       More recently, the position that video games may play a role in violent behavior is more often cited by conservatives. In 2007, one month after an armed student killed 32 people at Virginia Tech, Mitt Romney said that “pornography and violence” in music, movies, TV and video games were to blame for the carnage both there and at Columbine.

       And in 2012, after a gunman, Adam Lanza, killed 26 people, mostly young children, at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., Wayne LaPierre, who leads the National Rifle Association, put the blame on the entertainment media.

       He called the video game industry a “corrupting shadow industry that sells, and sows, violence against its own people” — naming games like Bulletstorm, Grand Theft Auto, Mortal Kombat and Splatterhouse.

        Now let's look at the opposition to blaming video games.

The evidence does not support the claim, scholars say.

       In a 2005 essay for PBS, Henry Jenkins, a professor at the University of Southern California, said that juvenile crime in the United States was at a 30-year low even though large numbers of young people play video games.

       “Researchers find that people serving time for violent crimes typically consume less media before committing their crimes than the average person in the general population,” he wrote. When it comes to video games, he said, “the overwhelming majority of kids who play do not commit antisocial acts.”

While that is true it entirely misses the point which I make on Figure 1's comments. Do violent video games lead to mass shootings? Usually, no. But are massing shootings often committed by young people who play video games. There we need more study, but the answer is often yes. So which question is the right one to ask? Likely the second one. why? In the first case if we outlaw violent video games it's true that players will argue that their rights were abused. However, while we have freedom of speech most of us know that we don't right the right to shout FIRE in a crowded theater.  When we consider the second question there is a shift in focus. Do mass shootings tend to be carried out by people who are addicted to violent video games? Here the focus is first on the shooting victims. These people have been cheated out of not just the right to play a game, but rather their lives or their health for the rest of their lives. True, not all shootings are carried out by video game addicts but for each one that we can prevent there will be many people who will not be killed, and along with them families that will not be destroyed.

       According to a 2015 study by the Pew Research Center, 49 percent of American adults — including roughly equal numbers of men and women — play video games, whether on a computer, a TV, a gaming console, or a portable device like a cellphone or an iPad.

       This statistic may foretell horrendous changes in our nation's morality. The mechanism of video game addiction is similar to that of drug addiction with respect to dopamines in the brain.  While most players are not murderers in the normal sense of the term, in 2015 there were 638,169 legal induced abortions reported to CDC from 49 reporting areas. The abortion rate for 2015 was 11.8 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15–44 years, and the abortion ratio was 188 abortions per 1,000 live births. The share of Americans who say they are “absolutely certain” God exists has dropped sharply, from 71% in 2007 to 63% in 2014. Junior's religious belief dropped sharply over the last decade.

       In Japan, about 60 percent of the population played video games in 2016, according to NewZoo, a gaming market research company. But almost no one is killed by a gun in the country, which bans possessing, carrying, selling, or buying handguns or rifles. There were only six gun deaths in Japan in 2014, compared with over 33,000 in the United States, according to GunPolicy.org, which tracks published reports on armed violence, firearm law and gun control.

        In 2013, The New York Times looked at research on whether games negatively affect long-term behavior, and more recent science does not contradict these findings.

A burst of new research has begun to clarify what can and cannot be said about the effects of violent gaming. Playing the games can and does stir hostile urges and mildly aggressive behavior in the short term. Moreover, youngsters who develop a gaming habit can become slightly more aggressive — as measured by clashes with peers, for instance — at least over a period of a year or two.

       This doesn't correspond to what I'm seeing with Junior. Rather than becoming more aggressive with his peers (in the 20s) he has become more withdrawn, but he is an adult. Still he was not a fighter as a child or teenager and he has been addicted to games since then. I regard the permission that I gave him to play these games during his teen years as my greatest mistake as a parent. It seems likely that unless he can break his game addiction he will never give me grandchildren. He agrees with that assessment but expresses no desire to change.

       Yet it is not at all clear whether, over longer periods, such a habit increases the likelihood that a person will commit a violent crime, like murder, rape or assault, much less a Newtown-like massacre. (Such calculated rampages are too rare to study in any rigorous way, researchers agree.)

       The argument that violent video games are to blame for real-world violence has been rejected by conservative titans including Justice Antonin Scalia. In 2011, the Supreme Court rejected the claim that violent video games promote real-life violence when it ruled 7 to 2 in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association that California could not ban the sale of violent video games to children.

The above ruling states that, "The most basic principle—that government lacks the power to restrict expression because of its message, ideas, subject matter, or content, Ashcroft v. American Civil Liberties Union, 535 U. S. 564, 573—is subject to a few limited exceptions for historically unprotected speech, such as obscenity, incitement, and fighting words. But a legislature cannot create new categories of unprotected speech simply by weighing the value of a particular category against its social costs and then punishing it if it fails the test."

Do we need a Constitution ammendment here? Aside from the fact that they are hard to obtain, many game players will fight the attempt to deny them of their pleasure.

              “Psychological studies purporting to show a connection between exposure to violent video games and harmful effects on children do not prove that such exposure causes minors to act aggressively,” said Justice Scalia, writing for the five justices in the majority. “Any demonstrated effects are both small and indistinguishable from effects produced by other media.”

Scalia may have been a great judge, but he is not infallible. New technologies often present many new threats to our wellbeing. Those that stand to profit from them will often take the path of the tobacco industry and do their best to protect their financial interests. It will be hard, if not impossible to outlaw video games. For now all I can do is to recommends to my readers that if they have kids they should not permit such games in their homes. Houses of worship would be well to make similar recommendations to their congregations.

       Figure 4 was "suggested" by my friends at Fort Huachuca. By suggested I mean that (while I was writing this article) Fort Huachuca reread my article about Maxine Waters calling for violence against Republicans. The Fort and I track each other constantly. Often I catch them doing something like this. I regard it as helpful. They seem to remember what I have written in years gone by better than I do.  As such this means that our relationship is almost symbiotic. 

       On June 22, 2018 Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House Press Secretary, was basically thrown out of the Red Hen Restaurant in Lexington, Virginia because Sarah worked for the White House. This outrage was then followed by Congresswoman Maxine Waters calling for violence against all of President Trump's staff and their families. Specifically she said, “If you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd, and you push back on them!” On the matrix below the axis term is MAXINE WATERS with MAXINE a transliteration and WATERS in Hebrew. Since news commentators and the President himself are talking about possible violent consequences of Waters' words, I checked the Code to see if there were hints of such action.  At the same skip as MAXINE WATERS is IMPEACHER, BLACK and SHOOTER. In the open text is WILL SURELY DIE. Who would be the target? The best answer is not so specific, but likely right. It is simply PEOPLE, which is a term in the open text close to SHOOTER. Trump was not found on the matrix although Waters is famous for her idiotic calls to "Impeach 45" (Trump is our 45th President). PRESIDENT is seen at skip +1, but this term is closer to IMPEACHER than to violent terms later in the matrix that are closer to Maxine Waters. CLINTON is also on the matrix at skip  -1.

STATISTICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE MATRIX. As per my usual protocol, no statistical significance was assigned to the axis term, here the third lowest skip of MAXINE WATERS in wrapped Torah. Two weeks into President Trump's term she was already on CNN talking about impeaching the President. By April, 2017 she was leading crowds is chants of "Impeach 45!" So it's not surprising that on the matrix the most significant term is IMPEACHER. Before considering ELS rank 3 of the axis term, IMPEACHER was found against odds of about 218 to 1.  PRESIDENT is on the matrix in the open text, but not in a really meaningful way. It had about 1 chance in 6.9 to be there. The threat of violence that many people were talking about is matched by WILL SURELY DIE which was in the open text against odds of about 16.6 to 1. It seems likely that sooner or later either a Trump lover will be shot by someone fired up by Waters, or a Trump hater will be shot by someone being harassed by a Waters fan. The difficulty in figuring out which will be shot is highlighted by the word PEOPLE in the open text against odds of about 5.89 to 1. Quite possibly, it will be both types of people (and, indeed, on August 3 and 4, 2019 we saw shootings carried out by both extremes). However we see that the word SHOOTER is there at a special case skip (+/- 1 or in this case the absolute skip of the axis term) against odds of about 10.87 to 1 and BLACK is at the same skip in the same column. BLACK is also in the open text. Odds against BLACK being at a special case skip were about 8.6 to 1. I have seen so many blacks on TV since Waters issued her call for harassment that is likely to result in violence and or death. So, given SHOOTER and BLACK in the same column with each other in 9 letters, and given that this column has the same skip as the axis term, we may well be seeing an indication that if a shooting occurs as a result of her remarks, the shooter will be black. CLINTON is on the matrix at a special case skip (-1) against odds of about 8.15 to 1.

       Overall, after factoring in ELS rank 3 of the axis term, the matrix was found against odds of about 37,463,979 to 1. However when looking at events related to the future where we don't know if they will turn out to be true, it's best just to look at the significance of individual terms rather than combined probabilities. By this rule all I can say here is that the fact that this woman's claim to fame is that she has been and wants to continue to be an impeacher. It seems likely that she will be responsible for getting someone shot. If she does some of that guilt should go to the media for giving her so much attention. Note: I wrote this a year before the El Paso and Dayton shootings. Waters is in part responsible for both.