Initial Report of Founding Conference of the "National Commission Against the New Violence"

Speech of Lyndon H. LaRouche
Speech of Lt. Col. David Grossman

                    Sunday, May 21, 2000                      |

     - INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON NEW VIOLENCE FOUNDED -
     

        The official founding of the International Commission on the
New Violence occurred in New York City yesterday. After an introduction 
by Dennis Speed, the meeting was addressed by Lyndon LaRouche and Lt. Col. 
David Grossman by phone. Preliminary transcripts of both of these
speeches are included below.
        The meeting then heard from Pennsylvania State Rep. Harold
James. Following a couple questions and answers, the plan was to
proceed with presentations by four other panelists -- Minister
Charles Quinn Muhammad, Jeffrey Steinberg, Dr. Abdul Alim
Muhammad, and Dr. Kildare Clarke -- with further questions and
answers interspersed. Also noted by Speed were several prominent
persons in attendance, whom he planned to have say a few words,
among them, Charles Billups of the Guardians in New York State, and
Delacey Davis of the Black Cops against Police Brutality; and Max Antoine, 
the victim of a brutal police beating in 1996. 
 
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        - LAROUCHE ADDRESSES THE FOUNDING MEETING OF -
            - THE COMMISSION ON THE NEW VIOLENCE -

{LaRouche's address to the New York City founding meeting of the
Commission on the New Violence on May 20, 2000.}

        LYNDON LAROUCHE: Let me begin by making a few observations
on the question of what we may call the specificity of New
Violence. Now by New Violence, we mean, by first approximation,
Nintendo killers in the military. We mean the replacement of
qualified police officers by Nintendo cops. We mean Nintendo kids
in the schools from the ages of 6-16. This is where the core of
the New Violence is located. It is not in the bullet, it is not
axe, it is not in the hammer, it is not in the fist. The violence
is not located in the physical act performed upon the victim. The
New Violence is located in the peculiarly perverted minds of the
perpetrators. The perpetrators are typically military
professionals, trained by the official military, or trained by
programs designed originially for the military. These are
Nintendo-style brainwashing techniques. This means Nintendo cops,
police officers who are not police officers any more. They're
merely Nintendo-cop killers. They have no sense of a human
relationship and their act on the one hand, and the effect on the
victim on the other hand.
        These are children who play Nintendo and Nintendo-style
games such as Pokemon, who are between the ages of 3 to 7-8, are
being brainwashed into becoming rage-controlled killers who will
kill with an adult, in an adult manner, but with a childish mind
which has no comprehension of the act which they're perpetrating.
It's something which they are just compelled to do. Littleton is
a paradigm of this problem.
        The difference between the New Violence and the old, lies
not in the victim or what the victim suffers, it lies in the mind
of the Nintendo-conditioned perpetrator. The controlling
motivation lies in a computer program, not in the human behavior
of the mind. This kind of motivation is peculiar to a society
which is brainwashed into believing in what is called an
Information Society, as opposed to the pre-so-called Information
Society. This causes a lot of controversy, because, when you get
to the point of pointing out where Columbine began, pointing out
where, occasions in New York and elsewhere, of Nintendo cops
putting 41 bullets into a man who had no reason to be a suspect,
before finding out who the man was, eh?
        The problem is, these acts have occurred; when you trace
them back to the cause, to the Nintendo-style training programs,
or the conditioning programs broadcast over the television
networks, distributed as games by game companies, game-selling
companies, are used to train cops, are used to brainwash the
military the way the cops are brainwashed, you then have to say,
What's wrong with society? This is the result of Information
Society. Now, Information Society is being praised from the
President on down, especially the President in charge of Vice, Al
Gore, as being a good. That is, the "New Economy." Everything
will be better in the Information Society. But it's the
Information Society that's killing! And when you attack that as
the source of the problem, you're running into some opposition,
and people don't want to hear about it, and say, "No! It's the
guns! Take the guns away!" It's not the guns. It's what's being
done to the mind. I have not seen a six-year-old child go into a
store to buy a weapon--whether the weapon is safely locked, or
not. That is not where the violence comes from from six-year-old
kids going into gun stores to buy guns. It comes from other
sources.
        The characteristic of this also means that we're dealing
with a society which is becoming dehumanized, dehumanized in a
way which is [was] not peculiar to our society in any previous
time. This is a process which has developed essentially over the
past 35 years, 30 years, which has become an acute problem in the
past 10-15 years. This is a new condition. But it means that when
people are so locked into the Internet, and the programmed games,
Nintendo-style games, and so forth, that their relations to other
people are no longer {human} relations, but are {dehumanized,
digital relations} controlled by a game. In other words, the
motive of the individual ceases to be the effect of their
relationship to another human being on a human level, but
instead, their motivation becomes their ability to perform
according to a program which is built into a digital computing
system, and once that's--
        Now, for example, we had on Friday, we had one of the
biggest collapses of the market, financial market, especially the
Internet market, the Nasdaq, that we've had to date. We are
seeing the inevitable doom of the existing financial system in
progress. We are being told, "No, this financial system is not
going to collapse, because it's a wonderful, good New Economy
system which is going to carry us to prosperity forever." But
then you go around the country--not only in the state of
Mississippi--where you find people saying the economy is booming.
Everybody's employed, they say. Well, how about the tax-revenue
base; where is the municipal income for the firemen, for the
police, for the schools, for the health care, for the other
things that the community, the local community, which the state
used to support? It's not there any more! Why not? Because with
working two or three jobs, instead of one, or one-plus jobs as
they used to work, they're now working two to three. And the real
purchasing power they're getting from two to three jobs per
person is less, far less, than the purchasing power they were
getting when they were working one to one-and-a-half jobs per
person.
        This is not only true in Mississippi, it's true throughout
the country. Local communities' tax-revenue base is collapsing.
This is not a prosperous economy. Nor is it a secure one. It's
one which is doomed. But the ideology here is: This is the New
Economy, the New Society, the Internet will bring prosperity.
        We have in the school system-- this is not just a matter of
money. The report is that half the pupils reaching the 8th grade
are illiterate. Now this is not just because of cutting the money
to school systems. This is because of an increase of the ratio of
bad teachers. And the bad teachers, who are producing this
illiteracy, eh?--are teachers who are responding to the new
ideology that corresponds to the New Economy.
        You have for example, in the nation as a whole, you have
hysteria. I'm getting reports from various parts of Europe--from
high levels from various parts of Europe, and from elsewhere,
from Mexico, from parts of South America, from Africa--people of
fair importance, hearing we're from the United States, say,
"Don't go back there again. They're insane!" They're talking
about the White House, they're talking about the Congress,
they're talking about influentials in the press. They're saying
the United States is the most insane nation on this planet.
[They] refuse to discuss anything until after the November
elections.
        And what's the insanity centered on? It's centered on the
Greenspan-Summers phenomenon. You have Larry Summers, the
Secretary of the Treasury, and Alan Greenspan--they are building
up the biggest hyperinflationary financial bubble in history as a
way of trying to prevent, or postpone the greatest financial
collapse in history. And there's no solution to that problem. The
system is collapsing now. It probably will not make it to the
August conventions of the Republican and Democratic parties. It
will not make it till November, in any case. The system is
doomed.
        But the whole society is characterized by hysteria. Hysteria
is based on confidence in Information Society, the so-called New
Economy. The hysterical belief: "You can not take this away from
us. We depend upon it. It's the only possible future. Don't try
to go back to the old kind of economy. It doesn't work. {It's
dead. It's dead. It's dead.} The New Economy is here, and we've
got to defend it to the last drop!"
        Now the New Economy mentality {is the same kind of thing} as
we're seeing in the Nintendo-killers in the military; we're
seeing it the replacement of qualified policemen by quick-trained
Nintento-killer-cops. We're seeing it in Nintendo-killer
children, our own children, in increasing numbers. Children from
the ages of 6 to 16. We had a case recently of a victim of
Pokemon--which is a killer program--if your child is watching
Pokemon as an addict, look out! He may kill you, or he may kill
himself. This child, four years old, tried to fly out a window,
and he flew to his death, because he believed he could fly,
because he was so much conditioned by Pokemon that he, as one of
the players of Pokemon, had the ability to fly. He flew, he flew
to his death. Other children kill other children under the
influence of Pokemon, specifically Pokemon. The same kind of
games are being pushed in schools, the same methods, the same
ideas are being pushed in the schools. So our children are being
destroyed under our eyes. And often parents who want to keep
peace in the family, will encourage their children to play these
games, because the parents either have their own entertainment
agenda, and they don't want to waste that on spending time with
their children, or something of that sort.
        So that-- the New Violence--it's very specific in the sense
it's a part of the Information Society lunacy which has taken
over the top level of the White House, as Larry Summers typifies
that, and many others, is also a symptom of a sick society. The
New Violence is separate, it's distinct, it's specific. But
society would not tolerate, would not take the Nintendo games to
its heart, unless the society were morally sick, and therefore,
we have to address the problem caused by the New Violence as the
Nintendo mode of conditioning, of Information Society in general,
but we have to recognize it's a symptom of a moral collapse of
society. And we have to recognize that the reason we're in this
mess, is because we've been doing something wrong. We've been
going along to get along, when something was wrong. And that
something that was wrong is about to destroy us all. Killing the
New Violence will not solve all our problems. But paying
attention to the immediate threat caused by the New Violence, and
paying attention which caused so many of us to become suckers for
tolerating the New Violence, should be treated as a warning sign
to us: Wake up! We're doing wrong. We'd better change it, while
we still can.
        Thank you.

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        - COL. GROSSMAN, CO-AUTHOR OF `STOP TEACHING -
  - OUR KIDS TO KILL,' SPEAKS TO COMMISSION ON NEW VIOLENCE -

New York City, May 20, 2000.

        {Colonel Grossman was introduced by Dennis Speed, who cited
his latest book ``Stop Teaching our Kids to Kill: A Call To
Action Against TV, Movie & Video Game Violence,'' which he
co-authored with Gloria DeGaetano.}

        COLONEL GROSSMAN: Thank you, Dennis, and my brothers and
sisters there in the audience. I am Dave Grossman, and I'd like
to talk to you about violent crime and the causations of violent
crime. And what I want you to realize is, we have to think of
violence like we would think of heart disease. It really is a
soul-disease, if you will. And many things cause heart disease.
There's obesity, overweight, does that cause heart disease? Yes.
Does a high cholesterol diet, or stress, or lack of exercise, or
genetics -- do all those things cause heart disease? Yes, we know
they do. If you take all the existing factors, and add tobacco to
it, the result is an explosion of heart disease, anywhere in the
world.
        Well, in the same way, I want you to ask yourself what
causes violent crime, or causes people to kill. Well, poverty,
gangs, drugs, availability of guns, child abuse, family breakdown
-- these are all important factors. But what we {know} is that if
you take the existing factors, and add the media violence --
television, movie, and especially now the video-game violence --
the result is an {explosion} of violent crime in any nation in
which it takes place.
        In America, since 1957, per-capita violent crime has gone up
approximately six- to sevenfold. Now, the first thing you have to
realize is, you have to ignore the murder rate, because medical
technology saves more lives every year. What you have to do is
you have to look at the aggravated assault rate, the rate at
which Americans are trying to kill one another off. And that has
gone up between six- and sevenfold -- per capita, now, we're
allowing for population growth in all these data.
        So, that's what's happened in America, and a lot of people
say, well, you know, it's all about guns. I testified before the
U.S. Senate and the U.S. House, and keeping guns out of the hands
of kids is a terribly important responsibility that everybody
from the NRA to the ACLU agrees on. When I testified before the
Senate and the House, a man by the name of Jack Valenti testified
with me. Mr. Valenti stood up in front of Congress, and said,
``This is not happening in other nations. It's all about our
guns. It's because the guns are there.''
        Well, again, guns are part of the issue, but the two killers
here in my hometown, in Jonesboro, Arkansas, at the age of 11 and
13, used an acetylene torch to try to break into a gun case. When
that failed, they stole a car, drove across town, and used a
crowbar to break into a law-enforcement officer's gun safe. What
I want you to realize is, that 15, 20 years ago, nobody would
have had a gun safe, and today that's the norm.
        The killer in Paducah, Kentucky, broke into a locked cabinet
in a locked garage in the neighbor's house. I was a consultant in
that case. And I tell you, that that boy went to an extraordinary
measure to get the guns that he used in that case.
        Additionally, the killers in Littleton, Colorado had adults
commit felonies to get the guns that they used in that.
        We are doing a better and better job of keeping the guns
away from kids, and we must continue to do so. But the kids are
going to extraordinary measures to get those guns.
        Well, as I said, Mr. Valenti stood up and said, ``It's all
about guns. It's not happening in other countries.'' And Mr.
Valenti's kind of a slow learner, because both times I stood up
and testified after him, before the Senate and the House, and
explained how this {is} happening around the world.
        In America, we've had a six- to sevenfold increase in
per-capita violent crime since 1957. In Canada -- in Canada, you
know, you've got a great nation. You've got all those gun laws,
you've got them semi-socialistic, paternalistic government,
you've got almost zero racial problems, and you've got the cold
weather that drives all the riffraff down to the United States,
you see. So, in Canada, since 1964, per-capita violent crime has
gone up fivefold. Attempted murders have gone up sevenfold.
        Across Europe and around the world we see the same
phenomena. In the last 15 years, in just 15 years that we've got
Interpol data, per-capita violent crime went up [audio static] in
Norway and Greece, it went up fourfold in Australia and New
Zealand. Per-capita violent crime in those same 15 years tripled,
tripled, in Sweden, and approximately doubled in 7 other European
nations. Meanwhile, in that same timeframe, we saw murder double
in India.
        Now, here's an interesting phenomena, and we're going to
come back to it over and over again. Television was placed in
every village in India in the late '60s and the early '70s.
Fifteen years later, the murder rate doubled in India. Anywhere
we saw television appear, around the world, Western television --
you see, in India, their favorite show was Starsky and Hutch, and
other such things. Anywhere that American violent media appear,
15 years later, the murder rate has at least doubled.
        Now, when we start thinking of the impact of the violent
video games, and the toxic material that's coming over the
Internet, when we think about that 15-year delay, you need to ask
yourself very, very carefully, what the world is going to look
like 15 years from now.
        Well, as we said, we saw India, with the doubling of the
murder rate in that vast nation, as the direct result of
television. We saw Brazil and Mexico had an explosion of violent
crime in the last 10 or 15 years. And Japan. Japan is a nation
with a homogeneous society, an intact family structure, universal
employment, draconian gun laws, an island nation. And in 1997
alone, we saw a 30% increase in juvenile violence in Japan. So,
again, what we're looking at is a worldwide phenomenon, in which
any nation which feeds death and horror and destruction to their
children, pays a tragic price.
        Now, a lot of people think that if we just outlaw guns,
it'll go away. And that's like saying, if we outlaw drugs, the
drug problem will go away. If we continue to glamorize drugs, and
every night the children are shown all of their action heroes
shooting up drugs, and smoking marijuana, why we know that it
would be virtually impossible to prevent the demand for drugs,
which will be met.
        In the same way, around the world, we're finding that it's
virtually impossible in a free society, to control the flow of
guns, if there's this {demand} for guns. I had a BBC crew in my
home, here in Arkansas, just a couple of months ago, telling me
about the explosion of guns that's coming into England. You can't
control all the drugs, and you can't control all the guns, and
the guns are worth more pound for pound than heroin is. And
people are buying the guns, and cases of [inaud] weapons are
coming into England, and the city of Manchester is now referred
to as Gun-chester.
        You see, the point is, that we cannot permit the mass media
to continue to glamorize violence and death and horror, and then
{think} that nobody's going to want the guns, and for some
reason, they're all going to go away if we pass magic law.
        Now, my friends, the very people that we count on to
{inform} us about the data is, the media, the television
industry. And they are systematically invested in misrepresenting
this situation. The AMA, the APA, the American Academy of
Pediatrics, the National Institute of Mental Health, the Surgeon
General, the Attorney General, the United Nations or the major
UNESCO study -- every major scholarly and medical body in the
world that's ever addressed the topic, has made {definitive}
statements about the link between media violence, and violence in
our society.
        I was on "Meet the Press" with our Surgeon General two weeks
after the Littleton shootings. They asked the Surgeon General,
they said, ``Can you do a Surgeon General's report on the link
between media violence and violence in our society?'' They said,
``You know, what the Colonel's talking about, talking about me,
it makes sense; maybe we are teaching our kids to kill. Can you
do a Surgeon General's report?''
        The Surgeon General, Dr. David Satcher, got this kind of
disgusted look on his face, and he says, ``Sure, I can do
{another} Surgeon General's report. But why don't we begin by
reading the 1972 Surgeon General's report that has already
established that?''
        Now, how many of you in the audience knew that the Surgeon
General says that there's link between tobacco and cancer? Raise
your hands. Of course you do. It's on every pack of tobacco you
see. Now, how many of you {knew} that the Surgeon General said
that there's a definitive link between television violence and
violence in our society? Let's see a show of hands. Now, I can't
see, but I'll bet there's not very many hands. Why don't we know
that, my friends? Why don't we {know} what the Surgeon General
has to say about a product that we inflict upon our children? Why
don't we know about the longitudinal study of 875 kids, across 21
years, that demonstrated the fact that the high-level viewers of
television were four to five times more likely to be violent
criminals. Why don't we know that? Why is the Surgeon General so
disgusted, at having to repeat studies that were done over a
quarter of a century ago?
        Well, the point is this, my friends. If you ask the
television industry about the link between their product, and the
harmful effects, they'll do the same thing as the tobacco
industry. Now, ask yourself. Up until just very recently, if you
asked the tobacco industry about the link between tobacco and
cancer, what will they do? Well, they will lie. You know how you
could tell the tobacco industry was lying? Their lips were
moving.
        In the same way, if you ask the television industry about
the link between their product and violence in our society, they
will do the exact same as the tobacco industry -- they will lie.
They will bring out their stooge researchers, their tame
scientists on a leash, that come out and claim that you can't
prove it. Now, my friends, I presented to the American Medical
Association, as a preliminary presenter, in their annual national
leadership symposium, earlier this year, and before the American
Psychiatric Association. In both of those cases, when we stood up
and talked about the health impact of media violence, they did
not invite the tobacco industry, or the television industry, to
come in, and tell ``their side of the story.'' The AMA and the
APA are convinced that there is no doubt about it: They are only
frantically searching for a way to get through the incredible
stonewall, by which the individuals who control the public
airwaves, are preventing us from getting vital information about
the health of ourselves and our children.

                    - Violent Video Games -

        Now, the most important point that I want to make today,
revolves around the video games, the violent video games. Now
what I want you to realize is that these video games have reached
a new level. All of the data, every lick and stick of the data,
on movie and television violence, causing violence in our socity,
applies directly to the video games, with bells on.
        Now, what will happen is, you'll see the video-game industry
say, well, that data doesn't apply to us. This is a new product.
That's like saying the data on cigarettes doesn't apply to
cigars. We know the violent visual imagery is having the exact
same impact on the kids. The problem is that this new medium, by
which the kids are learning violence -- and violence is a learned
skill, you learn it through visual observation -- but even better
than watching a training film, is partaking of a simulator.
        Now, these video games are simulators. There are flight
simulators, that teach you how to fly. And there are murder
simulators, whose only redeeming social value is that they teach
you how to commit the act of murder. If these things were rape
simulators, we would not tolerate letting our children play them.
And yet we sit and watch our children play endless hours,
practicing blowing people's heads off.
        Now, my friends, people are going to say this. They're going
to say, well, you know, that's just kids playing games. We played
caps when we were kids; you all remember playing caps? We had toy
guns. And I said, ``Bang, bang, I got you, Billy.'' And Billy
said, ``No, you didn't.'' So, I smacked him with my cap gun. And
he cried, and he went to his Momma, and I got in {big} trouble.
And you know what I learned? I learned that Billy's real. And
when I hurt Billy, bad things are going to happen to me.
        Now, in the violent video games, I blow Billy's stinkin'
head off in explosions of blood, countless thousands of times.
And do I get trouble? No. I get points.
        Do you understand the purpose of play, is to learn {not} to
hurt members of your society, and members of your own species. In
a basketball game, or a football game, when one of the players is
hurt, according to the rules, the play stops. That what makes
professional wrestling so dysfunctional.
        Now, my friends, listen. If you're an adult, and you enjoy
media violence, that's fine. I'm an adult. I like to drink a
beer, I like to shoot a gun, I like to smoke a cigar, I like sex,
I like all those things. If you give any of those things to my
grand-babies, you're a criminal. You understand? The things that
we enjoy, as adults, it's okay! But if you take the things as
adults, that you enjoy -- guns, pornography, tobacco, alcohol,
sex, cars -- and you give to kids, you're a criminal!
        Now, if you, if you want to play violent video games, and
you want to let your kid do it; if you want to have a drink of
beer and let your kid have a drink; if you want to shoot a gun
and let your kid shoot a gun, that's your business. But if I want
to make money selling guns, or beer, or pornography, or tobacco,
or violent video games to your kids, then that just became your
business.
        Now these violent video games are identical, as Mr. LaRouche
has said, to military-quality training devices. They make killing
a conditional response. I would refer you to my website, at which
I have three encyclopedia entries that I've written, and my entry
in the Oxford Companion to American Military History. I would
also refer you to my book on killing, and my new book. {Stop
Teaching our Kids to Kill.} ``On Killing'' is being used as a
text book in West Point, and in universities across the world. My
website is Killology.com, and on that website there are all these
extensive mainstream, peer-reviewed scholarly articles of mine,
demonstrating how the military has learned to turn off the safety
catch in human beings.
        You see, in World War II, we had a problem. And the problem
was that the vast majority of our soldiers would not fire. We had
magnificent soldiers. We had magnificent weapons. The problem
was, that we had crummy training. And in the training we taught
our soldiers to fire at bull's eye targets.
        Now, bull's eye targets. What is the fundamental flaw in
teaching your soldiers to fire at bulls' eyes. Well, as most of
you figured out, we have no known instances of any bulls' eyes
ever attacking any of our soldiers. If you want a soldier to be
capable of kiling a human being, he must rehearse on a human
being. Anybody that's been in the military in the last 40 years,
or law-enforcement training in the last 30 years, what you learn
to shoot at, was {not} a bull's eye target, but a man-shaped
silhouette that pops up in your field of view.
        You see, if I wanted you to fly a plane, I'd had to put you
in a flight simulator. A driving simulator isn't close enough.
Under stress, in the plane, your experience in the driving
simulator isn't close enough, and it won't transfer to the
reality. I've got to put you in the most realistic flight
simulator I can.
        And in the same way, if I want you to pull the trigger and
kill a human being under stress, I have to put you in a killing
simulator. In the military, in the law-enforcement community, the
conditioned stimulus is a man-shaped silhouette that pops up in
your field of view. Conditioned response -- you have a split
second to engage the target. You hit the target; the target
drops. Stimulus-response. Stimulus-response. Stimulus-response. A
few hundred repetitions of {that}, and then when an enemy soldier
pops up in front of our guys in Vietnam, boom -- we shot, and we
shot to kill. And we raised the firing rate approximately
fivefold; five times more individual soldiers, left to their own
devices, in Vietnam, were willing to fire than in World War II,
because of the training.
        Now, a bull's eye is completely different from a human
being, you see. Firing at bulls' eyes doesn't transfer to that
skill. There's a vast chasm between being a healthy human being,
and killing another being -- and most people cannot cross that
chasm. And firing at a bull's eye doesn't help. But firing at a
man-shaped silhouette, firing at a simulated human being, {that}
is close enough to the reality that I can use it as an
intermediate stepping, that it can prepare me, it can rehearse
me, mentally, for the act of killing.
        And then, in the violent video games, when I actually hold
the plastic gun in my hand, and I pull the trigger, and I feel
the recoil, and when I hit the target, the target drops, not only
do I learn the mental skill to kill, but I also develop the
physical ability to kill -- the pointing skills, the trigger
control, that allowed the young boy in Paducah, Kentucky to fire
8 shots, and get 8 hits on 8 different kids, a supernatural
accuracy.
        My friends, these violent video games are murder simulators.
They're not just murder simulators -- they are {mass} murder
simulators, because the child drills, and drills, and drills, and
drills, to kill every living creature in front of him, until he
runs out of targets, or he runs out of bullets.
        Now, in Paducah, Kentucky, in Pearl, Mississippi, in
Jonesboro, Arkansas, that we believe the boys set out to kill
just one person, usually a girlfriend, and then they kept on
firing, and they gunned down every living creature in front of
them until they ran out of targets, or were interrupted.
Afterwards, the cops asked the kids: "Look, you killed the person
you were mad at; why did you kill these other people? Some of
them were your friends." And the kids don't know. But {we} know.
Whatever is drilled in, is coming out the other end.
        Let me give you an example: Back in the old days, we used to
take our cops, and we trained our cops to fire revolvers out on a
range. Now, because we didn't want to have to clean up that range
afterwards, we'd have them fire six shots, and then stop -- and
we'd go kind-of King's ex-time-out for a minute. We'd empty the
expended brass from the revolver into our hands, and then we'd
put that empty brass in our hand, we'd reload, and we'd keep
going. Now you'd never, in the middle of a real life-and-death
gun fight, take King's ex-time-out, let me save my brass, put it
in my pocket, keep going.
        Guess what we find out real cops are doing. In a real
life-and-death protracted gunfight, they would end the gunfight
with a pocket full of empty brass, and no idea how it got there.
The point is, that two times a year, the cops would fire 60 shots
and save their brass; four months later, under extraordinary
stress, that's exactly what they're doing.
        Now, my friends, what are the kids being drilled to do? Not
to save their brass. They're being drilled to kill every living
creature in front of them, until they run out of targets, or run
out of ammunition, or are interrupted. {That's} what's happening
to our kids. And the result is, the kids have got the skill and
the will, to kill every living creature in front of them, until
they run out of targets, or run out of bullets.

                  - A Moral Responsibility -

        I want to wrap this up with kind of a model, and then I want
to give you a story to wrap it up with.
        The model I want to give up, is seat belts. Now, here's what
you're going to hear, guys. Katie Couric said this to me when I
was on the "Today" show. She said, ``Listen, I watched all that
violent stuff. I played these games, and it didn't bother me.''
She said, ``Well, why should I worry about my kids?''
        I said, ``Katie, you know, when I was a kid, I never buckled
my seat belt, and it never bothered me, so why should I buckle my
kids up?'' She says, ``Oh!'' Understand, when most of you in the
audience there, when we were young, we didn't buckle our seat
belts. But today, we buckle our babies and our grand-babies up
religiously. How did we learn to do that?
        Well, we knew we did something dumb, we knew we did
something wrong, and we were educated, and we did the right
thing. A lot of you out there, you did the wrong thing like I
did. I blew it with my boys. I got three boys that are grown now;
I blew it with them. But I've decided that I'm going to do a
better job with the grand-kids. And my model is my mom.
        When I had my first grand-baby, and he would sit beside me
in the seat, my mom, who was sitting in the back seat, reached
down and smacked me on the head, and said, ``Buckle that baby
up!'' I said, ``But Mom, you never buckled us up when we were
kids!'' And she smacked me again, and said, ``Don't be stupid!
Buckle that baby up!''
        That's exactly what we've gotta do. We've got to wake up.
Listen to what the AMA, the APA, the Surgeon General, National
Institute of Mental Health, the American Academy of Pediatrics,
has to say, and protect our babies, and protect our society, and
begin to confront an industry that is systematically selling a
toxic, addictive substance to children.
        I was on "Politically Incorrect" with Bill Maher and three
other Hollywood types. There was me, and four of these wacko
types; it was a pretty fair balance. And Bill Maher -- the people
there, these Hollywood types, this is their standard line. They
said, ``Look, we don't like all this violence. We don't let our
kids watch it. But it's what America buys, so we sell it. We're
gypped by the market place. America buys it, so we sell it.''
        I said, guys, that's drug-dealer logic. That's pimp logic. I
said, even drug dealers and pimps don't try to sell to little
kids. I said that, how does it feel to be functioning at a moral
level beneath the NRA, beneath the tobacco industry? The NRA and
the tobacco industry -- they accept regulation on their product
when it comes to kids. How does it feel to be the only industry
in America with a product that you know is harmful to children,
that you continue to insist on selling and refuse to accept any
regulation? Do you like looking at yourself in the mirror in the
morning, and you see a pimp, a drug dealer? Now, I don't think
they'll let me back on the show.
        But the point is, that this is a group of individuals who
are functioning at the lowest possible moral level. And we've got
to understand what's happening, and we can't let them get away
with it.
        And I'll tell you another obfuscation that they're going to
try to make. I was on a panel moderated by Larry King. And Larry
turned to me, and said, ``Well, you know, Colonel, the Bible has
lots of violence in it too. Should we ban the Bible, when it
comes to kids?'' I said, ``Larry, the difference is that the AMA
has not determined that the Bible is responsible for at least
half of all the murders in America.'' I said, ``Larry, we're not
talking about the written word. The written word can't be
processed until you're eight years old. It goes in the eye, has
to be decoded and processed in the logical center, and trickles
down into the emotional center. The spoken word can't be
processed until around age four. It goes in the ear, is decoded
and processed in the logical center, and it trickles down into
the emotional center.''
        But violent visual images, my friends, can be processed at
the age {18 months!} At the age of 18 months, the baby
comprehends completely what's on the television screen. The only
thing is, that it isn't until they're six, or seven, or eight
that they can understand that it's not real.
        Now, at the age of 18 months, it goes straight into the eye,
and straight into the emotional center. It's a powerful and
profound impact.
        These are the things you'll hear people say. ``Well, it
never bothered my kids. You know, gosh, should we be banning the
Bible too?'' They're going to turn around and say -- one of the
things you're going to hear, and here's my closing story. One of
the things you're going to hear, is, you're going to hear people
say, ``Well, if you don't like it, just turn it off. Don't worry
about what me and my kids are doing. You just turn it off.''
        And to people who say that, I tell a story that came out of
the shootings here in Jonesboro, in my hometown.
        I was out at the school as the lead trainer of mental health
professionals, on the night of what was the largest schoolyard
massacre in American history. At that time. It's since been beat
by the Littleton killings. And we were out there working in that
school.
        Now, the counselors that were working in the hospital that
day, one of those counselors came out ... and she had to debrief,
she had to talk to us, she had to tell us what had happened out
in that hospital that day. Now, to those people, whose solution
to this problem, ``If you don't like it, just turn it off,'' I
tell them this story that that counselor brought to us at the
school that night.
        She said, they were out working in that hospital, in that
emergency room, that small, small emergency room, with over a
dozen families in sobbing masses. Moms and Dads, and aunts and
uncles, and brothers and sisters, trying to come to terms with an
11- and 13-year-boy that had just butchered their little girls.
        In the middle of all of that, periodically, the doctor comes
out and pulls aside two parents, and says, ``I'm so very sorry,
but your little girl didn't make it. We did the best we could.''
        Now, this counselor said it had been going on for quite a
while, and all of a sudden, there's this lady that comes in.
She's all alone, she's got no friends, she's got no family, she's
got no husband, nobody. She comes walking into that emergency
room, and she sits down, and she's just staring off into the
distance.
        Finally, after she'd been there quite a while, one of the
counselors comes up to her, and she drops down on one knee, and
she takes this lady's hand, and she says, ``Can I help you?'' She
said, the lady looks me in the eye, and says, ``I'm the mother of
one of the little girls that was killed today, and I just want to
know, how do I get my little girl back? What do I need to do to
get the body back?''
        And they explained to her, that all of the ones that had
been killed today, had been sent to the state capitol, 100 miles
away, for autopsies. And when they were finished with the body,
they'd call her, and she could tell them what funeral home to
have the body shipped to.
        And you see it hadn't set in yet. And she says, ``Funeral
home. Funeral home. We can't afford a funeral. We can't even
afford a funeral.''
        You see, that little girl was all she had in all the world.
There was no husband, there was no friends, there was no family.
There was just her and that little girl, and she was going to
come to that hospital, and wrap her little girl's body in a
blanket and take her home.
        And for those whose solution to this problem is, ``If you
don't like it, just turn it off,'' my answer is, ``Come to
Jonesboro with your sad solution, my friend. Come to Jonesboro
and tell that mother how she could have kept her little girl
safe. 'Cause every single one of the victims of every single one
of the school shootings, their parents could have protected them
for a lifetime, and it wouldn't have been enough, if the parents
of one of the neighbor boys hadn't done their job.''
        What we have in front of us is a joint corporate, moral
responsibility, to reel in an industry that is systematically
selling death and horror and destruction to our children. And
around the world, as each new level of violence is sold to the
kids, and at young ages they suck this stuff up, 15 years later
we see the impact. God only knows what the impact is going to be
of what's being given to our kids now, but Paducah, and Pearl,
and Littleton, and Jonesboro, and Springfield, are an indication
of what's in front of us.
        And it's not going to stop, until we stop teaching our kids
to kill. Thank you and God bless you.