Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick laments video games, social media after El Paso shooting

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick pointed Sunday to the video game industry and social media as areas to look into after a mass shooting in a shopping area in El Paso on Saturday killed at least 20 people.

“Let’s condemn it for what it is: evil,” Mr. Patrick said on Fox News. “And I say how long are we going to let, for example, and ignore at the federal level particularly where they can do something about the video game industry?”

He said a “manifesto” believed to have been posted online by the alleged El Paso shooter includes talk about living out a “Call of Duty”-style “super solider fantasy.”

“We know that the video game industry is bigger than the movie industry and the music industry combined,” Mr. Patrick said.

“We’ve always had guns; we’ve always had evil, but what’s changed where we see this rash of shooting? And I see a video game industry that teaches young people to kill,” he said. “This was maybe a video to this evil demon — a video game to him.”

The Republican lieutenant governor also pointed out that manifestos of the alleged El Paso shooter and other recent accused mass shooters appear to have been published on the online forum 8chan.

“What are we as a nation to say that we’re going to tolerate and allow a website that lets killers post their manifesto before and to be posted after the act?” Mr. Patrick said. “We have to take a long look at who we are as a nation and where we want to go and what we’re going to tolerate from social media and from video games.”

“I look at, on a Sunday morning when most of your viewers right now, half of the country are getting ready to go to church and yet tomorrow we won’t let our kids even pray in our schools. We have to look at ourselves as a nation that’s many factors that go into these shootings — many factors,” he said.

In addition to the El Paso shooting, at least nine people were killed and more than a dozen others injured in a shooting early Sunday in Dayton, Ohio.