Absurdity
Conservative Lawmaker Suggests Mass Shootings Are Caused by Video Games and Doors
By BSN Staff, . BSN Network. Satire.
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Rep. Dale Chumley (R-GA) told the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday that the United States' ongoing gun violence epidemic is the product of two intersecting crises: the video game industry and the architectural feature known as a door.
"You remove the games, you remove the doors, you've solved the problem," Chumley said, speaking from a prepared statement he appeared to be reading for the first time. "It's not complicated. I looked into it."
Chumley did not specify how long he looked into it.
The congressman's testimony, which lasted approximately forty minutes, laid out what he called a "two-pillar theory of violence" in which Mortal Kombat and load-bearing entryways share equal blame for mass casualty events. He displayed a poster board with a photo of a door and a photo of a Nintendo Switch connected by a hand-drawn arrow. The arrow, a committee staffer confirmed, pointed in both directions.
"Doors provide access," Chumley explained. "Games provide motive. You take one away, the whole system collapses." He paused. "I'm open to taking away both."
A Democrat on the committee, Rep. Susan Parillo of Illinois, asked whether Chumley had considered that the presence of a firearm might also be a variable worth examining. Chumley thanked her for the question and said the hearing wasn't the right venue.
By Thursday morning, the Department of Homeland Security had received a formal request from Chumley's office to study the feasibility of replacing school entrances with beaded curtains, which he described in the letter as "non-threatening and also kind of fun." An agency spokesperson said the request had been received and placed in a queue alongside a 2019 proposal to make recess mandatory for members of Congress.
The video game industry responded swiftly. In a statement, the Entertainment Software Association noted that Japan has one of the highest rates of video game consumption in the world and approximately zero mass shootings per year, adding that Japan also has doors. The statement closed with the sentence: "We are not sure what to do with this information either."
Chumley's office fired back that Japan's doors are "different, culturally," and asked whether the ESA had ever personally played a video game. The ESA confirmed that several of its employees had.
Architects reacted with more confusion. The American Institute of Architects released a two-sentence statement saying it had never previously been asked to weigh in on gun violence and that it remained, on balance, pro-door.
By Friday, a bipartisan group of four lawmakers had introduced the SAFE ENTRY Act, a bill that would fund a pilot program in six school districts replacing traditional hinged doors with open archways, retractable barriers, or what the legislation describes as "supervised openings staffed by a trusted adult." The bill does not address firearms. It does, however, allocate $2.4 million to study whether video game characters experience doors differently than real people do.
Chumley called it a promising first step and said he was already working on phase two, which involves looking into windows.
Back in his district, reaction was mixed. Gerald Fitch, 67, of Macon, told a local news crew that he had three doors in his house and had never shot anyone, though he acknowledged one of them sticks a little and he has thought about it.
A spokesperson for Chumley released a final statement Friday afternoon clarifying that the congressman's remarks had been "taken slightly out of context" and that he did not mean to imply that all doors are dangerous, only the ones "in areas with a lot of games."
The statement did not clarify what to do about the Capitol building, which has 540 doors and a gift shop that sells Candy Crush on a branded phone charger.
Chumley is up for reelection in November and is currently polling at 58 percent.
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