Oliver North Blames ‘Culture of Violence’ for Mass Shootings

Just two days after a school shooting in Santa Fe, Tex., left 10 dead, the incoming president of the National Rifle Association appeared on television on Sunday to blame mass shootings on a “culture of violence” and the drug Ritalin, adding that “taking away the rights of law-abiding citizens” would not stop the carnage.

“The problem that we’ve got is we’re trying like the dickens to treat the symptom without treating the disease,” the next president, Oliver L. North, said on the program “Fox News Sunday.” “And the disease in this case isn’t the Second Amendment. The disease is youngsters who are steeped in a culture of violence.”

The N.R.A., the country’s most vocal and active proponent of gun rights, has in the past kept a low profile in the wake of mass shootings. After the 2012 school shooting in Newtown, Conn., that left 20 children and six staff members dead, for instance, the organization shut down its Facebook page, stopped updating its Twitter feed and did not return calls from the news media.

But after the mass shooting in February at a high school in Parkland, Fla., the N.R.A. appeared to shift its strategy. Just over a week after that massacre, which killed 17 people, Wayne LaPierre, the N.R.A.’s chief executive, spoke publicly about the shooting and called for more armed guards in schools.

“The shameful politicization of tragedy — it’s a classic strategy, right out of the playbook of a poisonous movement,” he told the crowd at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference.

“The N.R.A. will not only speak out,” he said, “we will speak out louder and we will speak out stronger than ever before.”

Erik Bernstein, vice president of Bernstein Crisis Management, said on Monday that Mr. North’s appearance on television was a sign of the “new strategy.”

He said the N.R.A. is likely facing growing pressure from donors, politicians and gun manufacturers to respond more quickly.

“The tone around gun violence is really not in their favor right now,” Mr. Bernstein said. “You can’t just sit silent and do ‘no comment.’ That just doesn’t work while people are dying.”

Mike Kuczkowski, the chief executive of Orangefiery, a communications strategy company, said on Monday that the N.R.A. “has been very adept in knowing when they didn’t need to intervene.”

But in the wake of the Parkland shooting, there has been a rise in high-profile student activists who have been able to influence the debate about guns, Mr. Kuczkowski said.

“That’s been a remarkable thing for us to see who have been following this conversation over the decades,” he said. “If I were in the N.R.A.’s shoes, I would take that seriously. I would want to rally the base.”

On Sunday, Mr. North said television and movies helped promote violence but also blamed medication.

“If you look at what has happened to the young people, many of these young boys have been on Ritalin since they were in kindergarten,” he said.

Ritalin and other stimulants used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder are not known to produce violent behavior, experts said.

“The odds that a medication like this is going to be associated with an act that took weeks or months to prepare is slim to none,” said Dr. Steven P. Cuffe, chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Florida College of Medicine in Jacksonville.

A.D.H.D. medications like methylphenidate, which is the generic name of Ritalin, and amphetamine preparations, like Adderall, can produce anger or irritability in some patients. But when that happens, the drug is discontinued and the patient is prescribed a different medication, said Dr. Cuffe, who has studied A.D.H.D. for two decades.

Drugs like methylphenidate have a short half-life, meaning they don’t accumulate in a patient’s body. For that reason, patients experiencing an idiosyncratic reaction would have an impulsive outburst, responding to something happening “in the moment,” Dr. Cuffe said, “not something that was planned out over time.”

Dr. R. Scott Benson, a child and adolescent psychiatrist in Pensacola, Fla., who has been practicing psychiatry for 40 years, said that about 5 to 7 percent of grade school children are estimated to have A.D.H.D., and hundreds of thousands of children are taking A.D.H.D medications.

There is no statistical correlation between these drugs and mass violence, he added.

“America is unique in that it creates shooters, and what we need to look at is what’s unique about America,” he said. “And one thing that’s unique about America is that we have guns everywhere.”

Shannon Watts, founder of the nonprofit Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, a grass-roots movement born after the Newtown shooting, shared a similar sentiment.

“.@NRA President blames America’s school shooting crisis on media violence and Ritalin. This is false,” she wrote on Twitter. “American teens watch the same movies and play the same video games as their peers in other high income countries. What’s different? They have easy access to arsenals and ammo.”

David Hogg, a survivor of the Parkland shooting who has risen to prominence as an outspoken supporter of gun control, also criticized Mr. North on Twitter.

“I keep reading this and laughing,” Mr. Hogg wrote. “Just think about that the President of the NRA is a man that Illegally gave guns to terrorists.”

Mr. Hogg was referring to the Iran-contra affair, in which the Reagan administration used the proceeds from the secret sale of arms to Iran to aid rebel forces in Nicaragua.

Mr. North, a Marine, became a central figure in the affair, and was convicted of three criminal charges that were dropped in 1991 by a federal judge.

Mr. North recently retired from Fox News, where he was a contributor and hosted the documentary series “War Stories With Oliver North.”

In a statement announcing Mr. North’s new position, Mr. LaPierre wrote, “Oliver North is a legendary warrior for American freedom, a gifted communicator and skilled leader. In these times, I can think of no one better suited to serve as our President.”